Our TV has a screen saver that rotates a collection of family photos. I often see an image come up of my son in my partner’s arms the day we left the hospital for the great unknown of parenting. He’s tiny, holding onto my partner’s thumb with all of his newfound strength. The same thought occurs every time: How can something so small become so overwhelmingly big in our lives?
We know that having a child changes our lives dramatically and that children need a lot of care and attention: they’re going to be on your mind a lot, for a long time. Being a mother takes a lot of psychological, emotional and physical energy. Additionally, in the early years, the sheer amount of 'stuff' that needs to be purchased and considered just to meet an infant’s basic needs is huge. There’s all the stuff required to fill up their room and make it comfortable for everyone – basinet then cot, change table, cupboards to store nappies, clothes and wipes, a chair to sit in while feeding or holding crying babies during the night, a baby bathtub, onesies, the list goes on. Then there’s all the stuff for when you need to leave the house – baby car seat, a large bag for nappies, wipes, barrier creams, bibs and maybe breast pumps or bottles, perhaps a portable change mat, a change of clothes and a toy, a pram or stroller, teething rusks or snacks. If you valued travelling light in the past whether it was to the local shops or on a holiday, forget about it, those days are over.
One of the things that we don’t consider is how once you’re a parent, you not only have a new relationship with a human being you’re completely responsible for and preoccupied with, you also have a relationship with all the stuff that that child comes with - material and otherwise. This stuff occupies your mind as an extension of your preoccupation with your child. You’re constantly considering: Have we bought the stuff we need? Is it the right stuff? Is it the best stuff? Is it environmentally friendly? Can we afford it? Is there other stuff I should be organising?
Navigating the world as a parent is layered with considerations about the wellbeing of your child, their stuff, and the planning that goes on around them. Now you’re getting about with a little human and a pram; you’re getting in and out of cars unloading the child into the pram from their car seat or you’re attempting to get on and off buses, trains or trams, getting upstairs into a café or on an escalator from the car park to the supermarket. You’re doing all this with a little person or people who need attention while also carrying all the stuff they might need.
We start with considerations around feeding, sleeping or toileting, the things we need to buy to facilitate these and the advice or specialist appointments that might help with that. We then move onto considerations like when did we last take them to the dentist? Do they need braces? Glasses? A higher fibre diet? In Australia we think about swimming lessons. In Norway, they think about skiing lessons. The list of things that can occupy your thoughts around growing children, their needs and their stuff seem endless.
We rarely reflect on our ongoing preoccupation with our children and all their stuff and why would we? We’re busy with the task of doing it - taking care of them, worrying about them, buying stuff for them, considering their needs both now and in the future. Once old enough to be at school we’re dropping them off and/or picking them up, we’re taking them to sports games or appointments, we’re figuring out their homework and signing permission slips and buying books and getting on with our lives. We’re organising friend get togethers while they’re younger or worrying about what they’re doing on their school holidays since we’re no longer involved in organising friend get togethers now that they’re teenagers. Many of us are chronically busy and preoccupied.
This blog post is about what happens when our children and all of the psychological and material stuff that surrounds them is momentarily absent. My son went away for a few days and I didn’t do the running around, washing, cooking and organising I normally do. Whilst he’s been on my mind, the amount of time spent worrying, thinking about and psychologically managing our relationship - that is the 'emotional labour' – was significantly reduced. With a few days apart I realised that the sheer amount of material, physical, emotional and mental real estate our mother/child relationship takes up is massive.
I’m so busy a lot of the time. Yes, I have an enjoyable life outside of my son: I work, I have a number of projects on the go, I’m interested in a million things, I have a partner and an introverted personality that craves alone time while loving my friendships. With all of that I also only have one child but that one relationship, so integral to who I am, not only contributes to filling me up, it takes so much energy, space and time.
Many mothers are chronically busy, again this is something well known. It took a few days in a child free home however for me to notice it on a personal level. And for a moment, it literally took my breath away. I stopped, frozen in place, taking in my quiet and tidy house, all appointments organised and nothing urgent I had to do. I realised not only how much I missed my son but also how little time I get to spend just reflecting on my own experience and our relationship, and I write blogs about and consider mothering experiences in my work every day! That little infant that we brought home, now much much larger, still occupies my thoughts and home in a way disproportionate to his actual size. Our relationship is threaded through my every moment whether we're together or apart.
The mother/child ‘us’ can be consuming. Of course, it’s not the only thing to occupy us, we have plenty of other things we're thinking about, but it can be incredibly encompassing and involving. The ‘us’ simmers away inside of me like an everlasting soup. It’s a good soup, it’s warming and hearty if sometimes hard to swallow, but it’s never not there.
Even when our children aren’t around, they’re on our mind whether we're conscious of it or not. Their presence bubbles away as an abiding concern when we’re getting the groceries, driving, exercising or working. It’s not a relationship that can be turned off though it can go through quieter moments like when you're focused on other tasks or relationships, or when the children are away.
I remember a friend saying to me years ago that once you’ve had a child you’ll worry for the rest of your life. It feels true. It might not always be worry but more of a preoccupation – our children and by extension the material and psychological stuff (like worry) and organisational requirements that go with them will, to varying intensities, often be on your mind. With this preoccupation we’re holding them just as we did when they were infants, it’s just an invisible holding.
This invisible holding keeps us so busy it’s easy to forget or appreciate that we’re doing it. This holding isn't ours alone, our children are with us in it. They feel our holding, they need it as we do and they give their own holding back if we take the time to notice. I think it might be of benefit to mother/child relationships and maternal wellbeing to remind ourselves that we are doing that invisible holding so much of the time and we’re doing it well.
While part of our experience of our children growing up is a loosening of the first holding we engaged in when they were infants, our holding does not disappear, it simply transforms. How we hold our children is always changing as our relationship stretches to accommodate our growing children and their own relationships with the world. We move from and between a tight protective holding, to a supportive holding to a looser psychological holding and throughout it all is our invisible holding.
I use art making to put a little distance between my busyness including my ongoing preoccupation with my son, our relationship and other parts of me so that I can reflect on them. Through drawing, I manufacture the space I’m currently getting while my son is on camp. I think giving yourself a way of making little pockets of time to sit down and notice the relationship, that constant simmering soup of 'us', is vital. It might be a soak in the bath, scrolling through photos on your phone. You might gather images from magazines or newspapers or the internet and make a collage or a collection, following your intuition instead of thought as you select images. You might pick up some of their playdough or Lego and make a mini sculpture. It’s not about contributing to the busyness of your experiencing, it’s about having an opportunity to reflect on that busyness, to notice what it's like and what it's made of. We don't need to fix it, just allow ourselves to become aware of how often we're holding our children, explicitly but also invisibly with our thoughts and concerns.
So many of us don’t have the time to consider 'this is what our mother/child relationship feels like right now and these are the many ways in which we hold it'. They may be obvious points but ones that I hadn't given myself permission to contemplate lately because I was too busy doing all the things I needed to do. I wonder if we might give ourselves a moment to notice all that invisible holding that goes on beneath the surface. Yes, that holding contributes to our busyness but it also contributes to our relationship. Some of it might not be necessary, there might be things we worry about and stuff we organise that we could choose to let go. But some of it is so important and worthy of recognition, even if only from ourselves.
This post is written by Dr Ariel Moy. She is passionate about developing mother/child relationships, she has a private practice as a creative arts therapist, is a Professional member of ANZACATA and is an academic teacher at The MIECAT Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
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