Photo by Jed Villejo on Unsplash
There are very common anxiety struggles all women face due to underlying trauma and experiences of oppression (see Part 4). Today we’re talking about oppression and underlying trauma hidden in the lives of women who become mothers, and women who don’t.
If you’re a mother…
There is so much pressure on you to get it right. Mothers get blamed so often for nearly everything that goes wrong with their children. As a counselor who works with mothers and daughters, I have witnessed the tremendous impact mothers have on the lives of their children. The special bond between mother and child is a foundational part of your daughter’s emotional and mental health. A daughter’s relationship to her mother can be a secure base from which to explore the world, or a shaky, unsafe space from which fear and conflict originate. And it’s also true that you are not the only person responsible for raising your children. Fathers, partners, grandparents, teachers, coaches – many people have an influential role to play.
The mother-daughter relationship is full of emotional and psychological landmines for both mother and daughter as it’s unlike any other relationship – you give birth to another female, a little girl who’s going to grow up to be a woman and possibly a mother one day, just like you, and that creates a lot of pressure, tension, and triggering all the way around. Communication issues and conflict can be so much more amplified between mothers and daughters.
If you have anxiety about how to talk and connect with your daughter, it usually springs from your relationship with your own mother. Whether you say “I will never do to my kids what my mom did to me” or you repeat certain discipline methods or traditions because “that’s how I was raised and I turned out fine,” it’s inevitable that your relationship with your mother greatly effects your relationship with your daughter.
How do you handle stress and anxiety around your daughter’s behaviors, words, or whatever it is that she does that you don’t understand? If you don’t handle it well, finding a counselor who can dig in and help you figure out how to do things differently is so helpful. A counselor is an objective person who can see things you don’t see, who can listen and point out places where you’re stuck, who can help break up the tension in dysfunctional interactions. If you’re not ready to try counseling, there are things you can try to ease your anxiety:
- Be curious. Instead of holding onto your personal interpretation of why your daughter says or does something, seek to understand her through genuine curiosity. This doesn’t mean pleading with her to explain, guilting her about her behaviors, or criticizing her. It means really, truly wondering, and that starts with your internal self-talk. Before asking your daughter, it’s important to first hold curiosity in your mind: “I wonder why she’s doing that, I’d like to know. Maybe she’s not saying those things to be mean, maybe she’s got something going on inside I don’t understand. Am I being fair if I just assume her anger, or her words, are wrong?”
- Pay attention to your feelings. It’s so easy to just focus outwardly on what your daughter says and does. It’s more difficult, and scary, to focus on what you’re feeling and put it out there with vulnerability. It’s so helpful for you to share your feelings with your daughter! If you’re anxious about something at work, or you’ve had a conflict with a friend, it’s okay to tell her “I’m feeling anxious right now, and I’ll be okay, but it’s just hard. It’s not about you – you’re not doing anything wrong. I’m just nervous, and I’ll be okay, I just wanted to let you know in case you sense it.” You don’t have to give details, or complain, or make your daughter your emotional comforter when you talk about your feelings. You’re simply communicating how you feel. Children, especially daughters, are constantly attuned to the emotional atmosphere in their home, and mothers are commonly the barometer used for measurement. Your daughter will be looking to you – her mom – to figure out how to handle her own emotions. Talking about emotions can be very hard to do if you grew up in a home where feelings were oppressed, hijacked, dismissed, or just ignored. If you’re at least attempting to talk about your feelings without making your daughter the cause of your feelings, the one who rescues you or comforts you, you’re already way ahead of curve. The tension in your relationship breaks up when you’re honest about your feelings and don’t expect your daughter to take care of them for you.
- Connect with Your Childhood. Put yourself in your daughter’s shoes! When you were her age, what did you feel? What were your touchstone experiences, the moments that impacted you? When did you feel good, when did you feel bad? Try and remember what it was like to be 5, 7, 11, 13, 16, etc. and remind yourself that even though you’ve “been there and done that” your daughter hasn’t, and she needs you to give her space to explore and learn about herself while you’re also nearby and available to help. Connecting to and processing your own trauma from childhood is also important. So many women believe that once they become mothers, any childhood trauma they had will no longer matter or will somehow be redeemed. That is not true. You don’t magically get over traumatic experiences just because you become a mom. In fact, there is nothing like having a child to trigger your own childhood trauma. If you’re getting triggered by your children and you can’t control your reactions, it’s time to seek counseling. You can’t get over your trauma by having kids and becoming the mother that you never had. You must process your trauma and hurt feelings before you can heal – there’s no healing without feeling.
Other oppressive messages and false ideals forced on mothers that contribute to anxiety:
- Your body can and should return to pre-maternity shape and size.
- Your role as mother should be all fulfilling – anything else interferes with what you’re made for.
- Conflicts between work/career and family/parenting are your personal problem.
- If you’re a single mom, you need to handle everything on your own.
- If you use daycare or nannies, you’re hurting your children.
- You should be thinking about your kids all the time – that’s your job.
If you’re not a mother…
It’s common to feel anxiety if you’re a woman without kids. Other people feel the need to question you about it. There’s often pressure from parents who want to be grandparents, judgment from the mothers in your community who think you’re selfish or unfulfilled for not having kids, or inappropriate sympathy from people who assume you must want kids but just can’t have them. Dominant cultural and religious beliefs are oppressive when they play into patriarchal ideas that women aren’t fulfilling their roles if they don’t birth children. There are so many messages in the world that make women without kids feel like they’ve failed at full womanhood.
You’re not fully a woman when you get your period, or turn 18, or have sex, or get married, or have children, or have a career. Femininity, female empowerment, and transitioning into your full womanhood is not dependent on these things. No one else gets to tell you “now you’re a woman.” Oppression from idealistic fantasies created by a dominant male-centric culture produces a lot of anxiety for women.
Here are some things to wonder about if you’re feeling anxiety about not having kids:
- Do I want to have children?
- Is it okay if my desires for children change over time?
- What does it mean to be a woman? Can I determine that for myself?
- What are the messages I’ve heard from other women – good and bad?
- What are the messages I tell myself?
If you’re interested in finding out what it’s like to be a woman past child-bearing age who’s also chosen to live life childfree, here’s a link to an article written by Susanna Rigg and published by Self magazine: 10 Women Look Back On Living Childfree By Choice.
If you’re facing criticisms, judgments, or too many prying questions about not having kids, it’s okay to confront people and let them know criticizing a very natural and personal choice is not acceptable. It’s okay to not answer questions and instead to let people know your life choices aren’t their business. It’s also okay to enter conversations with other people about this topic if you want to, and to leave those conversations when you need to.
And it’s more than okay to be thrilled with your life whether you have kids or don’t.
As a woman, my heart really breaks every time I see women criticizing and competing with each other. And one thing all women could do without: Apologizing for our choices to be mothers or not.
In the last post in this series, Can I Control My Anxiety? – Part 6, we’ll talk about anxiety specific to women around sexuality, body image, and hormones.
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