“Parenting is sometimes boring!” That’s what an American expatriate who has lived in Britain for 18 years wrote in an essay. And now Helen Kirwan-Taylor, a mother of two, is sifting through tons of hate mail and defending herself in numerous media interviews.
She said in a USA TODAY article that she’s being vilified because she isn’t interested in changing diapers. Guess what? I was never interested in it either. And I’d like to add for the record that I don’t believe motherhood is boring at all. Quite the contrary, it’s maddening, exhausting, heartwarming and heartbreaking.
As an example, Monday morning I had to walk behind my children as if I was a stalker and say to them, “Pick up your towel, turn off the bathroom light, put on your sandals, eat your breakfast and clear the table.” They complied with each directive without the usual whining or baseless argument. Could that be described as boring? If so, then much about life is truly boring.
Tell me, who gets excited about driving to work or driving home or unloading groceries? Who gets excited about brushing and flossing their teeth every single day and night? Perhaps my husband, but as has been pointed out in this very column, he’s not human. (For example, he doesn’t like chocolate and only eats when he’s truly hungry.) As I read the article on the British mom, I wondered, as I often do, “Can I relate to this at all?”
A few years ago I produced a series on the 50th anniversary of Women of Achievement, a local awards program for the volunteer efforts of women. I focused on each of five decades and how life for women changed, starting with the ‘50s. One professor I interviewed pointed out that during the post-war era and the end of Rosie the Riveter it was white women who mostly returned home, while black women kept working as they always had. Enrollment in college skyrocketed for servicemen who were able to use the G.I. Bill to get a degree, a better job and move into the middle class. The G.I. Bill was also used to buy cookie cutter homes and create the first-ever suburban lifestyle. However, that legislation did not impact the black community to the same degree. Black soldiers couldn’t get into segregated colleges or segregated towns. It would take the Civil Rights Movement for that to happen.
So what does this history lesson have to do with a mother in Britain who says parenting bores her? While other mothers are working two and three jobs, trying to support their family, she’s a freelance writer, living in an upscale neighborhood. I invite her to come see how real mothers do it.
Real mothers, like those sisters after the war, who didn’t have the luxury of becoming stay-at-home moms who could wax away the hours wondering if they had fulfilled their destinies or which color to paint the kitchen. Real mothers are just too busy raising their children to think about how boring any one aspect of it is. Real mothers know that it’s not all a bed of roses or a dozen roses. Children’s birthday parties are what they are. It’s not about you anyway, mom – it’s really about your kids.
And besides, boring isn’t difficult to handle when you have the financial means to do so. Changing diapers and going to birthday parties isn’t boring when you have money to buy more diapers and money to give a birthday party. I guess I have to tell this British mother the same thing I tell my children: Stop whining!