The Motherhood Effect

Society and Motherhood

Becoming a mother completely changed my view on society, especially when it started expecting me to think of myself as a second-class citizen to my child. My child is the most important human in my life (along with my husband, of course) but I don't want to be a slave to him. I want him to know me as a strong and capable woman who raised him but still had a life of her own. I'm so sick of seeing mothers turned to martyrs because they give up everything when they have a child.

I'm in a fortunate situation where my husband makes enough to where I can stay home with my son. Most of what we have for him have been gifts or hand me downs from family so we didn't have to spend a ton of money on clothing, furniture, or even toys. Even then, I felt weird about just staying home and staring at a sleeping newborn while I procrastinated cleaning the house. I was always used to pushing myself to do more and, at that moment, I needed to do more.

So, I started a business.

It was something that I'd been wanting to do for years but every time I quit a job and had a few weeks of free time before my next job started, I would do anything but try to get my dream business off the ground. It was always too much effort or I was too scared of not being able to create anything interesting. This time I wasn't going to let that happen. To motivate myself, I went through Rocket Lawyer and made the business an LLC and worked on getting clients.

At the time of writing this, I'm still trying to figure out how to balance the work that I have and still bring in more clients. Despite that, I am extremely happy. I make a little money every month to help out or save and one day I'll be able to tell my son that I started a business and still managed to raise him.

You don't have to do all that but aren't you tired of society insinuating that when you become a mother you don't matter as much? I can't stand saying I'm offended by things but that really does offend me. Even if you take time to do something fun like writing or learning to paint, you can take a bit of the power back from those who think that every last ounce of your energy needs to go toward your tiny human.

I didn't notice what people expect of new mothers right away. There were so many people who were over the moon about my son and that made me extremely happy that he already had people who loved him so much. That type of attention really clouds your judgment about people because 'how could they be bad when they love your kid so much?' It's a horrible conundrum that can cause so much stress.

I'd been in labor for 16 hours and it was down to a coin-toss of whether we were going to have a c-section or not when my son decided to arrive naturally. However, the labor had been extremely difficult on my body so my recovery took much longer than what I've seen others take. So, when my husband told me that someone said that he should stop helping me with the baby at night because he needed to go to work, I was both hurt and furious. I was still at the point where I could hardly walk without a network of pain and here I was trying to do everything myself at all hours of the day.

That's the moment it hit me - no one expected me to be anything more than a boob-bag for this baby that I love so much. It didn't help that any time someone came over it was always 'I'm only here for the baby.' I like to think it was a joke but I also know that there was some truth in it and still is.

For my entire life I've been so careful of other people's feelings and trying not to make waves. When I saw what becoming a mother did to my ability to function as a normal human, I said 'screw it' and decided that I needed to have a life in addition to caring for another life. It didn't have to be anything crazy but I needed to do something more. I was no longer in college, I'd finished my first book, and I was searching for my next big things. Not everyone has my drive for bettering themselves but I believe you can learn almost anything and this is a great skill to have. Without it, people just become lazier and lazier and then they find themselves in a dead-end place that they aren't happy with.