The Good Mother

A Surviving Facts Blog

I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in a traditional family structure. My mother was a homemaker, always cleaning, cooking and serving family needs. My father was an executive who worked long days and provided well for the family. My mom always wore makeup, coiffed her hair and dressed nicely. The house was always clean, dinner was always on the table at 6 pm, and we children were dressed perfectly. Today, my mom would be called a trad wife.

This set for me a definition of a good mother. A good mother sacrificed. A good mother had no identity other than her children. A good mother’s ambition was happy and healthy children- at least on a surface level.

I was never that definition of a good mother.

I was always a provider- the family’s primary or sole provider. I worked long days, rushing home to pick up my daughters from daycare and fix dinner. These responsibilities became even more complex once I divorced my first husband who had drained my inheritance and savings and charged up credit cards in my name. Being a single mom is fire juggling while riding a unicycle. You have to keep the blazing wands in the air and your feet can’t stop moving. Drop one wand, miss one pedal, and you’re ablaze.

I was good at the juggle- on most days and as long as nothing unexpected occurred. Illnesses could cause chaos for days, followed by weeks of catch up. I needed to work hard and progress because money was tight from my ex-husband’s financial devastation. Working hard also meant that my kids saw me answering emails and calls, getting up early, running in at the very last moment to pick them up from day care. I once had a colleague comment on “how much I had given up to succeed.” For me, the choice wasn’t obvious. I had to pay my bills- and catch up on the debt my ex had run up in my name. No credit card company was willing to consider me a victim of financial fraud because I had been married at the time. His debts were now mine.

My daughters had a nice home, were well fed and well dressed. I always took them to doctor’s appointments and attended activities and events when I could- which wasn’t always. But I was distracted. At work, I worried about my daughters; at home, I worried about work. Something always felt shorted.

In the background, was the good mother image I had learned from watching my mother.

Two weeks ago, my younger daughter became ill and had to go to the emergency room twice. All week, I scuttled up and down the stairs serving her needs. She had a severe stomach issue, and so I held her hair while she got sick, washed buckets with bleach, wiped her forehead with wet towels. I bought popsicles, applesauce and crackers; made rice, pastina and homemade chicken soup; washed and changed sheets and more. I was the “good mother.” Why, then, didn’t I feel I was?

This is when I realized I had bought the story. I had bought the patriarchal definition of motherhood, incorporating it so deeply into my psyche that more than half my life has passed before realizing it.

A History Lesson

The Western idealization of motherhood began centuries ago- as far back as ancient civilizations, excepting ancient Egypt, which was more egalitarian. Procreation was necessary for economic, social and survival reasons, and so, over time, mothering became a woman’s singular role. As the association of women with motherhood grew, women were deemed inferior to men and their rights to land ownership, succession and self determination became more limited. Motherhood also became more idolized and even fetishized, culminating in the Victorian conception of mothers as angelic. Literature of the time even referred to mothers as the “angel of the house.”

In the early twentieth century, world war, industrialization and immigration challenged such notions of motherhood. Working class women had to work to support families or support the war effort while men were on the front lines. These women saw new possibilities limited by laws preventing them from having bank accounts or divorcing abusive husbands. At the same time, privileged women capable of living the ideal, gained more education, which also provided glimpses into greater freedom. This growing knowledge of liberties led to the suffragette movement and the 1920 19th amendment to vote.

Not until the 1960s, however, was the motherhood ideal shattered. The women’s movements of the 60s, 70s and 80s significantly advanced women’s rights. In 1963, the Equal Pay Act was passed. In 1974, Title IX permitted women to open bank accounts and have credit cards. The Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994, and in 2013, women were allowed to serve in the military in direct combat positions. This is hardly ancient history.

Yet, we see today a retrenchment around ideal motherhood. Indeed, Project 2025 recommends fewer rights and supports for women. It calls for eliminating Head Start; does not advocate for paid leave, and in fact supports reducing the agencies needed to mandate paid leave in the US; reduces or eliminates health and mental health services available to women; and condemns single motherhood, same-sex marriage and divorce. Attempting to sublimate the damage of these policies, Project 2025 also supports ending “universal day care” and paying women to stay home with their children. In fact, Project 2025 claims child care harms children, a statement that has long proven to be false. Children in day care actually show more gains in various areas. How all this will be done is unclear. Will women be paid a livable wage? Since women would be dependent on men as providers, that seems unlikely.

Project 2025’s advocacy of such restrictive roles for women shows how deeply embedded the motherhood ideal is. Even for forward-thinking, feminist women like myself, we have grown up with the ideal displayed before us on television shows, in movies and in books much like propaganda. Along with the ideal has come the tale of the bad mom. We’ve all heard about women drowning children as if possessed by evil. Usually, the reality is severe postpartum psychosis.

Back to my present

Since my mother depicted the ideal so well, I absorbed it. When I finally became a mother, I held the ideal like a self-flagellation tool. My life responsibilities prevented me from the ideal. My reality asked me to perform roles associated with male roles. No support systems existed for me to even pretend I could reach the ideal.

And so, here I was with a sick 19 year old- certainly capable of caring for herself on some level. But my “you should be” concept kicked in, and I scurried about to live that ideal. Until the voice in my head foghorned: you are accepting the patriarchy’s definition of motherhood.

This voice did not mean I stopped caring for my child, though I stopped acting like a scullery maid. It did mean I released myself from the internal criticism we women are so good at. The voice no longer says, “not good enough.”

Many of us women have been running around trying to fill a black hole. Except black holes have no end. They can never be filled. Perhaps this is why Adrienne Rich once wrote that the ideal of motherhood “haunted” her.

We are more than fillers of black holes. We are fully formed autonomous human beings (obvious, of course), and we can define motherhood any way we damn well please. That is the new voice in my head, and I will fight for this to be the reality for all American women, for all women, everywhere.

I would love to hear from you, even if, especially if, you disagree. Perhaps we can bring back the American tradition of debate.

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