John Thinks Kids are Baby Goats
My first student teaching placement in college paired me with an incredible teacher. One of his valuable practices was to give his students the tools to recognize media manipulation. They'd spend a week or two studying the various ways in which advertisers use flattery, quiet threats, and other tactics to wheedle us into buying, using, and consuming products. It was fascinating, and I find myself still reading advertisements through the lens of that knowledge.
I ripped this advertisement from a parenting magazine I flipped through at the laundromat.
Jen Wilson. Among her other notable achievements (not to mention her incredibly toned calves!), she's a "kid dropper-offer and kid picker-upper." Oh, yeah, and she helps with homework and shops for groceries.
I have many thoughts about the absolute worthiness and substance of my current calling as a mother. I have just as many thoughts about our culture's disparagement of that calling. I'm constantly told, in both blatant and subtle ways, that being just a mother is not enough, especially if one has visible intelligence, beauty, creativity, or talent just GOING TO WASTE in the home. (And the idea that "successful" motherhood looks like Martha Stewart-hood is just as bad.) If only the Council Devoted to the Incredible Egg and Western culture in general spoke the truth about the tending of little souls.
I didn't want to take the time to place my thoughts down coherently right now, but I still felt the need to respond to the advertisement, so I added an asterisked message.
There. That's better.
7 comments :
you're brilliant but that's not why I love you;
it's because of those mean omelets you make with Aldi cheddar
heck yeah!
ps: drop those kids off already and fry me up some eggs -- do something useful with your time!
See, when you write posts like this, it makes me think thoughts. Lots of them. I don't think they can (ought?) all fit in this comment section, so maybe I will properly write them out some where else, but here are some:
How really sad that "mom" is now commonly defined and accepted as "kid picker-upper and kid-dropper offer". Then you get into the whole chicken or the egg (no puns intended here!) conversation of did people stop "getting" why motherhood was important once all moms did was pick up and drop off, or did it stop seeming important so they just picked up and dropped off?
I dunno, I'm just having difficulty seeing how anyone could think that eggs rate on the same level as one's children as not being an insult.
All of that, I suppose is rather traditional line of thought. What I really started thinking about, though, was, did we already do this to the fathers out there and no one raised nary a peep? That's the thought that I could expand to the point I get kicked out of the comments for being too long-winded.
I just think of all the places where it admonishes "Fathers, raise up your children in the way that they should go." and nowadays it seems that Mothers are supposed to be the raisers, and Fathers are just to be the providers--the go to work and get money people.
I don't seem to be able to talk in a straight line today, but what I mean is, by my understanding, men didn't "go off to provide"---they stayed home to provide, to raise their children, to teach them, to have them work with them---that work and home were one and the same. That home was the place for a father, as "head of the house" implies.
I know that I am speaking from the outside in, but I can't help but wonder if, as I said earlier, people are struggling with the pressure of peoples views on motherhood, and yet fatherhood is under greater duress. I know that a lot of people would say it is now physically impossible to have that kind of fatherhood in the society that we have now. . .but throughout my childhood I have heard how impossible it is to raise kids on only one income. In the meantime, only my Dad worked---and by the end of it there were tweleve of us, which defies the impossibility that was preached as fact to me. So I have great difficulty accepting that the thought be discarded on the grounds of "impossibility".
I can't help but think that most people feel that a stay at home mom is just about as impossible as most people would view having both parents in the home---a very daunting impossibility. I am less intimidated about a stay-at-home-mom, because I've seen it happen first hand. But I have begun to seriously think about the other side of the equation, about what place fathers are to have, as opposed to what the culture at large expects out of fathers.
I have to admit that from where I sit, it looks pretty brutal to me to be home, alone, with small children. It's not a fun set up. It looks really, really, lonely, and really, really difficult. I have seen people try to reconcile this difficulty by saying you really need close (e.g. nearby) friends and family to help you through those challenging times. But you know what? The whole deal sounds a lot less intimidating to me if I didn't have to do it alone, but with my (hypotehtical for the sake of the argument) husband, which is only logical. I don't feel capable of raising children largely by myself, but they wouldn't be just be my children, they'd be his as well. What logical reason is there for him not to be there raising them with me, together? Why does he have to be expected to be gone most of the time? Why does it have to be expected that I would have to be alone?
That this country is set up that way is undeniable. That it is they way it was meant to be does not seem to be the case to me. It just seems to me that as society has watered down motherhood to picker-upper, dropper-offer, and homework helper, fatherhood has already been reduced to a barely recognizable form.
Thinking of how impossible this concept sounds gives me greater sympathy for those that find stay-at-home-motherhood impossible. I really don't think there is any denying the impossiblity of it; there is only recognizing "with men, this is impossible; but with God, all things are possible."
As a completely unmarried, childless type person, I realize I'm probably not much better than an "armchair general". But I can't help but think about it, and it seems to me that we are a lot more accepting of what culture says fatherhood should be like than we tend to be for culture's view of motherhood.
Ahh. So much for trying not to get too wordy. If this wasn't an appropriate place to spew my thoughts, feel free to delete it.
Verbosely yours,
Titi
Motherhood is such a blessed gift. Your posts and pictures are proven results of the value of staying home with your children.
My husband and I have never regretted my staying at home with our daughter. When she entered elementary school I took a part time position with a school district so I could remain home with her in the afternoons and on holidays. Great memories, great fun.
Enjoy the many blessings of motherhood and the blessing of being home with them.
I think Jen Wilson is the babysitter.
The nanny?
I don't know that those descriptions even come close to what I do....I mean, TRIathlon? Pathetic.
Hahahahahahahaha!
First Sarah,
Make ME some eggs already!
Titi,
I think your comment has a lot of truth in it. I also think that it's an issue with too many layers for me to be able to (or want to) tackle in a blog post. There's an unsatisfying response for you! :)
Molly,
Thanks. I think the encouragement that women who've passed this season in their life is so valuable to us younger moms.
Second Sarah,
Hm, the nanny. I hadn't thought of that. Maybe so! (I wonder what kind of pay they give her...)
we have dubbed a particular type of egg her "Abigail eggs"-did you know that? Ever since those eggs you made for us in Buffalo. With Bacon thankyouverymuch.
And Titi~that is an interesting notion and you raise a good point. I think I can safely say, without any debate at all, that it is more generally accepted for fathers to be out of the picture. But there are many who are NOT fathering while working at home and those who father immensely well while working a job outside the home. So-I'll leave it there.
Being a FATHER is a role that ought to be aspired to and that idea is not really all that prevalent today is it?
Yeah. . .I was just struck by the "description" of being a "mom" (e.g. kid dropper-offer, kid-picker-upper, grocery shopper, goarden planter, homework helper) and realizing that fathers have also already been "reduced" like this as well. I wasn't really trying to say what a "good father" would look like, just that the modern conception of parents (both of them) is a far cry from what is presented in the Bible. But it was kinda late when I was writing the comment and my mind was going everywhere and it all popped out. I certainly don't think there is only "one right way", or anything like that. . .just that I sometimes think the whole issue is under-examined. Sometimes you just suddenly realize "Man, I never thought about that before!" (and then you blather on for several pages on someone else's comment section before you can properly come to your senses. . .)
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