how to be good
on the Marxist bargain of motherhood and the trouble with Fleishman is in Trouble
When my first son was born, my mother gave me a single piece of jaundiced advice: Be a good dad.
What she meant is that there’s no point striving to be a good mother, let alone a perfect one. If you want to succeed at parenthood, approach it like a man. Be good but not too good. Instead of doing everything, just make sure you do enough. Set boundaries. Keep something back for yourself. Fulfil your obligations, love your children fiercely and they’ll probably turn out just fine. For a long time I thought she was right.
In recent months, I have unexpectedly found myself the sole care single mother to two young sons. This has changed my life in unfathomable ways but the main thing it’s altered is my relationship to work. There’s just way more of it — the unpaid kind. Last October I went from being a partner, wife and co-parent to being the only responsible adult on deck. My parental responsibility doubled and my resources were halved. This dramatic change in circumstances has resulted in a Catch-22 I am still trying to dig my way out of: My kids need me more than ever before but I’ve never been so stretched. Five months in and I am still struggling but in some ways I’m getting the hang of it. But the reality is stark: I’m time and money poor and responsibility superrich. As Marxist bargains go, it sucks.
But a lot of things suck and it might have been worse. I could have four kids instead of two. I could be uneducated, unable to speak the language, I could be a refugee, an addict or chronically ill. I could be trapped in an abusive marriage — god knows many women are. At least as it stands I’m the mistress of my destiny. At least I’ve got a fighting chance. But it’s a struggle, and because of that lately I’ve taken mother’s advice to heart. I’m trying to be the best dad I can.
But there’s a problem, which is that I’m not a dad, I’m a mum. And mums are held to higher account. What’s more, the standards for mothers run in inverse proportion to our privilege and circumstances. If you believed Hollywood you’d think the world was madly in love with harried, struggling single mothers. I mean, who doesn’t love Erin Brockovich? Or Rene Zellwegger’s character in Jerry Maguire? But in the real world, that’s not how it works.
Just before Christmas last year I was called into a meeting at my kids’ school to discuss the boys’ “care and appearance.” A pair of well-intentioned twenty-something female teachers sat me down on a teeny-tiny chair and for the better part of an hour relayed their concerns over food stains on jumpers, incorrect uniform and Frank’s unbrushed hair. They wanted to know why the boys had been delivered to school late three times last month. (Because we’d moved further from he school and I’d misjudged the commute time.) They wanted to know why they sometimes hadn’t been wearing their school ties. (Because the spares been misplaced in the move.) They wanted to know why I let Solly walk home from school on own (because he’s ten) and also why Frank chewed his cuffs (because he sometimes gets anxious). They wanted to know if I was, in fact, giving him his epilepsy medicine each day (yes, of course). They wanted to know what measures I was taking to ensure that the boys’ did their homework, ate their vegetables, when to bed on time and were held to account for their behaviour at home? (I said something about drawing up a reward chart.) I answered the teachers’ questions politely, in what I hoped was a measured, conciliatory tone. I apologised for the lateness, the food stains, the unbrushed hair and promised to improve. I knew that whatever happened I must not get defensive or lose my temper because “angry single mother” is not a good look.