Modern mothers' guilty little secrets

Excuse Me, You’re Jack’s Mom, Right? Are You Losing Your Mind?
It can be slightly embarrassing to be women on a mission, particularly if that mission involves asking taboo questions of vague acquaintances. Still, we decided to start asking every mom we could find how she was feeling. In the grocery store, at after-school pick-up, during cocktail parties, and while pushing swings at the playground.

Over the course of the next six months, we talked to more than a hundred women, logging six thousand minutes of intense, sometimes tearful, sometimes humorous interviews. We talked to women across the country, from small towns like Port Angeles, Washington, to big cities like Boston. We talked to stay-at-home moms, full-time working moms, and part-time working moms. We talked to mothers in their late twenties and in their early forties. We talked to married mothers and single mothers. We talked to mothers with one child, mothers with two children, and mothers with three, four, and five. Ninety-five percent of our research was done one on one, in person and on the phone. We sat down with women behind closed doors or found some quiet time on the phone, and we listened. Many mothers threw us a bucket of sunshine at first, but then gave themselves permission to reveal their honest feelings about how they’re living in motherhood today. Many told their truths for the first time in years, and in doing so, they felt instant relief.

OK, not quite instant. Getting to the relief took a few minutes. Twenty-two minutes, to be exact.

Us: Tell us a little something about yourself.

Them: Well, I’m thirty-six, I have two kids, and I used to be the manager of a pharmaceutical company. I finally got a big promotion right before I had my first child.

Us: How are you handling motherhood right now?

Them: It’s amazing. I love it! I am so balanced. My husband is my best friend. I feel really blessed and extremely lucky that I have healthy kids and we’re able to provide a great foundation and a positive environment for our children.

Twenty-two minutes later:

Us: Sounds like you have real balance in your life. A lot of women we’ve talked to seem to have a hard time finding that. How do you do it?

Them: Ummm, well, maybe balance isn’t the right word. [Long pause.] Umm, actually, I haven’t taken a shower in three days. And, OK, my husband and I haven’t had sex in three weeks. And, well, the laundry is piled to the ceiling, and my house is a mess. My five-year-old daughter could also use a serious attitude adjustment. I really wish I had time to get a haircut. And I hate to admit it, but my son’s first word was “Shrek.”

Us: OK, things aren’t perfect. But overall, are you happy?

Them:  Umm, wow, happy? Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, I’m happy. Well, I wouldn’t say totally happy.  You know, I have an MBA. Why can’t I do this? [Long pause.]  I feel like such a bad mom sometimes. This really isn’t what I expected.One mother—talking with us on the phone, between working and picking up her four-year-old from preschool—summed it up best: “I was a really good mom before I had kids.” 

Honesty Starts Here
Sure, you can go ahead and keep telling all the women in your book group how beautiful your whole life is, but for us, it’s time for a reality check. We didn’t realize that being mothers would make us feel so unsuccessful. We didn’t realize that motherhood would involve so many sacrifices. We didn’t know we’d lose control. We didn’t know the skills we honed at work would not be transferable or, worse, would be transferable in really unappealing ways. As one mom told us, “I used to be a creative art director at a big ad agency, and I found myself driving around to six different drugstores at 10 p.m. to find three specific flavors of Kool-Aid to match the color theme of my daughter’s birthday party.”

We’ve been there, done that. And we can tell you from experience: this is not who this woman thought she’d turn out to be.

So it’s time to get real and start improving our lives in motherhood. And the first step involves being frank—with ourselves and with others. More than one hundred moms shared their innermost thoughts with us. They admitted some dirty little secrets and offered advice, which you’ll find throughout the book. We’ve pinpointed eight core issues to talk about, and each one stems from the same source: our overblown expectations. At the end of each chapter you will find applicable solutions that will help you rewrite your own rules for living in modern motherhood.

First, we need to get some disclaimers out of the way.

Yes, we all love our kids.Yes, we all adore our husbands.Yes, we are very, very lucky to have so many choices.

Yet... We’re feeling pretty maxed out right now.We’re stuck. We need to think about motherhood in a new way.We sometimes resent being mothers.We want to feel better about our lives.

The hope is that we’ll raise great kids and be happy doing it. And that means talking about the good and bad sides of motherhood. Because if we can talk honestly, perhaps we can lose the notion that we can and should do it all. And if we can lose that notion, then perhaps we can get a grip on our insane expectations. And if we can get a grip on our insane expectations, perhaps we can stop judging ourselves and other moms, learn to say no when we need to, embrace our daily lives, nurture ourselves and our husbands, and maybe, just maybe, relax and find peace. The ideal is to be true to ourselves, to make conscious choices based on our own value systems (and not others’ expectations of us), and to live our lives in ways that serve our own best interests and those of our families. Only then can we begin to love motherhood as much as we love our children.

Excerpted from "I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids" by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile.  All rights reserved.  Published by Chronicle Books. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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