Taking Care of the Caretakers
by Madeline Levine, psychologist and author
America can’t seem to make up its mind about mothers. Generically, we’re a pretty admired group. Check out the preternatural glow of mom on the cover of any parenting magazine aimed at the new mother. Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the fact that most mothers of babies and toddlers are generally exhausted, overwhelmed, have spit-up on their clothes (which generally consist of either sweats or our back-of-the-closet “fat” jeans) and haven’t put on make-up since the day their last child was born. The media apparently consider such images bad for sales, and prefer instead a sanitized version of motherhood, a blissful state marred only by our missing halos. Which brings me back to America’s ambivalence. It seems that while we adore motherhood, or at least the idea of it, we seem to have very little patience or sympathy for real-life mothers.
Nowhere is this more evident than at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. Mothers with few financial resources are portrayed either as heroic matriarchs or, more frequently, negligent, substance-abusing children themselves. The assumption seems to be that the strain of not having adequate financial resources is so insurmountable that, with a few noteworthy exceptions, moms at the low end of the socio-economic scale will inevitably find their parenting skills compromised. The corollary is that financially comfortable mothers are either founts of parenting wisdom or, more popularly, pathologically over-involved with the success of their children, prone to pushing their own narcissistic agenda at the expense of their children’s mental health, or (you guessed it) spoiled, negligent, substance-abusing children themselves. Both portrayals are generally inaccurate and reveal the kind of ambivalence about mothers that has long been a staple of America’s preference for our “founding fathers” rather than for the women who raised them.
“Nothing to Complain About”
A quick search of Amazon.com shows that there are 2,872 books on the topic of low-income mothers. Interestingly, affluent mothers have a mere 62 titles, almost all unrelated to child rearing. It is easy to dismiss the issues of financially comfortable mothers with the contemptuous “You have nothing to complain about.” This assertion has been made so frequently and in so many different venues that most of the mothers I see in my practice have internalized this inaccurate and foolish old saw as fact. As a clinical psychologist for over twenty-five years, in one of the most affluent counties in America, I have seen an endless stream of mothers sitting in my office staring blankly at the walls saying, “I don’t know why I’m here, I really have nothing to complain about.”
In fact, many of these women have a great deal to complain about. Their husbands, many of whom are titans of one sort or another, work grueling schedules and are often away from home. While many of these women have equally demanding jobs, the notion that child and household responsibilities will be equally shared is typically laughable. When it feels like, “It’s all up to me,” that’s because it usually is. Overworked moms are left to do the child-raising, making many of these mothers say, “I feel like a single parent.” Equally importantly, they don’t feel like they have a “go-to” person, someone to share the joys and trials of the day. When you’re raising children, every day has joys and trials.
Yes, many affluent moms have childcare or household help, and yes, that eases some of the logistics of bringing up children, but it does little to calm the sense of isolation and anxiety that affect so many moms. In addition, research has documented the fact that affluent communities are among the least likely places to enjoy a sense of connection and collaboration – necessary components of the kind of social capital that makes people feel valued, supported and integrated into their own neighborhoods.
The Difficult Climb into the Upper-Middle-Class Because my practice is made up primarily of adolescent girls and mothers (often the mothers of these same adolescent girls) I tend to get a clear picture of mom’s distress rather quickly from their daughters. Few mothers come to my office seeking treatment for themselves. Typically they come in worried about one of their children and downplay their own unhappiness or conflicts. Quickly, however, this same daughter fills me in on mom’s drinking, substance abuse, affairs, eating disorders and desperate depression and anxiety. Confidentiality often prohibits sharing this information with moms who are still maintaining a stiff upper lip, but it gives me a really good idea of what’s coming down the pike. It is often not until she sees her child improving, regaining zest and connection that mom tentatively inquires about psychotherapy for herself. Why it is so very difficult for financially comfortable mothers to address personal issues, many of which have been simmering for years, if not decades? This question deserves to be addressed in the hope of remedying some of the suffering endured by women who “have it all” and often feel that they have nothing of substance.
Making one’s way into the upper-middle class or above is sometimes a function of birth, but more often a function of intelligence, competitiveness, ambition and fortitude (and often a pinch of good luck). People who end up living in affluent communities have worked very hard to secure a place at the high end of the economic ladder. It is one of the reasons why divorce rates tend to be lower among the affluent. There is a great reluctance to “rock the boat,” after spending years of hard work attaining financial success. Women, who are typically short-changed in divorce, fear for their own economic future, but also fear that their children will no longer be afforded enriching educational and travel experiences.
Affluence has obvious benefits, as well as a host of less obvious and generally unexamined costs. The Reluctance to Ask for Help Our most current research tells us that upper middle class pre-teens and teens have the highest rates of depression, anxiety disorders and substance abuse of any group of children in this country. My educated guess is that the same holds true for their parents. I say this because we know the two main contributing factors for high rates of emotional problems among these kids are pressure and disconnection. Pressure and disconnection are two facts of life that affluent women are all too familiar with.
Few people find it easy to come into a psychologist’s, psychiatrist’s, or other mental health worker’s office for help. It means exposing historically painful experiences and current vulnerabilities. Psychotherapy is not for the faint of heart. In order to be successful it demands that, over some period of time, you become open enough, honest enough and intrigued enough to enter into a reflective, intimate and vulnerable relationship with someone who is essentially a stranger.
The Perceived Shame of Vulnerability
Affluent women are many things: they tend to be bright, driven, funny, efficient, competitive and productive. They are not vulnerable. Vulnerability is seen as the territory of the weak and the unsuccessful: territory that is anathema to those who have spent their lives working to be, or at least appear to be, strong, capable and successful. Having so frequently worked in competitive environments, whether at school, at work or in their neighborhoods, affluent moms mistakenly view vulnerability as a deficiency in the context of competition. No one in his or her right mind wants to be vulnerable in a competitive situation. Our ancestors would have been clubbed over the head and had all their “good stuff’ stolen if they had shown vulnerability in the face of competition. From an evolutionary standpoint the strongest and least vulnerable have considerable protection from predators. But ultimately it is adaptability, not strength, that preserves us.
We are long past needing to compete for tonight’s dinner. The lingering emphasis on competition that exists in most affluent communities has ceased to be protective and has become instead damaging. If we mention to our neighbor that one of our kids is struggling in math, and the response is some variant of “Your kid must have a problem,” or “Maybe you’re not spending enough time helping him,” or “Why haven’t you gotten a tutor?” then you are unlikely to approach this person for help again. After all, much of the time it’s not just solutions that we are looking for but a sympathetic and understanding ear. It is this expectation (often accurate) that vulnerability will be met with aggression rather than compassion that keeps most affluent women suffering in silence. Naturally, maintaining the appearance of strength and even perfection is the best insurance against being either misunderstood or exploited. No wonder that woman after woman who sits in my office begins by listing all the ways in which her life is perfect. Expressing vulnerability is a long way down the road for many of these women in spite of the fact that asking for help always involves an element of vulnerability. The mere act of sitting across from me in my small office means that the first step towards reaching out and hoping for compassion and understanding has begun. And the process of adaptability has begun. It’s much easier to throw back a few drinks than it is to really work on new ways of handling problems. But it is the process of reflection and understanding that allows us to act in healthier, more adaptive ways.
For Goodness Sakes, We’re Entitled to Reasonably Happy Lives, Too
The popular press seems to have picked up on the notion (backed by research) that an unhappy mother is “bad” for her children and that mom should get help so that her children will be successful. There is no question that a mother’s state of mind is a lifeline for her children, and the extent to which she is unhappy or emotionally unavailable does not bode well for her children. Putting up a “good front” is rarely successful since kids are masters at reading their mother’s moods. A “good front” only means that now your child has to work overtime dealing both with your depression and with your deception. A child’s job is growing himself, not growing his mother (or his father). Too much time spent either trying to cheer up or divert an unhappy parent takes time and energy away from the child’s real tasks of developing friends, interests, self-control and a sense of competence. It is clear that if mom is unhappy, then she serves her children best by attending to her own unmet needs. This way she is able to avoid placing most of her emotional bets on her children and is able to tolerate their normal progression towards separation without experiencing it as abandonment.
However, there is another issue here that troubles me. Rarely are women exhorted to go into treatment for themselves. How odd that mom, typically the emotional center of the household, is not encouraged to give careful consideration to her own needs – not just as a wife or a mother, but as a human being. While science has long talked about the “fight or flight” response of individuals faced with danger, more recent research has found that, while men typically employ “fight or flight” in response to a threat, woman employ a different strategy. Women “tend and befriend.” That is, they protect children first and then act cooperatively with other women to lessen stress by relying on each other. Both animal and human studies have shown the protective effects of affiliation with groups of other females for females experiencing stress. To function most effectively, women need support, connection, a sense of purpose and a robust sense of self. We cannot parent effectively when we are depressed and, equally important, we cannot live our own lives with enthusiasm and purpose.
Enough Already: The Tiresome Work Debate
Nothing in life is perfect, not ourselves, our marriages, our children, our jobs or our homes. Sure, children benefit from seeing their parents successful and respected. But they benefit even more from seeing their parents being real. Mothers obsess a lot about whether going back to work will hurt or help their children. Research is clear that a mother’s work status has nothing to do with a child’s emotional health. Counterintuitive as this may seem (i.e., we know parental involvement is good for kids so why isn’t more better?), I’d like to respond by letting two of my teenage patients speak for me for a moment. “Could you help my mom get a hobby besides me?” implores a sixteen-year-old girl of a mother who works a sixty-hour week. “How come my mother is always around, but never there?” asks a fourteen-year-old boy with a stay-at-home mom.
The quality of being “there,” of being what I call an inviting, listening presence, has no relationship to a mother’s work status. The argument would be that whatever makes you happier, more fulfilled, more alive is what should determine your decisions around work. It would be disingenuous, however, to say that we aren’t also juggling multiple demands, choices, necessities and commitments. Make no mistake: these are some of the most difficult decisions mothers make and we need to be thoughtful and compassionate with ourselves as we make decisions around home and career.
I worked part-time when my children were younger (something easy to do in my field). And even this was not a perfect solution – my husband didn’t help enough, I hated playing board games, I never had the time to keep up with my psychology journals, my kids complained that all the “other moms” led day-long field trips. But the fact is that it was a workable solution for me, not perfect, but workable. It allowed me to pursue psychology, my passionate intellectual pursuit, and it allowed me to be “there” enough with my husband and three sons so that my family felt generally intact and secure. We do our children a favor when we let them see us struggle with tough decisions. They in their turn will face their own struggles, armed with the resilience that they have observed in us. What makes us human is that we succeed and fail; we love and sometimes hate; we are independent and needy. We need to model compassion to our children by showing and valuing it in the world and by treating ourselves compassionately.
The Art of Regaining Community
The pressures on affluent moms to be perfect, to raise academically and athletically gifted children, to organize our own lives as well as the lives of our husbands and children, to cook gourmet meals, serve on the boards of local charities, organize events while we “help” our youngsters with everything from third grade dioramas to senior year college applications, all the while making it look easy, is simply an absurd proposition and a recipe for emotional melt-down. Duke University has researched this notion of “effortless perfection” and found that women who subscribe to the idea of “doing it all” while “never letting 'em see you sweat” have elevated rates of depression, anxiety and substance abuse. We are a social species and cannot function effectively without group support and some forms of ritual to cement the identity of the group.
We need to be less concerned with dust balls and more concerned with family time and family rituals, less concerned that our child’s every paper be perfect and more concerned with the creativity that is born out of experimentation and challenge. We need desperately to reach out to other women and build ourselves the kinds of communities that women throughout the ages found necessary in order to manage the difficult job of raising children. And we need to learn that there is an alternative view of community, a view that is evolving in communities around the country and that emphasizes personal connection as opposed to material possessions and cooperation as opposed to competition, and that values the group every bit as much as the individual.
Everyone Gets a Break When We Give Ourselves a Break
A mother of four wrote to me online, “When momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” We all know that’s the truth. The sooner we learn to tend to our own needs, to understand that the best gift we can give our children is a mother who is reasonably at ease in a marriage or relationship that is basically good, the sooner we can get on with the business of enriching not only our children’s lives but our own lives as well. Remember: when the flight attendant goes over emergency procedures, he says “In the event of a drop in cabin pressure, put your own mask on first and then your children’s.” When we can’t breathe, neither can our children. And if we only attend to our children, we run the risk of running out of oxygen. Put your own mask on first, whether that’s therapy, a yoga class, part-time work, walks with friends or a course at the local college. Do it for your children, but please do it for yourself as well. No one remembers a fourth grade social studies grade, and neither will your children, but they will remember the mom who had the time to share her day, the energy to be involved and the zest to take real delight in her child.
Madeline Levine, Ph.D., has been a clinical psychologist in Marin County, California for the past twenty-five years, treating primarily adolescent girls and mothers. She is the author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids (2006).