Dear Prudence:

[cereta]

Link.

Dear Prudence,

When I was growing up, my mother was the breadwinner while my father stayed home with us. It was always assumed that I, too, would be a “girlboss.” But I’ve had awful anxiety my whole life, and the idea of working outside the home overwhelmed me. It’s been a long journey for me to accept that I don’t need to earn money to be worthy.

I’m now a stay-at-home mom to two little boys, and we have a darling angel joining us this summer! My mother has been a tremendous help through my first trimester, and I feel truly blessed getting to see how happy and well-adjusted my boys are and thinking about how well-adjusted my daughter will be. Here’s where the problem comes in. I’ve seen how well-adjusted my kids are, and I know a HUGE part of that is my steady presence in the home. I’ve also been reading tons of parenting books about the importance of a healthy attachment in a child’s first three years to guarantee a healthy bond with the mother and emotional self-regulation. The more that I see the benefits of this in my own toddlers, the angrier I am with my mother.

I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life. I blamed it on unpopularity in grade school and a heavy course load in college. Since becoming a SAHM, I’ve noticed that my anxiety is as crazy as ever even on “easy” days. Meanwhile, my tots are anxiety-free. I’ve realized that my years of anxiety attacks and lying awake at night is because I didn’t have that secure attachment with my mother in my early years. Now, I have a great bond with my mother as an adult! We talk every day, and I absolutely could not have gotten through the first trimester of any of my pregnancies without her, much less the postpartum months. But I’m still resentful that my mother didn’t make me more of a priority so that I could be well-adjusted.

I don’t know how to bring this up with her. We’ve talked before about the fact that she should have spent more time with me when I was a kid. I know that she was raised in a very careerist world. She sees my staying home with my kids as a “choice” and has a very “you do you” attitude about it, but that’s not enough. She doesn’t understand that by making her work a higher priority than me, she set me up for a lifetime of anxiety and attachment issues. Should I bring this up with her at all, or should I accept my mother’s limitations?

—First Generation SAHM

Dear First Generation SAHM,

It’s normal to feel resentment toward a parent about the choices they made that affected your well-being, especially when those effects are so clearly felt as an adult. Now that you’re a mother yourself, I can imagine that it’s galling to consider what your own childhood could have been like if your needs had been better met. I do think there’s a time and place in the future for you and your mother to have productive, compassionate conversations about how you feel about your childhood and the way she raised you.

But I think you first need to examine and work through your anger and resentment with a professional—ideally, a licensed therapist who can help you vent, rage, and grieve to your heart’s content. Therapy can also help you manage your anxiety generally, too. If talking to a therapist is out of the question for now, I think you need some form of a supportive outlet, such as a friend who also has similar mommy issues or even an online support group of fellow young mothers. You need some space to dig through the years of emotions and memories that have curdled into this resentment on your own first before you are ready to discuss it with your mother. Give yourself a lot of time to do this; no one in the history of the earth has ever fixed their mother-daughter relationship overnight.

You’ll know that you’re ready to talk to your mom once you’ve arrived at a place where you can feel a little compassion and empathy for the way she made a tough choice to balance her own needs with that of her children’s. No woman ever gets it perfectly right; when you’re able to feel more accepting of your mother’s choices, it’ll be a good time to open the conversation.

—Delia

Comments

[cereta]

I am too incoherent to address things like actual social science on the subject, the immense privilege the LW is displaying, and the wee possibility that her anxiety is just the way she's wired, so I'll just say: I wonder how LW's father would feel about this letter.

[dissectionist]

As much as I feel for LW, there’s also no guarantee her anxiety was due to her mom’s choice. I had a SAHM and still ended up with anxiety. I was a SAHM and my husband was an involved SAHD at the same time (we both worked from home in jobs where we could do our work anytime, so we were both constantly there and, when we sometimes worked during the day, we were able to stop our work in a second whenever the kids needed us; we did most of our work at night so we could spend the days with our kids, at the park, etc). One, but not both, of my kids showed signs of anxiety from the toddler years. For some folks it’s just a biochemical thing that happens.

In addition, she says her dad was a SAHD; if he was involved with them, then that should have been enough. As long as children have secure attachment to a parent or other caregiver, it doesn’t specifically have to be the mom.

It’s psychologically useful to be able to say, “Because A, then B.” Then we can tell ourselves that if A hasn’t happened, B wouldn’t have. It gives us a sense of control and being able to prevent B from happening again. But it’s often not that neat or simple.

[oursin]

Even John Bowlby didn't say the secure object of attachment HAD to be Mama, only that there had to be one.

And having a mother around who didn't want to be there is not exactly a recipe for secure attachment....

(I had to do with the archives of several figures in relevant field, just saying.)

[aflaminghalo]

this honestly feels like bait.

[cereta]

Bait to whom?

[princessofgeeks]

IAWT

[adrian_turtle]

The steady presence of a parent in her home when she was a child doesn't seem to have affected her as an adult. She doesn't mention that she cares about that parent at all. I wonder if she is still attached to him?

I wonder if she thinks her father was babysitting, all those years? That would reflect a deep underlying sexism, but lots of people do feel that way. (About good fathers as well as bad ones.) She complains that her mother says she has a "choice" about staying home with her children...as if children have 2 parents and the family chooses which parent stays home with them. It's not just her own father who is uncomfortably absent from this letter, but the father of her children.

[topaz_eyes]

LW had a stay-at-home parent: her father. What is/was her relationship with him like? Was he fully involved and nurturing for LW growing up? And what was LW's mom like with her when she was not at work? Was she nurturing and involved in the hours she did have with LW? This information is entirely missing from this letter, and imho it is relevant as to what exactly LW has been mourning/missing. If dad were distant and/or uninvolved, then imho LW might be blaming her mother for something that wasn't mom's fault.

Also, if LW's mom were a SAHM her relationship with her might not be any different. A parent who resents staying home will impact on the kids' mental health.

[ashbet]

All of this!!

[watersword]

That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works!

...I'm going back to wrestling with an off-by-one error, that's less infuriating than this.

[adrian_turtle]

A battle horn, summoning armies to The Mommy Wars!

[aflaminghalo]

specific sections of the audience. there's a growing wave in america (and so around the world) to put women back in their proper place and this feels as if it as written specifically for them.

[magid]

All of this!

[movingfinger]

"...my mother was the breadwinner while my father stayed home with us."

Then your problems aren't because your mother abandoned you, because you had a stable parent at home caring for you, unless you aren't telling the whole story here. Which seems likely.

"...I feel truly blessed getting to see how happy and well-adjusted my boys are and thinking about how well-adjusted my daughter will be..."

Do other people thing "truly blessed" is a red flag these days? Not only for privilege, but also for, at times, someone vigorously asserting a counter-factual? Are her children actually perfect? Could they be afraid to show anxiety around Mom who may have the whole family revolving around her untreated anxiety?

Go get therapy, LW. You won't like it, but you need it.

[pauraque]

Could they be afraid to show anxiety around Mom who may have the whole family revolving around her untreated anxiety?

This was my thought as well.

[rmc28]

I'm with you there, grrrr

[melannen]

Yeah. Also, if LW originally blamed her anxiety on grade school and college, she was probably a perfectly well-adjusted-seeming toddler too! What is she going to do when one of her kids inevitably struggles with growing up, flog herself through the streets?

[haggis]

Like the LW, I completely forgot that the LW had a SAHD until I read the comments.

I hope that the LW takes this advice. I hope even more that she gets a bit more clue about how financially contingent her lifestyle is and how complex and tenuous the connections are between a parents intentions and the outcomes for their children's happiness. Hopefully she learns that the easy way, without losing the financial privilege or realising that her children's wellbeing is nit guaranteed, even if she makes all the right choices.

I hope she gets that clue before she hurts her mother (and potentially her children) really badly.

[raven]

Truly, truly fascinated to know what the darling angel writes to the advice columns in due course.

[mrissa]

In addition to the other sense that's been talked here, if your kids are still at an age that you would describe as "toddlers" and "little boys," you have zero idea how "well-adjusted" they are.

Also I hate to tell you this but you are not pregnant with a darling angel, you are pregnant with an actual human who will sometimes bash her brothers with a block or shriek like a velociraptor.

[lilysea]

LW

a) sometimes anxiety is genetic;

b) you can have a stay at home mother, and still get Anxiety, ESPECIALLY IF YOUR STAY AT HOME MOTHER HAS ANXIETY HERSELF.

[lilysea]

My grandmother didn't do any paid work outside the home. Despite this, she was completely emotionally unavailable to my mother and her siblings.

My mother didn't do any paid work outside the home. Despite this, she was completely emotionally unavailable to me.

A parent who stays home and doesn't do paid work is NO guarantee of nurture, support, or bonding.

[conuly]

Ditto.

[sushiflop]

I feel truly blessed getting to see how happy and well-adjusted my boys are and thinking about how well-adjusted my daughter will be.

A lot of things to say about this bit. "Famous last words" is a phrase that comes to mind, so is "don't count your chickens before they hatch."

[ethelmay]

The idea that she already "knows" that her daughter will be "well-adjusted" creeps me the fuck out. (An aside: who actually uses the term "well adjusted" these days? I think of it as exceedingly old-fashioned, but maybe it's come back.)

[frenzy]

Agreed. This screams "I became a tradwife and I'm mad my mom wasn't one."

Maybe I'm off base, but...

[bookblather]

I was gonna say, my grandmother did no paid work outside the home and was emotionally unavailable to my mom and her siblings. My mom did do paid work outside the home and was always there for me and my brother (as was my dad). It's not a one to one comparison.

[starwatcher]

My question too. She says father stayed home and cared for the kids. "Attachment" can be to a father as well as to a mother, for heaven's sake. She had a steady parental figure at home; I doubt that a change from father to mother would have alleviated her anxiety.

[jadelennox]

saaaaame.

And it's not just privilege. It's "my young kids seem perfect to me. this is not because they are biologically lucky, and definitely not because I just don't happen to know the particular issues they have yet, perhaps because they haven't manifested in ways I can recognise. No, it's because I am perfect and made perfect choices, and all of my failings are because my mother chose her career over her daughter, UGH. Also it would be fruitful of me to attack her about this."

[jadelennox]

you know, you may be right. Let's get some mommy wars and some SAHM attacks and invite some tradwifery for bonus clicks.

[movingfinger]

Her daughter will be well-adjusted, as perfect and well-adjusted as her mother wants her to be, OR ELSE!

[ethelmay]

Maybe not full-on tradwife, but adjacent? "girlboss," "darling angel," and "truly blessed" are all red flags to me. If I had called my mother (an anesthesiologist) a "girlboss" for having a profession, she would have cleaned my clock.

[full_metal_ox]

“Darling angel” is a declaration of intent.