Dirty Little Secrets
This one’s for the moms.
Just caught Oprah’s segment on the dirty little secrets of motherhood – what nobody tells you, what moms don’t like about parenting, and what they do to cope. Moms talked about everything from barely getting a chance to shower to making full meals for their kids from snacks found in the car, to experiencing the trauma of buying their first minivan. One of the speakers likened motherhood to a secret society whose details no one tells you because otherwise you wouldn’t join. Motherhood, they agreed, is overwhelming and 24/7 – no rest here for the weary.
Mothers admitted that they are hard on themselves, often because they are insecure about the choices they make. Despite the tremendous amount of advice on parenting offered by magazines and on the Internet, moms often feel totally on their own.
Said one, “I completely believed that I was the only woman in the history of time who did not have the maternal gene, and I thought I was completely alone.”
Said another, “I didn’t feel I had permission to talk about how hard motherhood really was.”
The conclusion of the show: Moms need to be honest and support each other.
Moms, agree/disagree? What has been your own experience? What did you not know? What would you tell other moms-to-be?
This entry was posted on April 6, 2009 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Social Trends. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Mom Trends, Moms, Oprah, Social Trends
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April 6, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I agree completely. I’ve always been up front about how much being a parent to preschoolers absolutely blows, but always get responses like, “Don’t wish it away…”
Please. If I could go back to before I had kids there are so many things I’d want to do when I was young and still looked passable in a bathing suit I may have never HAD kids.
I like my kids, don’t get me wrong, but I find the more they act like humans and the less they act like little raving lunatics it’s easier to like them. Love? Well, they have these cute little smiles…(even if they are sometimes evil smiles…)
April 7, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Thanks, Jenny, for the honest observation — much in the same spirit as the show.