In honor of Women’s History Month & International Women’s Day, we would like to share with you a story told by one of our incredible Zazzle Creators, Lise Wong. Thank you for sharing your story, Lise!
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We have all heard it over and over again “find your tribe”. But what does it mean? The intensity of motherhood for our generation is overwhelming. We struggle to find a balance and complain about getting the short end of the stick compared to men. BUT most fathers have already taken on levels and types of household duties that would stun our grandfathers.
So why are mothers from Generation X and the Millennials generation so different from the mothers who came before us? Often in these discussions, someone will make a wistful comment about a village. But beyond the wistful longings, the “village” is thought of as an unobtainable fantasy rooted in a vision of the 1950’s that never really existed.
It was around the 60’s that the village started to be abandoned with the rise of more and more women in the workplace. Of course these women still had a village of mothers, aunts and older children to provide the support they needed to pursue their careers. It wasn’t until that village passed on that women in the 80’s began to feel that loss.
Women in the 90’s and early 2000’s became a bit more realistic. We could have it all but not all at once. And that’s when the villages died completely.
Over years the “career first” advice brought fewer children to become older siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles—essential members of the childcare village of old. Our career pursuits often led us far from family, anyway. The career building single doesn’t need a village. We didn’t need it, and didn’t miss it until we started a family. But it was gone. And it wasn’t just the lack of extended family. We had waited later to have children, and many of our parents simply grew too old to keep up with our toddlers.
The end result is that most parents are on their own. Other mothers are too occupied with their own specific life-balancing problems. Fathers might do more than their grandfathers, but it isn’t nearly enough to replace everyone else. Out of options and frustrated, mothers often hold them in contempt for their failure to achieve precise domestic parity.
We entered into motherhood completely unprepared for its emotional force. That motherhood commands any portion of our identity stuns us.
Mid-career and postpartum, we start questioning all our assumptions and the career plans we built upon them. Now, if we decide to give up work or, “lean back” from our careers — we must not only justify “wasting” our education and losing a paycheck, but also forge a new identity.
We turned motherhood into a proper job to be done by us or a credentialed nanny under our direction. We created diet plans, lesson schedules. We did baby sign language and Baby Einstein. Housewives, perpetually feeling inadequate, responded to the notion that motherhood is just like any other corporate gig with a Martha Stewart offensive of militant domesticity, out-crafting and out-cooking the accountants and nannies. We made sure to place special emphasis on things only an actual mother can do, such as breastfeeding.
We complain about husbands not doing anything right, a state of affairs we might have avoided if we actually let them help. We might beg grandparents to babysit, but then saddle them with so many rules.
Working moms exist in a state of guilt for whatever it is they aren’t doing at any given moment. Stay at home moms pour themselves into their children to justify the worldly accolades they gave up. Mothers are isolated and spent, children are over-managed and smothered. And fathers are an afterthought. They aren’t typically mentioned outside of demands for more domestic help. We need to see motherhood as the valid choice it is, not a burden to be managed. We need new advice, a new plan.
The women hampered most by the loss of the village are the women without law degrees or a shot at the corner office, the ones who find it most difficult to help themselves. The elite woman’s strategy of hiring a village or quitting work is not available to her administrative assistant or housekeeper, who can neither keep pace with the motherhood rat race nor rely upon the nannies or stay at home moms whose time is consumed with the rat race.
With two young boys, there is no question that my husband and I are in the thick of it. And so are most of our friends. We are in a beautiful, yet sometimes overwhelming, season of life. We are building families and nurturing marriages, all at the same time. We are gaining obligations and losing sleep. Our priorities are shifting and tightening. We are busy and pulled in a million different directions.
When you have kids, it’s natural to make friends with other people who have kids. You’re in the same stage of life, you’re going through the same sleepless nights and tantrum battles, and it’s fun to have adult conversation while your kids all play together. But it is our primal urge to be a part of a larger village that drives us to form these common relationships.
And so this generation of women are indeed forming tribes, those precious gems who make day to day mothering tolerable. The ones who don’t care that my sweat pants haven’t been washed in four days. The ones who see my laundry piles and sink full of dishes and say, “Girl, you should see my house…” The ones who understand that a threenager is enough to make me crazy and won’t bat an eyelash when I say, “I just don’t like them today.”
I am so fortunate to have women in my life who save my exhausted hiney in my moments of mothering. Without those truth talking angels in my life, I couldn’t, no, WOULDN’T survive. These women have become my salvation. My daily lifeline and a way to maintain what is left of my sanity.
That is the essence of the village. If we want it back, we need to find it wherever it still lives. We need to find it and use it. And we need to rebuild villages where the old ones once stood.
So, my advice? Find these women who will support you and listen to you.
With every tidbit of useful advice, every display of friendship solidarity, with every cup of coffee I consume at sticky tables, these women help me find my footing as a mother, never once judging me on the days I say I want to quit. And I am grateful beyond measure.
Dedicated to my bestest bestie! My unbiological sister! Thank you for keeping me sane.
If you’re interested in reading more inspirational stories like Lise’s, check out our Women’s History Month – Inspirational Stories Shared by Zazzle Creators article!
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