What it's "the time" for
And what it's not!
I don’t hate ALL of this.
Things about this Instagram post I don’t hate:
Opting out of aspirational aesthetics and “shoulds” as a parent to young children.
Letting go of control re: clutter and mess.
Making room for the impossible-to-avoid “learning and growing” that attends life with small children.
But also!
Maybe when you’re stuck at home with a newborn and small children and the last conversation you had with an adult was with the nurse on-call at your pediatrician’s office to confer about poop color and texture, maybe it’s exactly the time to call a friend and “go to the movies on a whim.”
Maybe it is “time for young children” but such a time doesn’t eradicate the need for it to also be “time for you.” At least sometimes! Once in a while? Maybe the presence of children needn’t sublimate the adults who were there before them?!
Maybe you would rather sit in a silent room alone rather than “enjoy a home small enough that you can hear the laughter throughout it” and maybe that’s completely fine! Maybe thick walls are nice!
IT IS NEVER THE TIME TO REFER TO “GOING TO WALMART ALONE” AS THERAPY. I REPEAT. IT IS NEVER THAT TIME.
Maybe sometimes you’re able to “soak up their littleness” which is great! But maybe sometimes you find yourself sobbing over their littleness because you kinda long for bodily autonomy and maybe that’s completely fine!
Maybe sometimes you are well-rested and are able to “find joy in the mundane” bur maybe sometimes you find the mundane UNENJOYABLE and struggle to identify a day composed of labor and self-sacrifice and cleaning vomit from hard to reach crevices as “beautiful” and maybe that is completely fine!
Maybe it’s NEVER THE TIME to “reject feelings of being discontent” and instead maybe it’s ALWAYS THE TIME to be curious about the roots of our discontent and work towards feeling, oh, I don’t know, a feeling that feels a little closer to CONTENT. Maybe we deserve more than a desperate shield of toxic positivity?
Maybe, once “this time” passes and we’re no longer in danger of suffering the hell of clogged milk ducts or the torture of sleep deprivation or the all-consuming anxiety of new parenthood, we will be perfectly ok saying to ourselves, “I’m glad that’s over” because we don’t measure our worth as parents [mothers mothers mothers I’m talking about mothers!] by whether or not we “enjoy every moment.”
I’m 100% a bitch but this dude looks like he’s struggling to find joy in the mundane. Might I suggest a movie night?
Also it’s NEVER the time for performative momming on social media so moms who don’t love this stage of life feel bad about it. For all we know this woman had a few good days and reflected on it and thought ‘wow isn’t it great’ then she got her period, the kids were yelling, her husband was nowhere to be found to help and she was just as pissed as the rest of us about the lack of help there is for moms. Ugh.
Just flashed back to how I felt as a newly postpartum mother and tapped into how alienated and rage-y this would have made me. Agree about letting go of “shoulds” but absolutely no to letting go of our sense of ourselves.