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.