“Good moms have sticky floors, messy ovens, and happy kids,” reads a popular meme making the rounds on Facebook and Pinterest.
While I understand the sentiment, I don’t find this helpful for millennial moms seeking balance between unobtainable “perfectionism” and its new hot mess of a step-sister: extreme “authenticity”. Sometimes good moms have sad kids – in fact, some of my BEST work yields crying, angry children who are learning they can’t always get their own way. Sometimes good moms have clean houses, and it’s not (as the internet might have you believe) at the expense of their children. Most of us are just trying to get through this Motherhood gig with a smidge of grace and as few trips to the ER as possible. The unnecessary pressure to prove to ourselves and others that we have it all together – and this NEW pressure to make sure we show the world we DON’T have it all together – will always leave us feeling like we don’t measure up.
No one is perfect all the time; but we’re not failing all the time, either. You don’t have to be one or the other to prove you’re a good mom or a “real” human. In fact, I encourage you to stop trying to prove anything at all. Working Moms vs. Stay-at-Home Moms. Breast vs. Bottle. Pro-Vax vs. Anti-Vax. Free Range vs. Helicopter. Perfectionism vs. Authenticity. To me, they’re all fueling the same fire. Labels puff us up in pride while simultaneously disparaging our sisters who make differing choices in their mothering journey.
The solution for those of us who tend to hold ourselves to the impossibly high standards of perfectionism isn’t to do away with any and all expectations under the guise of “being authentic”. We need to be realistic with ourselves when choosing the priorities and goals that make sense for our individual families. The key to assuaging the guilt or jealously we feel when we see someone else who excels in an area where we have room to grow isn’t to make ourselves feel better by assigning malice to her motives or deeming her fake, selfish or neglectful. It’s to be honest with ourselves about our own shortcomings and failures – having the wisdom to know when we need to try harder and when it’s OK to say, “Meh. That’s just not top priority for right now.”
And this is why:
Our kids are watching. They need to know how and when to persevere. They need to be able to roll up their sleeves, doing hard things and messy jobs – but they also need to know when the safe and wise answer is to walk away. Those of us raising Type A children have to teach them to cut themselves some slack and fail well – that sometimes their best won’t be good enough, and that’s OK. Moms of Type B kids have the equally challenging task of helping them learn to pick up the pace and complete jobs on time without compromising the quality of their work – and that rules exist for a reason.
As mothers, we must model balance and confidence in our choices.
We can’t do this if we are consumed and overwhelmed by raggedly chasing perfectionism, and we can’t do it while clinging to apathy or laziness, allowing them to masquerade as “authenticity”. We can’t do this if we spend our time worrying about how real or fake we appear to the world outside our four walls; it’s paralyzing. It’s a waste of time. And no matter how hard we try, we can’t control how other people perceive us.
Ladies, you don’t need their approval or their permission to be YOU. And they certainly don’t get to decide if you’re a “good” mom, online or off.
In the end, it’s not about the state of our ovens and floors – there are many good moms around the globe who have neither! It’s about the state of our hearts. It’s about knowing our own strengths and weaknesses; developing the ability to prioritize what our families truly need from us. That’s how to determine whether or not we’re doing a “good” job as mothers – and most of us aren’t giving ourselves enough credit.
