mask of motherhood

The mask of motherhood, writes Susan Maushart Ph.D. in The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Everything and Why We Pretend It Doesn't (1999) is "an assemblage of fronts--mostly brave, serene, and all-knowing--that we use to disguise the chaos and complexity of our lived experience...

The mask of motherhood is what keeps women silent about whay they feel and suspicious of what they know. It divides mother from daughter, sister from sister, friend form friend. It creates an abrupt and tragic chasm between adults who have children and adults who don't. It distorts the distance between childhood and adulthood, cutting ever deeper gaps between the generations. It pits male parents against female, amplifying the disjuncture between the verbs "to mother" and "to father." Above all, the mask of motherhood, by minimizing the enormity of women's work in the world, nourishes and sustains the profound ignorance that confuses humanity with mankind." (2-3)

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we not pass on the knowledge so that women who choose to become mothers (most of us) can face it more equipped and be surrounded by greater understanding? Are we so ashamed of the chaos we encounter, the overwhelming boredom, the struggle to do it all when we thought we could have it all? Why will overbearing friends and family already initiated mothers just nod with a smirk when we sigh about how hard it is ("told you so"), what's the real meaning of that? Is, "it will change everything" really providing any real knowledge at all?

"The housewife of the 1950s and 1960s was told she had it all, and was left to wonder guiltily, 'Is that all there is?' Today's woman is also told she has it all--and there are times when she would give almost anything for a refund. Whereas our mothers' generation suffered a sense of emptiness, we are more likely to be feeling distinctly overfull. And the impoverished expectations and life choices of women a generation ago have given way to an embarrassment of riches." (xi-xii)

It's not just that motherhood comes with the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows, it's all those other things we set out to do, career, friendships, romance, exercise, political engagement, community work ...

Today's women are primed for achievement, but we find ourselves not "combining" motherhood with the rest of life in calm blend and balance, but desperately juggling, hanging on for dear life.

"All things were meant to be possible. The discovery that only a few of them are achievable, and some of those are mutually exclusive anyway, comes as a nasty shock." (178)

"We married and became mothers in the expectation that our lives or independence and achievement would remain fundamentally unaltered ... We are shocked to discover, and often too ashamed to admit, how far from this ideal we have traveled." (181)

But if we let this shock and shame, confusion and overwhelm silence us, how can we be helping ourselves, in the long run? How then to assert the power we do have to choose, to say yes to some things, no to others, without guilt or embarrassment.