Is There A Motherhood Ideal?

Hey everybody, welcome back to the family teams podcast. We're continuing to try to bring balance to the content by talking to mothers about some motherhood issues. So I have a, an awesome cohort of dads that are processing with me on the podcast on a regular basis, different elements of what it means to build, build a family team that impact fatherhood.

You know, more from, I think more like a, a child development perspective, but certainly this has a huge impact on the way we think about family from a theological lens and hear family teams in terms of like our embracing of God's design for family, the roles of in a family. And there's a constant collision and an enormous tension that we're all wrestling with between.

So yeah, she, she has a lot of very directive things to say about the literature, about what does appear to be in the best interests of the baby and how that can be intentioned with. What our society is advocating for women in general. So we want to be honest about these conversations. We want to like talk about these things and, and try to understand them.

And so, and I think this has a huge impact on, on motherhood, because if we can never talk about the ideal, then it's like, what are we aiming at? And do we have something concrete to aim at? So I want to play what she says about this topic. What you see to be the optimal way to raise a child for maximum positive outcomes.

That's the ideal. And I think it's hard because we, you know, we're not allowed to talk about the ideal today in anything. I, I don't know when that happened because, you know, if, if things are less than ideal, often they're easier to deal with if first we understand what the ideal is, right? So, if we can't talk about the ideal, we can't repair, we can't, you know, Work through and resolve the conflicts that come from the less than the ideal.

So I want to unpack that a little more. You mentioned quality and quantity time. There's a difference between the two. As you said, I think in your book, children need both. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Let's start with the quantity word, because I think that's the most sticky for people. I think, I don't know if it's 144 hours in a week, if I have that number correct, waking hours for a child is, I don't know if it's 80.

So then they go deeper and deeper into kind of a detailed conversation on exactly how much quantity time is ideal. But what I thought was really helpful and what I wanted to ask you three about is. What she, she said that we can't even talk about the ideal today. And there, there is a, there is sort of a, I don't know, like a, a collective decision to ignore the ideal.

Like if you're going to do anything, do it well, right? There's that quote out there. And I think if you're not, if you feel like you're already going to fail, then why try? Why, why shoot for the ideal? Why go for it? You know? And I wonder if there's that at play in this, and I'm sure it's been You know, it's hard, like, there's probably just been so many generations of this continuing where, well, my mother wasn't present and I think I turned out okay, so, you know, I'll, I'll just keep doing what, you know, I learn and what I experienced, so at some point, generationally, that happened, like, that belief started, you know, and so, I don't know, that's just my thoughts on that.

And so, and we don't really have a good way culturally, at least in the secular world, to deal with the problem of shame without just destroying the ideal. That is our strategy in a secular world for overcoming shame. In the gospel, we have a different way of doing that. I think one, one of the ways to, to think about the ideal though, that makes it less Of a burden and, and, and of a judge is to think about this from a generational perspective.

His or her generation. And so to me, knowing the ideal gives me both the freedom to know that I, I can go upstream from, from, from here, but I don't have to do it all in one generation. And then I can even train my kids and say, look, I, you know, as a mother, I wasn't able to do this for you, but I wish I could have, I couldn't because of these reasons, but I was able to do more than my mother did for me.

Yeah. And I think when we were just talking about like generationally, I feel like that's something for me and like my, like. Or just like generation where I'm like, man, I grew up and my mom was home with us and that gave me like such a desire, like at a young age, like I want to do that with my kids, but I think growing in that emotional healthiness, which has been challenging, I've had to look back at my own, like.

That encourages me that like challenges me to keep going on those days where I'm like, man, I've, I've not done a great job at that, but thank you Lord for the journey and the process that I don't have to accomplish this in one day or one week, but you give me a lifetime to decide what my kids, um, and that the board like covers us too.

And so that, that, that sort of bias towards I only get one shot at this, man, it really makes this, it creates like an impossible tension for women because on one hand you feel, okay, I need to take care of myself and I need to make sure that I'm getting all the advantages. That I can in this life, but I am literally going to take my family line farther away from the ideal than my own mother did.

So she actually faces that head on. And I was really surprised by how she talked about this topic. So I want to share, um, this clip as well.

And that would be infants and toddlers. And, and so, as my husband always says to me, writing these books was giving a voice to children, because our society is very fixed on the needs of parents, it's very fixed on the needs of mothers. If you look at all the articles that are written, and a lot of the books, it's all about parents, and what do we need to do for parents, and how can we help parents.

The answers of what it does require to be the parent that you need to be for your kids. And in a way, there's, there's hard truths. And I think, you know, you do your book, I remember reading it and it's full of empathy. It's very understanding. And I think that's how you, you come across. But I, why do you think, what is your theory?

Because for me, guilt is a signal feeling. So basically what it says is you're in conflict. So like physical pain is another signal feeling. If you hurt yourself, you, you know, break your ankle hiking or playing basketball or whatever. You're going to stop, you're going to go to the doctor, you're going to take it easy, you're going to look at your ankle.

Shame is a different thing. So shame has to do with character. Shame means that you feel like a bad person. So if the things that I'm saying make you feel ashamed, it has nothing to do with what I'm saying. It has to do with something much deeper, something that has to do with feeling like a bad person.

Topic, because it really creates a total overlap between conversations around motherhood and the gospel itself. How do we deal with this topic? Yeah, Jess, what did it start for you? I just love how she called out that sometimes doing the right thing is like being uncomfortable or like working through like pain is like a good thing.

That should be like a signal of like, yes, like keep going, keep pushing. Like it is going to be uncomfortable. Um, but like. For some reason, I feel like we can like correlate that in athletics where like, if an athlete comes to us and is just like, Oh my goodness, like I'm so sore today, but like I'm training for this, like big race in a couple of weeks, we'd be like, well, yeah, that's like, good job.

Like that there's like this pain and yes, that we should have empathy for like, I'm sorry, you went through that. But also like the hope of the gospel is like, God wants to redeem and restore our families so that he is just made like most of, and so like, keep going, like, don't give up. But I just don't know if moms today have cheerleaders in their corner who have maybe gone before them and done that, or just like even themselves working through that to be like, we can do this, like for the sake of like our kids and grandkids, like for our family's blessing and flourishing, like don't stop, like keep going.

And so. And, and we have a unique way of being able to continue to face that and continue to have hope and optimism as we move towards it without it crushing us and telling a story about us that we can't bear. Justine, what did this stir up for you?

Let's talk about, let's be vulnerable. But at the same time, it becomes this like really unhealthy, I don't know what the word would be, but just like a really unhealthy culture within that where it's, it's validating in some way. I don't know. Yeah, it's. You're right about that. Like there is a sense in which the cheerleading as opposed to it being about the really hard parts of motherhood and like, you can do this.

And you know, that, that reversal that she's describing. And, you know, the empathy that she describes as well about, okay, we need to have enough empathy for the infant and the babies that we are bringing into the world and that we're bonded to, to be able to make sure that we're not sort of using those voices, those cheer, cheerleading for our individual sort of desires that create behaviors that are really bad for our children or that will, can really do damage.

Have lost their empathy for their children. They no longer feel for their children. Something has been disrupted because of generational expression of attachment disorders in the last 75, 80 years. Something has really been disrupted. In terms of mother's ability to feel for the distress and the pain and the longing and the loss of their children.

So I'm a by product in a good way of the women's rights movement of the, of the sexual revolution, um, and I'm a lot older than you, so I really am, I did, I was a beneficiary of it in many ways, but. The way it was structured by Gloria Steinem when it was first, you know, conceived was Gloria Steinem said, if you don't go out to work, you are, you betray the movement of feminism, you betray the women's rights movement.

She never felt the oxytocin pull. She never was attached to a baby. But it really, that message was very destructive. Because it didn't say, And now all movements have, there's an extreme to them when they first begin, you know, and, and I guess she saw it as a war, but it was a war that was waged, not just against men.

So the next generation is one step away from feeling the attachments sort of to their babies. And this is, we know this from lots of mammalian research. So, yeah, we, we suffer from, we suffered a lot from that. I have a t shirt that I love. I'm a feminist. I work, I do helping profession work, you know, I always have, and, and I have a t shirt that says maternal feminism, which is that I believe in women's right to choose a career or not a career, or the ability to work, or.

lot there. And so she begins by talking about the. The kind of disruption of kind of the empathy instinct that is bonding a mother and her infant. And that this is really rooted in a kind of a, we're, we're sort of three or four generations into a movement that has disrupted that connection. And so, so many people are walking around saying, what's the big deal?

And if you, if, if this detachment becomes normative, then we're essentially damaging whole generations of people as opposed to having invented a brave new world that's actually better for women, children, everyone. So yeah, Justine, what does this stir up for you? Well, I think we just don't want to, like, see the consequences of our choices.

We don't want to die. And Michelle, last week you talked about like gardening. And I think about like a seed has to die to produce a new plant, which is similar to what you were talking about last week and how much we have to do that ourselves in imitating Christ. But I think the farther that we get away from following the And then the more damage we see being done in and through the home.

And I think at that level, we need to make sure that the, our reaction to sort of the gender problem doesn't result in damaging our own children. Like they can't be the. casualties in some kind of battle between the sexes, but, but it is really important to say that becoming a mother or father is, is really a call to lay down your life.

And I feel that the answer to that, that we're constantly promoting is for men to try to lead the way and sacrifice any kind of career identity and say that my fatherhood comes first and that I'm primarily a leader in my home and that when I go to work, I am providing for my family, not attempting to create a separate individual identity that will then help me avoid my identity at home as a father.

So a couple of things where it was like, when, when that was said, you know, like I just had this idea of just, it was a switching of teams almost when they believed this worldview of, Oh yeah, like, I mean, of course that sounds good, right? Yeah. Let's band together. And I, yeah, it was just like this team mindset where there was just this switching of teams.

And I remember thinking and reading this one book that was really popular 15 years ago, that was all about sleep training, keep it, you know, on a watch, all the things, feeding times, sleep times. And while I see The beauty in that, it really was, I, I saw it personally as an excuse to keep my life the way I wanted it to be.

Between all of the messages, how to work through that. Yeah. Where did this empathy go when it was disrupted? And I don't think to your point, Michelle, the empathy went away. I think it got transferred to the women's movement in general, which then allowed it to kind of come full circle to me as an individual, like woman, if I'm going to try to separate from what, what a message to hear that the best thing you could possibly do for the sake of the cause is to put yourself first.

imposing on my baby by suggesting that it's actually normal or good because somebody came up with a theory last week about how this is good for children. And I love that you went to your mother. I think, I think where a lot of this needs to be confronted is with connections with older mothers who remember a time before a lot of the You know, latest experiments and propaganda that, that whose memory might, might go back into a much more distant past of, of traditions of mothering that, uh, really celebrate these things and don't assume that the new is always better.

Like our, our sanctification, our transformation. And so like allowing the Lord to work through that. And then again, we talked about earlier, like being okay, if it is like a challenging season to like wrestle with that and like. Having those people that we can like be like, Hey, I'm wrestling through this.

He, he puts in one of his books, a dedication to his mother. He said, to my mother, who always knew that butter was better than margarine. And I was like, that is so perfect. You know, because, you know, that there is, there, there are connections that go before these latest techniques and a lot of parenting strategies are just like the modern Western diet, their ideas that sort of popped out of very recent times, and were often influenced by sort of hyper individualism and consumerism, as opposed to what's actually been truly historically true about caring for children.

Why is that? Why did God design it that way? And I think it's because he didn't want anyone in the family, any child to ever feel alone. And I think that knowing that. Your mother is going to empathize with you at that incredibly deep level allows us all to live in a world in which we're never emotionally alone.

And there's, there are, there are pathways in the gospel to being able to be a highly empathetic. And also to, to, to continue to have a joy in your life. So thank you all so much for, for doing this, this conversation with me. I think this is, this is another challenging topic. I just love to, to try to figure out what are the things that we're learning are really recovering when it comes to motherhood.