Drawing the line: Why mothers need to have boundaries

Until recently, I considered it light-hearted, comical and inevitable that the life of a mother should be completely overrun with pieces of her child's life. From morning 'til night, like many mothers, the evidence of my daughter was everywhere; from stuffed animals in my bed to toys, books and empty juice cups scattered throughout our house and cars. Even the guest bedroom, my daughter decided, was the "time-out room" for her stuffed Cookie Monster because "he bites." Where her presence in my world wasn't physical, it was mental. Like many mothers, I sometimes have found it hard to hold a thought that was my own... that wasn't about her or how I relate to her.

Then I read something that resonated with me, from a wonderful book called "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children" by Wendy Mogel. Mogel is a California family therapist who knows a lot about the malaise of modern parenting.

Mogel writes about parents who would go to her for family counseling, often with a "problem" of the child's behavior. But upon examining the family's situation, Mogel would usually take a greater interest in the parents' behavior than the kids'. Mogel writes, "They tell me their bedrooms are littered with toys, shin guards and dirty socks. And children march into their parents' rooms at all times of day and night."

Looking back at my reaction reading that is humorous... and a little sad. Whoa, what kind of parent puts up with their kids' dirty s...? Pause. Dear God, at this moment, my daughter's dirty socks are lying next to my side of the bed. Curious George is buried under my comforter somewhere and there is a "Little Tykes" toy vanity along my bedroom wall... where my own vanity should be. My own bedroom is not my own.

Where are the boundaries?

Mogel assures her readers, backed by the full authority of God's commandment, "Honor thy mother and father" that demanding space for yourself as a parent is the right thing to do. Mogel believes that God understood that kids do not automatically respect their parents, so that is why He commanded it. And honoring your parents she believes, begins with establishing boundaries between parent and child and enforcing it with an expectation of privacy. Children can keep their toys in their own rooms. They can learn to knock before entering your bedroom. And we certainly can find a better place for those dirty socks.

So if the need for boundaries between parent and child are as old as the ten commandments, then how did we end up here, in a world where children rule over their households as little "princes" and "princesses," and mothers subordinate their own needs to those of their children?

That question is tackled in another fabulous book I'm reading, "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" by Judith Warner. In it, Warner describes how popular media from Parents magazine to The New Yorker continually give us a vision of the "ideal mom" -- one who is Zen and can lose her self in the small acts of mothering. The ideal mother would accept that her body was her child's -- to nurse from, to use as a jungle gym and to schlep the kids around as their needs required. Her possessions were theirs, too. "Pillows, pots, plates, jewelry and clothes -- all got thrown on the floor, dribbled with juice, coated in scum. So did she."

The ideal mom could also be counted on to never let her child out of her sight, to put her marriage and friends on the back burner, and to provide countless acts of engagement with her child; from "co-watching" Baby Einstein DVDs to teaching her baby sign language to enrolling in enrichment "classes" no sooner than her baby can hold his head up. Mothers of older kids warn me that it gets even harder. Coordinating ballet, hockey, Cub Scouts, and countless other schedules requires enormous organizing efforts.

But if the "ideal mom" strives for perfection in this realm, the "real mom" knows that so much of this is ridiculous. It is an exhausting, no-win situation to try to subscribe to the "ideal mom" philosophy. It requires total subordination of the self that you were before you had kids and it puts you in constant competition with other moms who are able to eek out just a little more devotion to their kids than you can muster.

I firmly believe that every mother is fully entitled to draw her line in the sand, and make space for just herself for whatever purpose makes her uniquely her. And if that isn't enough to convince you, understand that your kids, even little ones need their space too. Families were designed, not for total and constant togetherness, but to be the commons where we can bring our unique selves to one another, to celebrate, encourage, enjoy and protect one another.

On one last thought, while I was writing this, Sophie pulled out her Duplo blocks and built me a beautiful tower that I never would have enjoyed, had I spent this last hour tending to what I might think her "needs" to be.

I'm going to go check that out.

My White Crayon Moment

A few months ago, my 2 year old daughter said something that stirred my inner maternal activist and I haven't been the same since then.

In her box of crayons there is a white one that she will try to use on her white paper from time to time, but of course, the markings are invisible to her. She usually says something like, "Mommy, that one has no power" and hands it off to me... I'm not sure if she wants me to fix it or just complain about this injustice of having a crayon that she believes doesn't work.

So one morning I dug through my closet until I found some dark green paper. I handed her the white crayon and said, "Here, try this." She scribbled for a while on the dark green paper and then she said, "Oh, this one has power!"

It struck me that this was an interesting choice of words for such a little girl... that she chose the word "power" to describe being visible and making a mark within her own tiny world. It was a great reminder for me that being invisible does not mean we do not have power. So much of the caregiving and domestic work that mothers do is, indeed, invisible, but it is not powerless.

To show other moms the power of a white crayon, and that invisible work is still real work, I created a workshop for members of Mothers & More, a national organization dedicated to mothers as individuals. It will also be presented at the 2009 Mothers & Madness / Mamapalooza Conference in New York City in May. In this workshop, I ask participants to write down one important caregiving task they've recently performed; but they have to write it with a white crayon on a white piece of paper. They can then show their neighbors what they wrote, but of course, the writing is invisible to all. It's a frustrating experience, if only briefly, to be unable to show what you've done. I then ask the participants to write the same task on a colored piece of construction paper where everyone can now see what they wrote. Participants feel relieved and more relaxed after their work can be seen and we discuss the real life "white crayon moments," such as:

• your husband comes home and asks what you've done all day
• you find yourself justifying an absence from the workforce to a stranger at a cocktail party
• you struggle to explain in a job interview how you've used your skills while raising children
• you find yourself covering up your mother-work while at your paid job because you intuitively understand that it is not taken seriously in the workplace
• your friends tell you that it must be nice not to have to "work" as they imagine you watching the View, Dr. Phil and Oprah all day -- do they think the kids care for themselves?

Doing the work of motherhood is like writing with a white crayon. However, as I see it, there are two ways to deal with the frustration and sense of powerlessness this can create. One way is to shift your perspective (i.e., look at the white writing against a different background). When you talk with other mothers who understand just how real the work of caregiving is, it's like having that colored piece of paper there, suddenly showing you that the work you did was real. The other solution is to use all your crayons... in other words, use all your skills, discover all your interests and live out all your passions to the extent you can.

Just because you are a mother does not confine you to only coloring in white crayon.