Mom envy.
A term you may have heard, especially if you frequent the mom-blogs of half a dozen of your facebook friends (like I do…confession!), or find yourself reading parenting articles that you found linked on said mom-blogs. Mom envy is essentially what happens when a woman becomes a mom and promptly starts comparing herself to other moms. The interwebs and blogosphere definitely contribute to mom envy, because you can hardly scroll through facebook or Pinterest these days without discovering yet another adorable blog, written by a super-woman who is somehow able to invent new craft projects, upcycle old furniture, bake amazing cookies, and do it all one-handed while she homeschools her five kids (simultaneously documenting it all on her blog, of course). Even without the influence of virtual moms to envy, I’ve heard many women speak about their own experiences with friend and acquaintance moms they actually know in real life—and they envy those ladies, too. I guess it’s no surprise that we women tend to do this…isn’t mom envy just an extension of school-picture-day-outfit envy, high school boyfriend envy, and all the other kinds of jealousy we harbor growing up surrounded by female friends and frenemies?
However, the ins and outs of mom envy or jealousy in general are not really the focus of this blog. In fact, why is a topic like this on my mind, when I have no kids of my own? I haven’t crossed the threshold into motherhood, so I can’t participate in mom envy, right?
Wrong.
Weird confession time, guys. I’ve discovered that I sometimes struggle with mom envy, even though I’m not a mom and have no immediate plans to become one. Furthermore, none of my closest friends are moms, either, so it’s not like I’m stuck in some mommy circle that has inexorably rubbed off on me. But every now and then, I feel a green twinge. I feel a sliver of fear that someday, when I actually am a mom, I might not cut it.
Here’s an example. The other day my sister-in-law posted a picture on facebook. It showed her four-year-old son drawing some kind of scribbly blue diagram. The caption said, “Learning about watersheds during our ‘school’ time!”
Barf.
Okay, I didn’t barf. I actually thought the picture was cute, and I was glad to see my nephew was getting some “school time” (he has never attended pre-school, and she’s planning on home-schooling, at least for a while). BUT, intermixed with those pleasant feelings was the big, fat, panicky squeeze of mom envy. Here’s why.
If I were in her place, with three kids under five, pregnant with a fourth, and a house/urban farm to maintain, would I be sitting down with my son for a nice little lesson about watersheds? Probably not! Primarily because….what the fuck do I know about watersheds?
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Another time a few weeks ago I was having lunch with said sister-in-law and nephew, and she happened to use the fact that it was sunny to ask the little guy if he remembered how they learned about water reflecting and refracting light. That’s right, not just reflecting, but refracting! What four year old needs to know about that? Well, after these encounters, it’s got me thinking that perhaps ALL OF THEM DO. And if my future four-year-old can’t explain the difference between reflecting and refracting or diagram a watershed…well, I’m probably a failure.
At this point I think you can detect a note of panic here, and I want you to know I realize that the situation is truly not as dire as all that. Not only do I have years to figure out what a watershed really is, along with all the other parenting know-how I’ll need, I also know that over-reacting and over-comparing will never be helpful. I know it’s not really a competition between my sister-in-laws and me to see who can raise the best kids. But I still don’t want to lose.
I am aware that being a parent highlights all kinds of flaws and inadequacies, and generally leads to a lot of stress and freaking out. But should I be concerned about all that already? I can’t decide if this is an opportunity to motivate myself to become a better person (and future parent) or a time to let go of expectations and envy and just try to relax.
For me, I think my mom envy (at this point, at least) is concentrated around the idea of educating my kids. Making them smart. Preparing them for school and life. I couldn’t care less about upcycling furniture for the baby’s nursery or feeding them all home-grown, all-organic food. But their minds? I care. I care a lot.
This probably touches a nerve for me because of my profession. I spent 13 years in school and 6 years in higher education, all with the goal of becoming a teacher. I now have a diploma that declares me to be one, but what if my sister-in-law, who has a college degree she has never really used, is actually the better teacher, the better nurturer? She’s already doing it, day in and day out, with her kids, and I’m just not sure how adept I’m going to be when the same task is set before me.
In the last few years, you know, since finishing high school and college, and now graduate school, I’ve discovered that there were quite a few gaps in that education of mine.
Somehow, I graduated not knowing how to explain what a watershed is, and asking dumb-blonde questions like, “Wait, is a wolverine a real animal? Of course not, right? Wait, what?”
How am I going to fill in those gaps for my own children? Even though I’m a teacher by trade, I have zero interest in homeschooling, but I also can’t say I completely trust the public education system that produced me. I will freely admit that I am jealous of my sister-in-law at times, not only because she had her kids potty-trained before they were 2 (what??) and they are lovely, well-behaved kiddos, but because she clearly has more knowledge than I do in some areas, and she’s already doing a great job to pass it on to her kids. I don’t know if I can live up to all that. Mostly, though, I’m worried about how this will manifest in the future. If I already find myself giving in to mom envy when my children are merely hypothetical, how will I deal with it when I’m faced with real, flesh and blood little humans that are relying on me to be their first and best teacher?
I guess I’ve got some shit to figure out in the next couple of years.
Want to feel even more inadequate as a human being? I just read the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. His father started teaching him Latin when he was three, Ancient Greek when he was five, and by the time he reached age thirteen he had already read all the major works of about 20 classical authors and was writing rhetorical compositions in Latin.
Yeah…pretty much I suck. lol