The Great American Mothering Contest

Americans are so competitive! Even motherhood is yet another contest, another arena we enter when we have a baby and duke it out for motherhood honors ... whether we like it or not. People are forever judging our skills and the results of our labor. Are our children smarter than other children? Better behaved? Better looking? More talented in sports? More successful?

Some mothers take to the competition with enthusiasm. They are forever asking other parents how their children are progressing, always looking for an opening to reveal the superiority of their own children. I have never fully understood this. Why would you do something that creates instant dislike in everyone around you? Any sane mother knows that today’s little star can fall from the sky tomorrow. The unholy delight people take in the problems of children with truly obnoxious mothers knows no bounds. Why would you set yourself up for this? Why would you set up your child for this?

Some fortunate mothers have resilient children that get along beautifully all through childhood and maybe even the rest of their lives. They are charming and well liked. They brush off difficulties with ease. People compliment these mothers on what lovely children they have, and it is hard not to become smug when you are basking in the spotlight of the winners circle in the motherhood contest. The smart ones know their good fortune is not entirely their own doing, yet it is still difficult for them not to pity mothers whose children don’t win all the awards.

I asked a mother whose teenage son had gotten into trouble if she felt pity and patronizing attitudes from other mothers. How did she deal with the “humiliation” of her son’s difficulties? She said that while she did sense parents were looking down on her, she could not blame them because she would have done the same thing had this not happened to her. It is bad enough having a child with problems without the additional burden of being declared a loser in the Great American Mothering Contest.

One of the women I admire most in this world is Carolyn, whose daughter had every problem in the book. She had done all the usual sex and drugs things available to American teenagers. She clearly had problems with depression or some variety of mental illness. She was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. I asked Carolyn how she handled the shame and humiliation that can be overwhelming. She said, “Oh, I don’t have time for that. I just told everyone what was going on. I needed to be at the hospital. I needed for someone to pick up my other child at school. Shame was a luxury I couldn’t afford.”

On Mother’s Day I think of the parents of lost children: children who died, children who simply left home and never contacted their parents again, children who are so estranged that for all practical purposes, they are lost to their parents. I think of the parents whose children, because of mental or physical illness, need care long after they are grown. They will never be independent, and in this country, we prize independence above all else.

Motherhood is the most risky undertaking of a lifetime. We usually don’t know how risky until it is too late. It is not a contest. I repeat: It is not a contest. It is diving off the high dive into the deepest waters of life. It stretches us beyond all the limits we thought we had. If it brings joy into our lives, we are indeed fortunate and ought to thank God or thank our lucky stars for every scrape of joy that comes our way. It can bring the most excruciating pain a human can suffer. It calls out our every strength and exposes our every weakness. It is life distilled to its essence. But if you are a mother, I don’t have to explain this to you. You know what I mean.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.