My oldest turns 10 this month and while I’ve busied myself with the wants and wishes of his birthday, I’ve also given myself time to reflect upon a decade of motherhood. My first reaction is surprise: 10 years? How can that possibly be? Like all parents throughout generations: Where did the time go? Time distorts as a parent. One expects it, or rather , must confront it during the newborn stage with its parade of seemingly unending sleepless nights. But this distortion continues well past teething and diapers. Many days raising two children feels slow, sometimes fraught with sibling spats and arguments spill over TV time on weekends. One of the many parenting cliches holds true – the days are long, but the years are short. Suddenly, the baby who rarely napped or slept much is the same kid tinkering in the garage, dismantling his bike and refashioning it with smaller wheels (ripped from his sister’s bike, naturally) all because he is a person who is so curious about how everything works from bikes to the universe, part by part. He’s become a kid infused with wisdom that leaves me speechless, particularly after a conversation where I fretted over whether he still felt close to his best friend whose life is dominated by soccer. Maybe he felt left out. His response? “Mom, you know that you don’t have to do everything single thing your friends do. That’s now how friendship works.”
Well, my son, it took me many more years, or call them decades if you must, to understand that.
Arriving at this motherhood milestone is also a reckoning with the precariousness of birthing and raising children in America where there is little support compared to other nations around the world that offer universal or national health care, governmental policies supporting maternity and paternity leave, and affordable childcare options. These massive gaps in a social safety net, reinforced by governmental policies that seem to have no problem subsidizing the oil and gas industries but yell and scream about the socialist boogeyman when it comes to women and children, make the whole business of parenting extremely fraught. Women are subjected to the societal whiplash of messaging about the sanctity of life and motherhood while they’re reproductive rights erode and often have to sacrifice economic security just to pay for childcare or medical bills, from the quotidian breaking-your-arm-after-falling-off a swing to more serious diseases or injuries. In Washington D.C., major federal restrictions to SNAP and Medicare programs are going into effect, which provide support for low-income families to access food and medical care.
As a mother, I am humbled by the advantages and privileges in my household that allow me to have health insurance through my spouse’s job, which covers said recent broken arm without going into medical debt. Our family also benefits from our built-in safety net: our parents live in the Flathead Valley and often help with childcare. While most people would argue that of course grandparents and relatives should be an active part of a child’s life — it does take a village, after all — our society has changed a lot and often grandparents or other relatives live several hours or states away. I’ve lost count of how many times my mom has come to the rescue to help when a kid is sick, my husband’s traveling for work, and I have an afternoon of classes to teach. We don’t keep my mom on standby only for emergencies and she’s a regular part of my kid’s life, as are the other relatives who live in the area. It adds a much richer layer to our lives, and all of us benefit from the intergenerational relationship. I’ve also been so fortunate to have a strong and wide friendship community where we’ve built a village to help with last minute childcare asks.
Bewildering, exhausting, hilarious, and joyful in ways I never even anticipated, I’m excited what the next decade of parenting will bring.