How Dare You Tell Us to Stop Pretending Motherhood is Hard!

‘Our Facebook feeds are filled with motherhood tinged in grey. A woe-to-me-nothing-is-tougher-than-this attitude. But why?’ wrote Mamamia writer Shauna Anderson last week in her article titled ‘Being a mum is not hard. Stop Pretending it is.‘

‘It certainly isn’t a constant dance on a mountain of happiness. But it isn’t hard.’

When I read this all I could think was: what an effing judgmental bitch. Who the feck gives you the right to judge our experience. Being a mum is not hard?

Try parenting a kid with special needs, try worrying each day that you might not be able to feed them.

Try watching your newborn sleep every night knowing her brother slipped away in his sleep at the same age.

Try multiple miscarriages and not trusting that this time it might work.

Try leaving your husband because his violence to you made your children stop talking and start wetting their beds.

Don’t tell us that other people have it much worse and try to guilt us into feeling like failures. Life does a pretty good job of it on its own.

Everything is relative to your own experience and everyone has their own struggles.
How dare you tell me that I don’t struggle, that my life is easy! You have no idea!

I thought that we were past the age where women tore each other down and into the part where we were supporting each other!

When my baby was in the prem unit I felt bad that I was not coping well because my baby was having breathing problems and needed constant medical care. The lady whose child was next to me has just lost one of her twins and was facing a series of operations for her surviving baby to have a functioning heart. It didn’t make my pain any easier to bear.

My friend who had her baby in the same week was sorrowful because her baby had to spend the night in the special care nursery with jaundice and it didn’t make her feel better to know that others had it worse! How the hell could it!

Often when you hear a mum tell her tale of woe, ‘little Sally has had trouble feeding lately because she has had a blocked nose’.. there is always someone ready to up that story ‘well I have had mastitis and Johnny can’t latch on because he has an ulcer’.
Do you thank that it is helpful to Sally’s mum?
No, she wants reassurance, help and advice and someone to care about her problems, not someone to tell her it could be worse!
Why do we do that??
Stop it!

It is wrong on so many levels to tell us that we have it easy, that we are whingers, that it could be worse.

Your post is doing exactly that.

Your post could mean that a woman struggling somewhere doesn’t seek help because she thinks that her problems are not big enough to be heard. She might be at the end of her tether and on the verge of disaster.

She might not be able to cope any longer, she and her baby might be in trouble.

You don’t know what her struggles are, how she is feeling, you don’t care.

They are not real issues in your opinion but might mean everything to her.
How arrogant! How judgmental! How dare you!

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression please know you are not alone. You can seek help at Beyond Blue or call 1300 22 4636.