Playground Mobs & Pitchfork Parenting - The New Village Reality
Thursday, the day that has become my full-time work day, has become the husband and daughter’s “free book day”. Just writing this line turns my heart to mush, just as it does every time I wave them off at the door, and watch them go on their little Thursday-morning ritual. I’m not entirely sure about the order of things, but at some stage during their city adventures, they stop by the Cudeca charity shop where the husband checks out the books, and the daughter has a dig through the toy shelf, sometimes even picking up a little bargain. And on the way out, they browse through the Free Book Box outside the shop. On some days, they come home with illustrated treasures: most recently a copy of Janosch’s Wie der Tiger Lesen Lernt, and a French book with a cover that bears a striking resemblance to the book that inspired the name of her favourite band, Belle and Sebastian.
On a bad day, when all the good reads have been scooped up by others, they’ll either come home empty-handed or proudly presenting new inventory for our basket of bathroom reads. Y’all have those too? Those titles and picture books that don’t quite deserve a spot on your bookshelf but do serve as the perfect accompaniment to a satisfying bowel movement. Last week, they came home with two for the basket: Spice Girls, Girl Power!, the official story as told by The Spice Girls, with the tagline, “How to Get What You Really Want”, and Sex and the City – Kiss and Tell, the official companion book to the series (and other extracurriculars). As I write this, I’ve only had a precursory flip through my pre-pubescent years of 90s girl power and Buffalo shoes. But I’ve spent some quality time with the four Manhattan ladies whose talk about all things sex and a little bit of city often served as my bedtime stories during my teens.
One of the main things that has kept me reaching back for this book are the pages dedicated to the set design – particularly the characters’ respective apartments. I’ve always had a thing for interior design and love flipping through the pages of Architect’s Digest or watching an episode of Living Big in a Tiny House. As one might expect from a SATC episode guide, there is much more focus on the character’s fashion choices and sexual escapades than there is on the homes they don’t seem to spend a lot of time in anyway. But seeing as I currently find the noughties aesthetic more appealing than the bubblegum pinks of the early nineties, I’ve taken no issue in revisiting random chapters in the lives of Bradshaw, Hobbs, Jones and York. And on one such occasion, I found myself laughing out loud.
Below an image of Samantha, Carrie and Miranda looking very The Witches of Eastwick, the text box dedicated to season one’s The Baby Shower starts with the tagline: Is motherhood a cult? A working title I’d been sitting on for this very piece I’m writing now, for months. There are many, brilliant pieces focused on the subject from one angle or another. Eliane Glaser’s Motherhood: A Manifesto – an extract of which was published in The Guardian under the title, The Parent Trap: The Cult of the Perfect Mother – and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s, For modern mothers, the toxic pull of the “momfluencer” feels inescapable, for example. Thinking about the latter as I stared at The Baby Shower’s tagline, I couldn’t help but wonder – if this is how Carrie was referring to motherhood, the fads and social hierarchies that come with it back in 1998, how the fuck would she refer to it now, in the age of Insta mombies? A mob?
***
A couple of weeks ago, I had my first “couch day” since my daughter and I came down with COVID last year. There was nothing fun and leisurely about it and the reasons were similar – I got mown down by a nasty flue. There was only one upside to the whole thing: I got to watch a bit of TV. Mostly in the wee hours of the morning, when the cold sweats made it impossible to sleep, but hey – a win nonetheless. After wasting almost an hour trying to find something to watch in an endless library of options not on the list of shows the husband and I watch together and are therefore verboten, I decided to give The Letdown a try. Written and created by Sarah Scheller and Alison Bell, it follows Audrey (Bell), a new mom who, finding herself feeling lonely and overwhelmed, joins a mother’s group… and quickly realizes she could have just as well logged on to the opinions of a whole world-wide ring of mombsters judging others from behind their screens, instead of exposing herself (and her child) to them IRL.
The group starts their session by swapping birth stories and liken veterans trying to one up another with their war injuries – or “picture-book” deliveries – competing over top scores for hours spent labouring, ranking tears from one to four, and trampling around the emotionally charged subject of elective and unplanned caesareans under a barrage of mom-guilt. It is the female equivalent of swinging dicks around, and at the end of it all, no one goes home a winner. They all leave with a hole in their soul as gaping as their post-partum wounds. Which begs to question – why is our modern (yet oh-so-backward) world preaching the necessity of a village when its only purpose is to come at you with its pitchforks? A sisterhood that is quick to leave its sistren out in the cold as soon as they don’t comply with set ideals 100%? What’s worse – it’s not only that the judgement goes around playgroups and playgrounds as fast as a virus at nursery. It literally jumps out of the pages of parenting books and blogs, and the unrealistically manicured and curated rooms of vloggers who have christened themselves mother superiors on a whole variety of mothering themes ranging from birthing to breastfeeding, BLW and parenting in general.
What is sold as a resource for support and community, is really just an invite to make yourself feel incompetent and, frankly, like shit. In a “controversial” 2009 piece titled The Case Against Breastfeeding, Hanna Rosin compared reading La Leche League's 1958 book, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding to “talking with your bossy but charming neighbor, who has some motherly advice to share.” She likened the revised, 2004 version, to “being trapped in the office of a doctor who’s haranguing you about the choices you make.” In that case, exposing yourself to pretty much any kind of “positive parenting” literature since the peak of social media, feels something like undergoing the Ludovico technique, only instead of pumping you with nauseating medicines, it injects you with painful amounts of shame and mom-guilt. So, when The Letdown’s Audrey allows herself to get pressured into turning to said literature by her mom group, and her husband Jeremy (Duncan Fellows) reminds her that they’d agreed not to read anything of the kind following their birth (prep) experience, I loudly, lovingly – and knowingly – applauded him. Because that’s where it all starts. This is where they first get you.
***
I was on the fence about hypnobirthing until I spoke to two friends who promised me it was a beautiful idea to hold on to leading up to the birth, but that all those visuals of your body “opening up like a flower” go out of the window the minute you find yourself shitting on the floor and pushing out haemorrhoids the size of your baby’s feet. They’d also been told not to scare other women – i.e. share their birth story. Understandable as much as it is dangerous. Either way, their honesty was exactly what I wanted, and I decided there was no harm in letting myself be brainwashed into believing that I could have the birth I wanted, as long as it kept me chill until b-day. And you know what? It did have me believing I was capable of just breathing my baby out of my body like a stubborn stool. That the ridiculously calm, radiantly smiling and majestically squatting birth experience was, indeed, possible for every woman.
Everything discussed in the course, from contractions – nay, surges – to natural pain relief methods was spoken about in an empowering (at times annoyingly) positive tone, prepping participants to readily fight all those white coated, latex-fingered docs on suggested pokes and sweeps. Everything but medical intervention, particularly induction and caesareans. As soon as we reached this chapter, the tone shifted. Suddenly there was an unspoken understanding that, if you did agree to certain interventions, that if you did get an epidural or end up getting induced and/or having a caesarean, your choice or circumstance will be commended but you’re no longer part of the positive birthing club. After all, women were made to birth naturally, right? So why can’t you? This is the emotional turmoil many women put themselves through when things don’t go by the book. It’s so unnecessary, but inescapable due to the natural birthing propaganda we are constantly being exposed to. And it’s all part of this motherhood cult, the members of which are – to an extent, perhaps, subconsciously – trained to make those outside of it feel somehow inferior.
The same counts for the subject of breastfeeding. I am all for fighting the stigmas around breastfeeding – there is absolutely no need for a woman to feel embarrassed to be doing so in public, nor should it be up for discussion how long she decides to feed her child this way. If anyone should feel ashamed, it’s the people who take issue with it. That part of instating a Breastfeeding Awareness Month makes sense, though I believe it could just as well merge with the Free the Nipple movement. What doesn’t make sense to me is the narrative surrounding it: again, something that is supposed to offer support and community, has turned into a practice in alienation. We preach a woman’s right to choices and then go on to make them feel like a Rabenmutter[1], when she goes on to choose what is deemed wrong or, at the very best, “not as good as” – regardless of her reasons and circumstances. And all that with the same marketing approach formula milk companies use to push their product: by emotionally manipulating viewers and selling one reality to a – economically, racially, mentally, culturally etc. – diverse public.
So now, mothers who are very much aware, are being told to educate themselves and others – in other words, spread the gospel on how, just like every woman can freebirth like June in the Handmaid’s Tale, all women can and absolutely should breastfeed. Even if it jeopardizes their own physical and mental wellbeing and the child’s by proxy. This is done in a manner that is truly condescending, regardless of the included disclaimers insisting on their genuine belief that every woman should do what is best for them and their child – if that were the case, Breastfeeding Awareness Month wouldn’t be used in the way it is now. I know many mothers who felt tortured by the fact they couldn’t – and no, this is notfuckinguncommon – nurse their babies, and put themselves through absolute hell because of it. Tragically enough, it was often nurses, midwives and mom groups who stood above the already flaming pit in their stomachs, pouring more gasoline on top. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating and taking pride in breastfeeding; it’s a beautiful thing. But don’t try to push your experience on others when you don’t know their story – not that you’re owed an explanation, nor is it any of your business (even if your Instagram status has you believing it is).
***
Perhaps this is why famous children’s book author and illustrator, Beatrix Potter, never had children of her own. Having recently revisited my childhood favourites Peter Rabbit and co. with my daughter, I reached the conclusion that maybe the child-rearing village we all grew up to believe in is far more akin to Potter’s farm-life experience – only the Orwellian kind where the mammal elders turn into bloody tyrants who will preach anything from dismantling the patriarchy to increased chances of a higher IQ to pressure women into unassisted birthing and breastfeeding at all costs. Her beloved characters Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mrs. Tabitha Twichit are perfect examples of (anthropomorphic) females burdened with the unrealistic expectations set out by their peers. Peers like the “fine company” Tabitha hides her kittens away from when they return home from playing, muddy and wild, afraid she might be perceived as imperfect when she was taught to strive for perfection.
Sadder still is the story of Jemima Puddle-Duck, who is not trusted to hatch her own eggs, because she doesn’t appear to have the patience to sit for twenty-eight days. This results in the farmer’s wife repeatedly confiscating her eggs, and earns her the scrutiny of all the other puddle-ducks on the farm, with her sister-in-law, Rebecca, being particularly cruel in saying, “you would let them go cold, Jemima, you know you would.” Intent on hatching her own eggs, Jemima escapes the farm in search of the perfect nesting place, far away from overbearing hens and gossiping ducks. And while the twists and turns of this tale will have you believe that the villain of the story is the whiskered-gentleman planning to make an omelette with her eggs and a Sunday roast out of her, in my opinion, the true villains of the story are the bitches who drove her from the farm in the first place.
Whether we’re talking about the fabled characters in Potter’s stories, the fictional but cringingly realistic character Alicia (Katherine Barrell) on Workin’ Moms (“Mother Knows Breast”) or our own actual social circles – figuratively speaking, like Audrey’s nemesis Sophie (Lucy Durack) on The Letdown, we’ve all got our own soiled panties to contend with, and it’s time for those who have placed themselves on birthing/breastfeeding/parenting pedestals to start acting and, most importantly, communicating that way too. So, my suggestion here is this: don’t waste another second reading or watching anything that makes you feel “less than” in your approach to doing what’s right for you and your kid. Do throw out those one-sided parenting books, blogs and vlogs that send you spiralling into misery and self-doubt. They don’t even deserve a place in your basket of bathroom reads. At most, they deserve a prime spot on your toilet roll holder. Recycling at its finest.
[1] Bad mother