It is not a good feeling to tell my toddler I am looking forward to her waking up, and to wonder what percentage of what I’m saying is a lie. Children are unpredictable, and even if we are full-time stay-at-home caregivers, unless we also have a full-time staff that takes care of every other imaginable domestic task (including dressing and bathing us), children’s needs are going to interrupt our projects. It is not emotionally realistic to expect us to respond with unadulterated delight to the fact that a doctor’s visit has suddenly taken the place of afternoon working or exercise time. Neither is it constructive to burden ourselves with guilt over the times when our children’s needs, or presence, do not awaken in us feelings of bliss.
But in her 1970 parenting classic Your Child’s Self-Esteem, Dorothy Briggs points out that one of children’s greatest psychological needs is the need to feel cherished. That means that while I do not need to be delighted by every interruption, I do, fundamentally, need to communicate to my daughter that I am delighted by the fact of her existence, that I am glad she is here, that I do look forward to her waking up, and that I care about her needs even when they interrupt my plans. I recently started listening to Sophie Harper’s podcast, called Not by Accident, about her choice to have a baby as a single woman. The podcast is in part a record for her daughter Astrid of how very much Sophie wanted her, how much, as the title points out, she is here on earth by desire and on purpose. Their story has been reminding me of something I do not want to forget: that Lucy, too, is here on purpose. And that means that making space in our lives for her is not a chore but a joy. Or if it sometimes feels like a chore, then it is a chore fundamentally motivated by joy.
How, then, can I get out of the straddle-parenting trap of comparing myself simultaneously to parents with full-time childcare, and parents who have chosen childcare as their full-time vocation? Here is one of the things that is beginning to help me.
Desires: Give Yourself Space to Know What You Want
I realized that I was in rough shape when I could no longer say what I wanted. This happened on a small scale: I would find myself with a block of uninterrupted time, know that I was exhausted, and begin scrolling through restorative activities I normally enjoy. But none of them sounded appealing. Even getting myself upstairs to take a nap felt like too much work. I knew these were classic symptoms of depression. And it also happened on a large scale: I realized that I could no longer say what I wanted vocationally. Did I want to be Lucy’s exclusive caregiver, with enough breaks for me to recharge occasionally and give Jim time with her but no significant outside childcare? Did I want to home school her and go on learning adventures all over the city? Did I want to be the one to make our home inviting, to make it a place of welcome? Did I want to respect the dignity of daily tasks by not hiring them out to someone else? Did I want to write? Did I want to use my Ph.D.? Did I want to paint? I had feelings in response to each of those questions: guilt, fear, and anxiety. But not desire.
As I noticed this, I also noticed that I was afraid to know my desires because I was afraid they’d be impossible to meet, or that they would show I didn’t really want to be a mother after all. And I was afraid that knowing them would mean slavishly obeying.
My first assignment on the way to finding joy in this season of my life: do whatever it takes to hear your own desires. And realize that knowing you want something is not the same thing as pursuing it. My desires have no sense of responsibility or of reality; even before I was a mother, they did not limit themselves to twenty-four-hour days or sixty-minute hours, or respect my own need to eat or sleep. Once I know my desires, I will need to do the work of lining them up with reality, including the reality that Jim and I have brought a little girl into the world who depends for much of her health and gladness on us. But I cannot arbitrate between desires, or between desires and reality, if I do not know what each of those are.
It looks like there is going to be a Part IV. Next up: Figuring out what’s necessary.