It's Time to Talk About Mothering
- Megan Haldane
- Jun 26, 2017
- 6 min read
Firstly though, I would like to relate a small experience I had yesterday whilst I waited for my grand daughters to finish their swimming lessons.
Just below me on a wooden platform, the type you warm up on when you get out of the swimming pool a little shivery, I noticed a man smoothing, soothing, touching, … maybe you could call it massaging his daughter who was lying on her tummy soaking in the sun. The man was her father I am sure. His daughter looked to be three years old. She had the tiniest body but at the same time was very beautifully developed with strong looking muscles and an all over olive suntan … very typical of an Australian girl who would have experienced a whole summer of physical play out in the sun along with her swimming lessons.
Her Dad was rubbing her back in a way I think I could safely say he might rub his wife’s back, concentrating a lot on her sacrum. Her little bikini pants seemed to be in the way so he caringly pulled them down a little bit exposing the very top of her tiny bum cheeks. I noticed the little girl quickly swing her left arm around and pulled her bikini up. The man was busy watching some other little ones swimming and when he looked down at his daughter again he noticed her bikini pants were ‘up’ again so he pulled them down again, just a little, very caringly, very lovingly. He began to rock her from side to side and then she settled. Then he began a rubbing motion all over her back, until he noticed her bikini top was covering quite a lot of skin so he lifted it up in order to keep skin contact and began using his fingertips in a swirling motion like a tickling scratching movement very nicely with just the tip of his fingers. His daughter I think was in heaven by now. After a while he began massaging her whole back quite firmly from top to bottom and back up to the top. His hand, I noticed spanned her whole upper back so he did a lot of kneading with his fingertips and stroking with his whole hand. Sounds great?! … if you were his wife or partner I would say yes. This obviously loving kind father did not have the discernment to know that his daughter was receiving a massage and caressing touch reserved for an adult woman. Of course his intention was pure and loving but his physical action was potentially provocative in terms of its sensuality and intimacy. There is no doubt about it. My girls were still swimming so I continued my observation and saw this sweet little girl turn over onto her back. Her face was that of a just turned three year old, actually, quite a ‘baby face’. She scowled at her father angrily and grabbed at his arm pulling it onto her tummy wanting more of the same kind of touch. Her father would not, or could not face it and he told the little girl to stand up, pick up her towel and go with him. The girl was very unhappy finding it hard to move out of such a pleasure state. She complained and cried a bit but was soon distracted as a girl aged about five jumped out of the pool and ran up to her father. She was shaking and a little cold. He threw a towel over her shoulders and the two little ones followed him over to a tree where, to my astonishment, he went to a stroller and picked up a crying baby who had been lying in the shade.
Aha! The boy they had so wanted, dressed fully in blue and trying to suck on a blue dummy amidst the cries. I think the baby would have been no more than three months old. Very quickly the baby escalated his crying to a scream, the kind of scream only a hungry baby can achieve.
The father put the baby back into the pram and began scrabbling around underneath, his arm disappearing into a bag. He pulled out some fruit and snacks and sat the girls down to give them their food. All the while the baby screamed at such a pitch at one time he seemed to gag and go silent. After a few seconds the baby screamed again, much to my relief. The lovely father never paid any attention to him whatsoever whilst tending to the girls. Typically, I noticed other women close by having a slightly disturbed response to the baby’s screaming, my own being, ‘just pick him up and hold him in one arm whilst you tend to the girls.” Eventually the father produced a tiny bottle filled with milk and picked up the baby who continued screaming. He sat on the grass and tried to settle the baby who by this time was too distressed to even realise that a bottle of milk was there for him. Suddenly the little 5 - or - so year old left her lunch and came and sat down by the father cooing at the baby and patting him. This worked nicely and the boy began sucking furiously, choking at first and then settling down to drink his bottle of milk at which point his father picked up his mobile phone and one handedly began texting someone. This wonderful father took everything in his stride. He was resolutely unperturbed. And there they sat, a wonderful happy family on their Saturday morning outing. As I looked across at them I felt very disturbed. They all looked somehow grumpy and disconnected. What disturbed me most though was the missing person factor. It seemed a woman’s presence was called for. Where was Mummy?!?
I know, I know … off at the supermarket? … having a well deserved Saturday morning lie in? … at work?… at a conference?… maybe looking after her own elderly mother and taking her somewhere she needed to go? … Best of all, maybe she was off at the beauticians or hairdresser becoming a yummy mummy for some event later in the day. This, I find is how a lot of parenting is done and there is a reason. Us women, the mothers of the seventies and eighties demanded a lot. We really did put our foot down. We complained, we moaned and groaned, we got angry for sure. You men are going to share the burden of care of all children from this day on! This was our thinking. We taught our daughters and sons that parenting ‘had’ to be equal. Yummy mummies …Yes! … dregged out tired slummy mummies … a resounding NO! I think we did quite well. Nonetheless, I see the results of the ‘missing’ mother and I am truly alarmed. It had to go far further than was ever intended. If a woman works, she needs someone to share the care of the children. Women I talk to are in two camps, … the ones who cannot and do not believe in leaving their babies when they are very young and the ones who can leave them anything from a few weeks old … and they do. The saddest part about this is that these two camps do not mix very well. Each camp feels guilty somewhere inside themselves … even jealous and competitive toward each other. Free choice! Free to choose! … they each say. Well, I say to myself, I have been a part of the forming of the new motherhood and I am sorry to say I made a huge mistake. I was in protest and never thought further than that. I actually enjoyed my time being a mother tremendously. My protest came from the nature of comparing my own situation to that of mens. Sometimes I yearned to just walk out the door at 8am and leave someone else to it as I felt I was being left with the raw end of the deal. ‘Bad’ mornings were sometimes really bad in that they had the potential to last all day. They never did. I am forever grateful that I never had to leave my children while they were babies, … not until the youngest was 6 years old. The simple fact is that urbanisation and non communal living left us mothers at home isolated waiting for ‘the man’ to come home to give us some adult company. That actually worked quite nicely for me at times but I wanted more. Now nobody is at home … often the six year old will leave the house after the parents and return to the home before they arrive back home. As I said in a column, I want to share things I have learned as a therapist and here I will write the most important conclusion I have come to in my thirty years of observation and work with families … in one longish sentence. Here it is: Children need to stay with an available, devoted, surrendered Mother with a capital ‘M’ for the first three years of their lives in order to be given the chance to learn, develop and grow in an integrated thoroughly connected relaxed way. That’s it!
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