Bathroom-Stall Lullabies
⚙️ SYNTAX ~ How Postpartum Reality Turns Moms Into Quiet Monsters
“I can’t believe you decided our schedule for us.”
Those were the first words out of my boss’s mouth when he called me into his office. I had recently returned from maternity leave, which saw me very sick with pre-eclampsia. Vaccines had just started to roll out for COVID, and my job held a mandatory in-office work day. I had difficulty finding childcare for the day and had to ask my husband to take the day off work so I could go in.
Now that an effective COVID vaccine had become available, my company decided to bring everyone back to the office two days a week. They let each department decide which two days would work best for them. The mandatory in-office work day was to hopefully springboard excitement about being together again and help teams solidify their two days.
I ran into multiple issues in finding affordable childcare. I hoped to get someone to watch my daughter for the two days I had to be at the office, and watch her myself while working from home for the other three.
The cheapest (and only) option I had was a daycare that offered an affordable choice for parents. In exchange, it had to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I would still lose a little bit of money each month until my daughter became older and needed less individualized care, but it was the best option I could find. I quickly secured a fast-filling spot and informed my boss so he could talk to other members of my team to see what days worked best for them, hoping to collaborate. I was the only one on our six-person team who had a child needing care.
However, upon arriving at the office, my boss wasted no time pulling me aside to inform me of his disappointment in my childcare arrangements. Instead of a collaboration, I received a scolding and a half-hearted attempt at an area to pump; a cold, all-window, and constantly used meeting room with see-through blinds.
After this unpleasant meeting with my boss, I grabbed my pumping gear and went to the communal bathroom outside of my office instead. The stalls provided more privacy for a new mom figuring out a pumping routine. Tired, beaten down, and still recovering from childbirth, I cried in that stall.
This was one of the many unpleasant introductions to motherhood I experienced. Throughout the last four years of motherhood, I’ve learned that maternal instinct is a myth, Darwin contributed to very sexist ideas about women, and mom rage is very very real.
Being a mom in America today makes me somewhat (key word: somewhat) sympathetic towards Pamela Voorhees. The mother of Jason from the Friday the 13th series.
I want to reassure everyone that I will NOT be going on a killing spree to avenge my dead son. However, the anguish and rage she must have felt when irresponsible camp counselors let her son drown almost makes for an understandable case of murderous lunacy. Hear me out.
Imagine being a fifteen-year-old in love and slightly naive when you become pregnant. You have no option but to have the baby. The people who shake their finger and gossip about you in town, saying you got yourself into this mess, are also the same people who say that your equally young boyfriend couldn’t possibly handle the duties of being a father at fifteen. But apparently, you can.
The father eventually bounces, leaving you with everything. You are sleep deprived, experiencing a range of emotions, and you’ve lost any sort of support from your family and friends because you can no longer attend school or relate to those in your class who don’t have kids. On top of that, your baby has a medical condition, which must make your medical bills sky high.
I’ve filled in a lot of the gaps in Pamela’s story. Since it appears that the father wasn’t in the picture, she had a child with hydrocephalus, and no obvious signs of a support system in her life, I can only imagine this is how her motherhood experience played out.
Eventually, Pamela finds a job at a camp as a cook. She gets to bring her kid, who is eleven at this point, and have him play while she earns as much money as she can. Hoping her little family can have a future, or at least pay down some of the exuberant amount of medical bills we get here in America.
Seeing how she appeared to be the only one who cared for Jason, she must’ve felt an intense love and protectiveness towards her son, who possibly struggled in the world with his medical issues. She must have been drained, depleted, and possibly optimistic that things would work out for them in the end.
Until one day, some hedonistic and lazy camp counselors aren’t paying attention, and Jason drowns in the lake. All the work she has put in for her family, all the uphill battles she has faced, and all the love she has for her son have been cut off (horror pun intended).
It’s possible that the teenage counselors were relatives of the same people who wagged their fingers at Pamela when she was younger for getting pregnant. Now they are making a case that the teenagers were just being teenagers, no need to punish them, it was Pamela’s fault for not watching her son anyway.
If you have seen the movie, then you know Pamela enacts her revenge after hearing Jason’s voice telling her she needs to avenge him. Then, she does the same thing again over twenty years later when they attempt to reopen the camp. So toss in a strong case for mental illness in there and voila! You have your mommy monster.
While I am being dramatic and (hopefully) slightly funny to illustrate a point, I do see how the little lies we have in society about motherhood can paint us out to be failures and even monsters. If there is something messed up in your life, you have probably traced it back to your parents, with your mom being the front-runner.
Just this past Mother's Day, I sat with someone who told my daughter that daddies are for playing and mommies are there for comfort and care when you scrape your knees. We love to force the idea that mothers have to be nurturing and gentle creatures, or that we have a very specific role to fill.
It seems innocent enough, except one of my husband’s hobbies involves learning about self-defense and medical aid techniques. He gets a kick out of finding the coolest and most efficient band-aids for cuts and other boo-boos. So when my daughter internalized this, it was me she ran to when she cut her hand after falling. She reiterated what the person told her, that I was there to fix her boo-boos.
Now I love it that my daughter feels safe enough with me to run to me when she is hurt. However, my husband also used this chance to shine and get out the many tools and first aid kits he stores to properly apply a special bandage to my daughter’s hand. I tried to step in and bring her comfort, but was unintentionally pushed aside by him because he has spent years learning about this stuff.
All I can think about is, I wonder what her memory will be of me. Will she feel let down since I didn’t properly care for her boo-boos? That I wasn’t as nurturing as I should have been? That I am a terrible mother for not fulfilling a role that has been categorically defined by men who didn’t want to lift more than a finger when it came to child-rearing? (Thanks, Darwin…)
We demand so much of mothers and how they should be. It can feel like remorse and failure when we don’t live up to those unrealistic expectations or are not given the space to find out how to parent in our own way. I even wonder if it can add to our therapy bills down the road, if the picture of motherhood we had been sold as kids doesn’t match up to the human being who was our mom and tried to do the best she could with the little she had.
The picture of motherhood we have been sold is total crap, and our kids need us to adjust our expectations of parenting. So future and current parents receive affordable childcare, maternity/paternity leave, and more understanding bosses. So we can eliminate baseless reasons for how a family should look, and Mom can choose to go back to the workforce (or not, because raising kids IS a full-time job).
Moms need to be removed from the monster category for simply showing up as human. Until this happens, mommy monsters like Pamela Voorhees will almost (key word: almost) win my sympathies.