Mothers have been beating themselves up since the beginning of time. We beat ourselves silly, sometimes until we’re black and blue and questioning our abilities to raise productive members of society. So this video should come as no surprise to me. But it does.
Take a couple of minutes and watch. Go ahead. Click on it now. I’ll wait…
Did you watch? Good. And did you see yourself in any of these moms? I bet you did. I sure did.
I imagined being asked to describe myself as a mother.
My first thoughts were: too little patience, yell more often than I should, don’t spend enough quality time with the kids, wish I was better at (insert a plethora of things here).
Why?
Why do I automatically resort to negative criticism of myself. Why do I overlook all the things – good things – that I do? Why do so many of us do that?
Probably partly because it is much more socially acceptable (not to mention humorous and relatable) to be self-deprecating. I mean, we all have those Facebook friends who post their mom-of-the-year statuses on a daily basis. Look how great I am. See how much I got accomplished. Look at this fruit platter I made based on a Monet painting that I saw on Pinterest. I so often find myself rolling my eyes at these posts and thinking whoopdee-f”in-do.
But why? What’s so wrong with it? The truth is: absolutely nothing. Who am I to say that it’s unacceptable for anyone to post the cool things they do as moms? It’s judge-y, and it’s negative and it sets all of us moms up for feeling sheepish and shameful about touting all the positive things we do, when we should be shouting our awesomeness to the heavens. Maybe not all the time. But at least sometimes.
Another reason we are so critical of ourselves, I think, is that we all have this vision of the ideal mother and she’s someone who floats around out there in the mythical aether being her perfect self. We can’t really define her as a person with precise words, but what we can and will do is to constantly compare ourselves to this Goddess and point out – because we are painfully aware of – when we are NOT her, which is all. the. time. Because she doesn’t exist.
She’s not your neighbor. She’s not your friend. She’s not the mom who posts all the status updates you roll your eyes at, who, incidentally, is doing just what we should all do – sometimes.
I’m not sure which came first: being critical of others or being critical of ourselves, but it does seem that one begets the other. So, while we all work on being a little less judgmental of our fellow moms, let’s also work on being kinder to and forgiving of ourselves. (Heck, post one of those mom-of-the-year statuses about your awesomeness. I swear, I’ll think twice before rolling my eyes.) We are damn good mothers. And it’s about time we started admitting it.
Oh and by the way, did you happen to notice in that little video what the kids said about those same moms who were so critical of themselves? They are our true judges, so let them have the last word. My guess is that they have much nicer things to say about us than we do.
What do you think? Why are we so critical of ourselves? I’d love to read your thoughts!
