Perfectionism

PostingImages of maternity

VirginandChristChild_Small.jpgWhy do we expect so much of ourselves as mothers? Where do we get the idea we should be martyrs to our children and give up our own identities? This exhibition,  called Images of Maternity, running at the local Scottish Gallery of Modern Art might offer some answers. I haven't yet had a chance to see it myself, but works on display include paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Pablo Picasso, George Romney and Christine Borland. I'm intrigued by this exhibition, because so much of female identity is tied up with cultural precepts that seek to define and trap us in our roles as mothers. Cultural precepts set down by music, literature, newspapers and paintings like the ones in this exhibition.

My view is that it's hard to resist the cultural message we can - and should - be perfect mothers to saintly children. And so life becomes even more of a strain for those of us struggling to look after a screaming baby. We expect motherhood to convey us to a state of bliss. Then find ourselves isolated, bored and frustrated. Experiencing something very different to the 'new baby joy' we were expecting. How much of the gap in expectation is to do with the fact women spend their lives bombarded with images of post-natal perfection - like the Botticelli picture above?

We're encouraged to believe that giving birth is the crowning glory in our lives, the moment when we fulfill our biological and cultural destiny, that it will bestow perfect happiness on us in our new roles as mothers. But, of course, despite the brave faces that new mums put on for each other at coffee mornings, it's just not like that.

I'm hoping to get along to the exhibition at the weekend, and it'll be interesting to see if there are any paintings that challenge some of the tired old stereotypes that seek to manoeuvre women into chasing after unattainable dreams of motherhood. Exhibition runs until 22 June.

Posted 27 May 2008 12:49 | Number of comments: 4 | Comments

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PostingPregnancy made easy

AngelinaJolieandB28861s_Small.jpgHow does Angelina Jolie do it? How can a pregnant woman manage to look that good? She makes pregnancy look easy. And she's expecting twins, for goodness' sake. Plus she's due in just a couple of months. But here she is, glowing with radiance in every single picture I've seen of her at this year's Cannes Film Festival. She's there to promote her new film, directed by Clint Eastwood, about a single mother in 1920s America whose son goes missing. Looking at the press pictures at lunchtime, I couldn't imagine her suffering a moment's morning sickness, joint pain, indigestion, constipation or cramp. I suppose she is an actress, part of the deal is putting a good face on things. Even when she just wants her bed. With a bottle of this elixir near to hand. But really, I must make more of an effort with my appearance.

Posted 21 May 2008 15:16 | Number of comments: 4 | Comments

Out and about Perfectionism Pregnancy

PostingUnruly regulations

safe_Small.jpgHere's a book that sounds like required reading for every parent of a young child. Playing it Safe by Alan Pearce, published by those clever people at The Friday Project, is a collection of all the silly health and safety stories from the press. There are gems about taps that limit the temperature in your bath, a ban on palm trees in Torbay (sharp leaves - ouch!) and the school that stopped children playing football in case they got hurt. There are even warnings on the back cover about the book itself - "Beware of paper cuts".

I say 'required reading' for parents of young children because since Beanie arrived 18 months ago I know I could benefit from a reality check on the difference between responsible parenting and crazed health-and-safety lunacy. I'm not proud. I can admit when I need help.

I write this as a mother whose cream sitting room is now accessorised with grey lagging pipes and gaffer tape, strapped to every conceivable surface where Beanie might hurt herself. 

Before Beanie arrived I too used to find health and safety silliness amusing, just like this book does. Yes, I was hip once. Really. Oh, how I laughed to myself at childproof locks, 'corner protection devices' and over-protective parents. You know the type, the ones who won't let their kids eat uncooked cake mixture - raw eggs/salmonella, 'Ooh, dangerous!' - and freak out in pregnancy about unpasteurised cheeses and eating a mouthful of peanuts (so risky with potential nut allergies).

Then when Beanie arrived all that changed. The world turned overnight into a dangerous and frightening place. Husband and I began to take seriously some of the things Playing it Safe is mocking. We don't see the funny side in turning down the central water thermostat (if only we could find it) to lower bath water temperature. Our sense of humour (and proportion) has run dry.

On Beanie's first night at home husband and I were in such a state of panic we became alarmed our new wardrobe might emit toxic glue fumes that would harm her.

"She's wheezing!" husband announced in panic about his daughter at about 3.30am. We lost the plot so badly we ended up all sleeping in another room, far from the offending wardrobe and any risk of pollution. It was one of the worst nights of my life, yet was meant to have been one of the best.

In our defence, sleep deprivation did play a part in the madness.

Even so, a copy of Playing It Safe might remind us that it's possible to get through life safely without following every nutty regulation dreamt up by jobs' worth bureacrats. Or inventing ones of our own, for that matter.

I plan to place a copy in the bathroom. Where I often plant reading material I want my husband to see.

Somewhere close to where I imagine the water thermostat might be.

Posted 09 October 2007 16:58 | Number of comments: 12 | Comments

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PostingLearning the lingo

036_Small.JPGReading a piece in The Times about neologisms that are creeping into the language, I started to think about some of the mother-and-baby ones they missed from their list, which included gems like blogosphere (hurrah!), biopiracy, embed and podcast.

Here are some newly coined words and phrases for parents that I've encountered recently. Please let me know if you agree or disagree with them, and about others you've stumbled across.

1. Travel system

Or, to give it the full title, a 3-in-1 travel system. A complex arrangement of plastic, wheels, buckles and straps, costing the annual GDP of Moldova, that mysteriously transforms into car seat, forward-facing pram, rear-facing buggy, rocket ship and Formula One racing car. With optional footmuff and air conditioning. Special prizes available for anyone who can fathom the crypic instruction manual while pregnant or recovering from childbirth. (Pictured above is another kind of 'travel system' altogether)

2. 'Bye bye' - as transitive verb. 'To bye bye' meaning 'to dismiss'

Not strictly a neologism, but usage has changed. 'To bye-bye' is to wave away undesired objects. Example: "She bye byed away the broccoli as she was no longer hungry and waved for Petit Filou." When Beanie gets bored with something she says 'bye bye' to indicate I should remove it.

3. Develo-play

Wheeze to persuade parents of young babies that buying certain toys will boost early motor skills. Often billed as 'interactive'. How the human race survived so long without this stuff at its disposal I can hardly begin to imagine. It wasn't like this back in the late 60's when I was a kid. Cue Last of Summer Wine music.

4. Infant stimulation

The big buzz word of childcare. Surely a ruse dreamt up by toy makers' marketing teams, who have realised they can persuade parents to shell out on tonnes of unwanted and largely useless plastic by laying a guilt trip on them and suggesting that without these toys, children's development will be delayed? Baby Einstein provides CDs of classical music suitable for under-ones.

5. Baby gym

A nest of fabric and colour, with toys dangling from above, for newborn babies to explore.

6. Soft play

Perhaps designed to soothe our fears that children might get hurt while engaging in the rough-and-tumble normal to early childhood.  Little about this experience is soft.

7. Discovery cards

Remember flash cards? They've had a make-over. This is: "the perfect on-the-go learning activity for babies and toddlers"

8. Teether book

Book with plastic edges for babies to bite and chew on while teething.

9. Pacifier

Dummies are increasingly popular with modern parents. And they have a new name, borrowed from North America. Let's face it, pacifier doesn't have the same negative connotations as dummy.

Anyone know of any others?

Posted 30 August 2007 09:40 | Number of comments: 23 | Comments

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PostingBaby police

Following my mid-week rant about acronyms polluting the world of mothering, one of my correspondents has gamely suggested I call myself Acromum. I'm flattered!

I could use the small remnants of my time not spent blogging, working or looking after The Bean, to fight acronyms wherever I see them, armed with nothing more than a hefty changing bag,  toddler reins, broccoli spears and some smelly old nappies.

That should bring people back to earth and get them to drop these silly titles like SAHM and WAHM.

The ultimate deterrant, of course, would be disemvowelling.

If I had an arch-enemy, perhaps someone from the acronym-rich military or medical professions, or even someone over at the Parenting Police HQ - Ofmum -  they could fight by wheeling out a copy of the Book of Acronyms that Ingenious Rose alerted me to.

At the sight of the dreaded volume, I would instantly wither into a pile of meaningless letters, spouting received wisdom set down by well-meaning but mostly childless bureacrats who equate life for a newborn in rural, war-torn Africa with arriving in a neurotic, middle-class family in the Edinburgh New Town.

Much of the advice on breastfeeding in the UK comes from global organisations concerned primarily with developing countries. Yet it gets applied across the board in developed, as well as poorer regions, even though the worst many of us have to contend with is a scrap over parking places in this city. Not exactly equivalent to civil war and the West Side Boys in Africa.

Though  talking of conflict, there's also the issue of differing parental opinions on the finer technicalities of parenting. For example, how best to warm a bottle - which can lead to vicious, internecine guerilla warfare.

 "Don't add the powder before you heat the water, I've told you a million times!"

"What difference does that make? You're undermining my parenting!"

 "You've got to add the powder afterwards. It's the microbes in the milk."

"Microbes? You're making this up. Oh, don't tell me you read it in one of your books."

Guess we forgot to be grateful there was no trip to a dank well involved. And took sterile water for granted.

Perhaps the Ofmum bureaucrats are right - and there's something to be said for one-size-fits-all parenting (oh dear, almost felt an acronym coming on there) - with baby police around the world marching to the same step.

Then again, important differences remain. At least in Africa the enemy isn't someone who's meant to be on your own side.

Posted 07 July 2007 11:41 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

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PostingNever-good-enough Mum

You just can't get it right as a parent. Hours of my life spent grafting at the coal face of motherhood, hacking up wholesome organic vegetables and reducing them to pureed slime, of which my daughter might, on a good day, consent to eat a grudging spoonful, and now look what happens.

I finally master an RSS feed from the BBC and one of the first things I see today is the latest directive from Mothering HQ telling me I've wasted my time, my sweet potatoes and my freezer space by pureeing all this food.

In all honesty I always knew The Bean preferred fromage frais to anything I made. Now it seems that pureed food is not just unpalatable, but bad, bad, bad.

For it seems purees are in fact the work of evil food manufacturers who want parents in their commercial  thrall for years to come.

The Unicef Baby-Friendly Initiative almost equates pureeing food with  formula-milk makers peddling their evil powder to third-world countries.

Truly, motherhood and martyrdom go hand in hand. I know now how poor old St Sebastian must have felt. Not so much plugged full of unfriendly arrows, as, in my case, pierced to the heart by my own Moulinex whizzing wand, stoned by a flurry of small plastic food receptacles, shamed in the village stocks by the liberal daubing of pureed parsnip thrown at me by my own daughter.

Like all parenting gurus, Unicef wheels out a battery of dire consequences for any parents foolish enough to consider ignoring the received wisdom on pureeing.

You see, babies get addicted to pureed food.

And spoon-feeding babies pureed food is unnatural and unnecessary.

Why, it could delay the onset of their chewing skills. Babies unlucky enough to be fed pureed food by their reckless parents have little control over how much they eat.

Which in turn makes them vulnerable to getting blocked up. Oh, and they could also become fussy eaters in later life.

If Unicef had their way babies would survive on a milk-only diet for six months and then move straight onto solids. Bypassing evil gloop altogether.

I've yet to meet a mother who made it to the six-month mark before breaking out the Organix baby rice. If anyone reading this has a child who made it that far on milk alone, I congratulate you. Please could you let the rest of us know how you managed it.

So, here's my idea, how about we expand the Unicef remit. It could include not just a Baby-Friendly Initiative, but a Mother-Friendly one too.

Ideally, one that publishes research proving what we all know - that once babies are onto baby rice at four or five months, their mums can get a decent night's sleep, without waking twice a night to open up the mini-bar.

Actually, no, forget about baby rice. If I'd known Unicef's ideas on purees sooner there'd have been no mulched-up carrots or rice. No, I'd have served up a nice, tasty steak and chips to my daughter. Start as you mean to go on. Medium rare, I think.... Softer on the (non-existent) teeth that way.

Posted 19 June 2007 02:38 | Number of comments: 22 | Comments

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PostingVicious circle

My heart sank this morning when I read in The Times about yet another pregnancy survey that will alarm many mothers and mothers-to-be. Apparently women who suffer stress in pregnancy transmit their anxiety to their unborn child from as early as 17 weeks. Stress levels in foetuses as young as four months old rise and fall in line with those of their mothers.

The Times quotes a midwife for Tommy's, the baby charity, saying: "What is now clear is that high levels of stress in pregnancy can in some cases be detrimental to the health of the baby and to remain as stress-free as possible is certainly important."

The researchers, though doubtless well-meaning, seem to have forgotten something important in all this - stress is part and parcel of being pregnant. Pregnant women are biologically programmed to worry about anything that might present a danger to them or their child(ren) - and pregnancy is a stressful time. I fear this research could make many mothers feel bad about themselves.

Professor Vivette Glover of Imperial College London, who carried out the research, has suggested previously that the greater the stress felt by a mother, the lower her baby's IQ. The babies of stressed mothers are also more likely to be anxious and show signs of attention-deficit disorder.

In fairness, medical staff have responded to the findings by asking the family, friends and employers of pregnant women to give adequate support and reassurance during their pregnancy.

Consultant obstetrician Pampa Sarkar who worked with Professor Glover on the research is quoted in The Times saying: "We do not wish to unduly worry  pregnant women. It should be remembered that one of the best ways for people to avoid general stress is to lead a healthy, balanced lifestyle."

Pregnancy is stressful at the best of times, even with a supportive family. Will the baby be okay? How will I cope? Will I be a good mother? How will my relationship with my husband change? Will he still fancy me? What will the birth be like? What about my work? Will we be okay on one income? How will wider family politics change? What on earth have I got myself into? Will I ever get a good night's sleep again? Why has he got all the duvet on his side?

When I was pregnant the last thing I needed was someone coming along to tell me I shouldn't be stressed, because it might harm the baby. There's no escaping that life can be stressful, especially with a battery of people trying to take control of your body. In fact, I felt quite stressed just reading this report.

Posted 01 June 2007 09:36 | Number of comments: 8 | Comments

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