The Good Mother?
As a feminist, I expected to have a career equal to my spouse’s and to share household and childcare responsibilities with him. After college I pursued a literature PhD with the goal of becoming an English professor. I got married during graduate school and got pregnant while on the academic job market. I had it all figured out: I would give birth in April and be ready to start as an assistant professor the following September. I even flew to a couple of job interviews seven months pregnant, husband in tow for support (in retrospect this is funny: he’s a lawyer, not a doctor, so it’s not like he could have helped if I went into labor mid-flight).
A couple of things happened: 1) I didn’t get a job offer; 2) to my surprise, after our daughter was born, I didn’t want to leave her. So like my mother before me, who raised three children while my father worked long hours, I ended up working part-time.
I’m a perfectionist and an overachiever who’s used to straight A’s. When I decided to devote myself to child-rearing, I became over-invested in being a Good Mother. As Nancy Reddy describes in The Good Mother Myth, she thought “being a [good] mother meant always putting your children first and never minding…that your dinner was the scraps from their plates…[loving] your kids so much that all your desires would just fall away” (1). The Good Mother is expected to give her children everything: food, water, the extra blanket, at least one kidney, and the last seat in the lifeboat. The Good Mother is expected to throw her body between her children and danger.
I’ve had lots of therapy and I am a feminist, so I recognize this myth as retrograde, oppressive bullshit. But having sacrificed my career at its altar, I’ve kind of needed to believe in it. It became my life’s work to give my daughter a magical and protected childhood. I read her countless picture books, some of them over and over in one sitting (I remember one particularly odious board book called The Little Car, which required “vrooming” noises that made my daughter squeal with delight). I did so many art projects and our drawers were overflowing with beads, crayons, felt, construction paper, paintbrushes, glitter glue, pipe cleaners, spangles, popsicle sticks, and googly eyes. Even though I find pretend play boring, I hosted tea parties for my daughter’s stuffed animals and helped her dress and play with her Barbies (yes, Barbies: I dare you to judge me!). I spent endless hours on playgrounds, at children’s museums, and in the children’s room at the local library. I tried to make each birthday memorable and even celebrated half birthdays during most of her childhood. I sought out nutritious foods that she, a picky eater, might eat and gave her treats in moderation. Once she started school, I packed her lunch every day, always including a handwritten note with a variation of, “Hi sweetie, I hope you’re having a great day at school! xx Mommy.” I volunteered as fundraising chair of her public elementary school’s PTA and helped raise thousands of dollars for its programs.
To keep her from becoming too spoiled, I made sure there were responsibilities and consequences. From an early age, she had chores like setting and clearing the table and keeping her room relatively neat. For those rare times she disobeyed or broke the rules, I had “1-2-3-Magic” and timeouts in my parenting toolbox.
To stay sane, I did make time for myself. I hired a babysitter a couple of afternoons a week so I could get my hair cut, go to the dentist, take a walk. I taught my classes, graded papers, exercised, had coffee with friends, occasionally went out to dinner with my husband. And I joined a chorus, which rehearsed one night a week. But while my daughter was growing up, I tried to put her first.
So have I earned that A, that parenting gold star, that Good Mother title? In spite of everything I’ve done right, a little voice whispers, “No! When it mattered most, you failed.”
The Pig
In June 2010, shortly after our daughter’s 14th birthday, we planned a trip to England to celebrate her middle-school graduation. Through a British travel agency, I booked a weeklong self-guided cycling tour: we would pick up bikes in Oxford and cycle north through the bucolic lanes of England’s Cotswolds region while a van transported our luggage to that night’s inn. We aren’t a sporty or outdoorsy family; our preferred activity is dinner and a Broadway show. And my daughter didn’t learn to ride a bike until she was eight. But for some reason it seemed like a good idea for our family to do this trip by ourselves rather than with a guide or group.
It was probably lucky that while cycling in Central Park three weeks before the trip, I collided with a pedestrian, fell off my bike, and broke my shoulder. It was a hairline fracture and didn’t hurt, but the orthopedist told me not to ride again until it healed. So we revised the trip: rather than cycle, we would rent a car and drive from inn to inn.
The trip started out well. In Oxford we marveled at the sight of Harry Potteresque young scholars headed to exams on their bikes, robes fluttering behind them. We toured Blenheim, the magnificent palace and gardens where Churchill spent much of his childhood. Each night we stayed at a lovely inn with comfortable beds and delicious farm-to-table food.
For our last day in the Cotswolds, I planned a cross-country hike. Up until that day we had gotten along pretty well. That morning at breakfast, our daughter made it clear she’d rather do almost anything than spend one more day in her parents’ company. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but it probably went something like this:
“The hike will be fun,” I said. “And the concierge has suggested a really cute place for lunch.”
“I hate the food here,” she grumbled, scowling at her porridge. “I hate hiking. There’s no decent shopping. I miss my friends. I want to go home!”
“We’ll be home soon,” I said, sneaking a “help me” glance at my husband.
He shrugged. Usually he excelled at cajoling our daughter out of her rare bad moods, but this day he had nothing. Maybe because the hike was my idea.
After breakfast, the concierge handed me a map with handwritten directions and explained about the easement, a British law that permits hikers to cross unhindered through almost any farm (which to private-property-worshipping Americans seems bizarre). We started off by walking through several fields, our daughter lagging defiantly behind. An hour into the route, the directions said: “turn left at the ha-ha.” My husband looked at me expectantly. I’m a scholar of 18th-century British literature; surely I could recognize a ha-ha. Unfortunately at that moment, my mind went as blank as our signal-less cell phones. We chose a random direction and were soon lost.
“There’s a farmhouse,” I said. “Let’s ask for directions.”
Before we knocked on the door of the thatched-roof house, we stopped to gawk at the pigs, which were confined inside a barbed-wire enclosure. Some of these animals were small and cute, but others were large and menacing, making me glad for our barbed-wire separation.
Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shape lurking in the open doorway of the barn next to the enclosure. All black, weighing about 500 pounds, and glaring at us with its tiny eyes, this pig was clearly contemplating how we might taste for lunch. And there was no barrier between him and us!
“Run!” my brain screamed, so I started sprinting toward the low wooden fence surrounding the farmhouse. I dropped the digital camera I had been carrying, dashed back to grab it, then turned around and hurled myself over the fence.
I was safe!
Only then did I remember the pig’s other potential victims: my husband and daughter. They were fine—the pig had by now retreated into the barn’s depths—and they were laughing uncontrollably. So was the farmer, who was standing at his kitchen window pointing and guffawing at the crazy stranger (me).
Do you see what I did? At the moment when I should have sacrificed myself for my daughter, I choked. It doesn’t matter that we were never in danger; what matters is that I thought we were and chose to save myself (and the camera!) instead of her.
The Roast
A couple of years after that trip, my husband threw me a party for my 50th birthday. He rented a room in a private club on New York’s Upper East Side and family and friends came to celebrate me. This event included a roast, a four-generation tradition on my mother’s side. Guests recited poems or sang songs in my honor that poked gentle fun at my flaws. My daughter’s speech featured the pig and included all the gory details, right down to the ha-ha and the rescued camera. Her punchline, “I don’t know what I would do without my mom, even if she would leave me as a pig’s dinner,” got a big laugh.
I laughed along with the crowd, but I also felt embarrassed and ashamed. Now my worst parenting moment was exposed for everyone to see. Now everyone knew I wasn’t a Good Mother.
By this point you’re probably thinking, “How could this be the worst thing you’ve ever done as a parent? Aren’t you being too hard on yourself?” Well yes. And I acknowledge plenty of real and more damaging parenting mistakes. As a perfectionist, I probably put too much pressure on my daughter. My family of origin has boundary issues that have trickled down into my parenting. And I’m an anxious person. Because I wasn’t popular as a child, I worried too much about finding the perfect school where my daughter would fit in and have friends. Throughout her childhood, I tried to stay calm whenever she had friend trouble. But children can always tell.
In spite of these parenting flaws, my daughter is now happily married with a thriving career. I’m proud to claim some of the credit for her self-confident, well-adjusted state (to be fair, my husband deserves partial credit too). So why has that pig continued to haunt me?
I think I’ve viewed the pig as a test that I failed. The pig represents the potential dangers that could harm my daughter and my shame and guilt that I haven’t always protected her. It represents my ambivalence about the books I didn’t write and the professional accolades I didn’t get. It represents my anxiety about what kind of example I’ve set for my daughter. That’s a lot of weight for one oblivious pig to bear.
Letter to My Daughter: Beware the Pig!
“To my dearest daughter,
You’re all grown up now and preparing to become a mother yourself. Being your mother has been the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m happy I chose to be with you instead of having a Big Career. Maybe because of my upbringing, I didn’t know any other way to do it. I think it messed with my sense of right and wrong though. I was probably too worried about Doing It Right to do it right (if that makes any sense).
So my “words of wisdom” are: “Beware the Pig!” That damned pig represents the oppression of The Good Mother, which if you let it, will devour you. I’m here to tell you there’s no such thing as The Good Mother. Instead, you can be good enough. If you want to work, work. If you want to stay home, stay home. If you want to do both, that’s fine too. And try to keep your sense of self. There’s no one right way to be a parent, only your own way and your spouse’s way (and sharing it will help). When you make mistakes—and since you’re human, you will—forgive yourself. Try not to feel guilty. Try not to worry about things you can’t control. And keep your sense of humor.
I love you with all my heart, Mommy.
P.S. I promise to protect you from any ravenous barnyard animals that cross our path. Or at least I’ll try.”
1 Nancy Reddy, The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom. New York, St. Martin’s, 2024. E-Book
Kate Levin is a retired adjunct English professor who lives in NYC. A member of the Kelly Writers House Advisory Board for many years, she currently serves on nonprofit boards in education and the arts. She has published fiction and nonfiction in Bookends Review, Smoky Blue, Marathon Literary Review, Heart Balm Literary, and The Writer’s Workout. She also has a series of articles in academic journals about teaching Eliza Haywood’s 18th-century novella “Fantomina.”