When did motherhood become a performance sport?

Trying to understand motherhood, I look to the past. I’m sure that Adam gave Eve heaps of handy hints on how to push Cain and Abel down the birth canal. He probably said, “Seeing you like this hurts me as much as it hurts you,” as she sank her nails into his hand and hissed, “You are never touching me again, you fig-leaf bastard.”

Throughout the centuries, it seems, women have been offered parenting advice that is both unhelpful and insulting. Scottish physician William Buchan’s 1804 book Advice to Mothers, on the Subject of Their Own Health (a masterwork of 19th-century mansplaining) held that “in all cases of dwarfishness or deformity, ninety-nine out of a hundred are owing to the folly, misconduct or neglect of mothers”. In 1916, mothers were advised that their anger was the cause of their child’s crying (chicken, egg), and in 1878 had to be told not to give babies gin to relieve flatulence. (Having farted my way through many G&Ts in my time, I feel confident that this advice was solid.)

These days, you’d be forgiven for thinking a mum could never be “good enough”.Credit: STOCKSY

In 1962, women were informed by American doctor Walter Sackett that breastmilk was deficient and should be substituted with bacon and eggs at nine weeks of age and black coffee once babies reached six months, to get them used to the “habits of the family”. Assuming, of course, that the baby is born to a family of beatniks.

In the 1950s, British paediatrician and psychoanalyst Douglas Winnicott came up with the concept of the “good-enough” mother, who sacrificed herself less and less as time went on so that the baby grew able to cope with frustration. Basically, mum’s failures taught her baby how to manage in an imperfect world. What a time to be alive!

These days, you’d be forgiven for thinking a mum could never be “good enough”. It’s a performance sport and the motherhood internet is awash with different versions of the role. I can be a yummy mummy sporting the three Ts (teeth, tits and tan) and curating my life and my Insta-squares like a magazine, or I can identify as an attachment parent, espousing extended breastfeeding, baby-wearing and toilet-training from birth. This is also known as “elimination communication”, and it requires holding the baby over the bowl for long periods while presumably thinking hard about those expensive years at university.

I could become a “fitspo” mum, posting pics before, during and after pregnancy that display how I “got my body back”.

RACHAEL MOGAN MCINTOSH

I can get advice on “modesty mothering” through blog posts like “Getting Real about Yoga Pants and the Lusty Gaze”. I could become a “fitspo” mum, posting pics before, during and after pregnancy that display how I “got my body back”. Hint: start with a hot rack in the first place, add patriarchy, bulimia and a sprinkle of self-loathing to your postpartum depression, and shazam!

I can scroll endless nutrition-advice spaces that promise to teach me how to eliminate gluten, dairy, sugar, joy and hope from my diet. To be a truly crunchy parent, I note, making organic bone broth and activating my hazelnuts will take up the precious few hours not spent holding my baby over the toilet.

I can do “time-out” or “time-in”, be an old-schooler or an unschooler, use gentle parenting or read God, the Rod and Your Child’s Bod. I could spend my days as a day-drinking “scummy mummy” heroine, a MILF beauty blogger or a retro-fembot housewife with a perfect pantry, aspirational bento lunch boxes and shades-of-beige colour palette. What about a tiger mum? A freebirth-on-riverbank mum? A virtue-signalling “sanctimummy”: every post a teachable moment! An aggressively fertile mum-of-many, lining my children up in a row in their tonally matching wardrobes? An urban hipster in a linen Mama Bird T-shirt, surviving on kombucha and cocaine?

I could document my pregnancy until finally live-streaming the birth in vivid detail, captioning my post with #blessed. Every person who views the footage might call for eye shampoo and a copy of the King James Bible, trying desperately to unsee what cannot be unseen, but I would be #blessed.

It’s such an exhausting exploration that it leaves me needing a nap. Every generation thinks they invented sex, coffee and child-rearing. But the fact is that humans are all morons, every baby is a fresh and different beast, and the world we live in is changing faster than a toddler’s mood in the late afternoon.

Over time, I pick my way through the strange landscape of parental advice, and the panicked intensity of it diminishes, bit by bit, baby by baby. I start to realise how little the details matter, and what a long road motherhood actually is. Some things seem clear: don’t serve the newborn bacon and eggs; don’t breastfeed the teenager. But so much more seems dependent on the ongoing process of facing my own flaws and virtues with clear eyes and understanding that each of the children requires different things from me. Including, perhaps, getting out of their way.

Edited extract from Mothering Heights (Affirm Press) by Rachael Mogan McIntosh, out now.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.