Millennium Mother

I had an early morning doctor’s appointment this week and so I shared my walk along the pavement with the pre-school traffic. Not the type in cars but those walking or shuffling along, mostly it seemed to be mother and child partnerships making their respective journeys. I’m guessing to school and on to their jobs or various ‘Mum’ duties of the day ahead.

Just as I was thinking back to my own walks to school many years ago, a vision of Millennium Motherhood sped past me. A sleek, silver scooter with the child stood on it grasping tight to the handle bars and - I presume - the mother behind, one foot balanced upon the scooter as the other pedalled gracefully along. The mother wore a rucksack on her back with a water bottle in the pocket, the sort of bottle with a central space for a piece of fruit or cucumber to sit dispersing its flavour throughout the working day. She was also carrying the daughter’s school bag, nonchalantly slung over her shoulder. 

So it was that this pairing wove between the walking school traffic, zipped across the road and deftly bounced up the kerb and on their way. I don’t know if this was their everyday mode of transport for the school run, I don’t know anything about them but this snapshot kick started my writing engine - an inner monologue scattering sentences and questions around my head. I thought about how passive the child was in all of this - a passenger perched on the scooter, facing away from the parent, no dialogue between them, no exchange of observations about the world around them as they travelled, no exertion on the child’s part. Then I thought how it was maybe a positive experience, this way to travel to school - both in close proximity, zipping around obstacles, sharing the fun of the ride without using up petrol. All that is indicative of current times: fast, green, a child balanced precariously but protected by the arms of her mother - a working mother looking sleek and well-presented, what we have termed as a ‘yummy mummy.’

The whole image screamed ‘sign of the times’ to me and made me think of my own times. That made me sad. Many times I missed out on sharing that walk to primary school with my own children. Often they would walk with my parents or the childminder as I had dropped them off as I rushed into work. Ironically getting to the classroom to be there for other people’s children, I wasn’t around for my own.

We often feel guilty as a parent. We lay blame upon our own shoulders for steps we didn’t take and for ones we did that we wish we hadn’t. We can’t remove the imprints left behind by those footsteps but we hope we learn to tread a little more carefully the next time round. I’ve had times that I have been brought back to a decision made long ago and re-evaluated it. Hindsight brings us a wisdom with which to judge directions taken but its experience can cause us to overthink the past, knock our confidence and cloud our judgement moving forward. Add the effects of the menopause into the mix and a spiral of overthinking, self-doubting thoughts can take hold which will only lead to a distorted picture of your past decisions.

We have always made a conscious effort to treat both of our children the same. If one was given a treat for a certain event or achievement, then so would the other when their time came around. Yet there is always that nagging feeling that you did some things for your firstborn that you were unable to replicate the second time around, merely due to the fact that this time you had two children demanding your care and attention. I suppose you could argue that you perhaps had the time and space to mess things up with the first and so get it right more quickly with second or subsequent children. What I do know though, is that none of it was by design.

I am sure that if I was parenting a baby or toddler now, it might have many aspects that look quite different to when I was doing it with births in 1997 and 2001. Straddling the dawn of this new millennium as a novice parent, I set out to do the best that I could. Much has advanced at a rapid pace since then and the world currently feels like an uncertain and often hostile place. I cannot imagine being a new parent now and I struggle still to be a good parent, to take those positive steps, to be supportive to my children now. The parent-child dynamic certainly changes over the years but I still remain the Mum. Often now, they tell me how to do things but they still seek advice, confirmation, someone to listen, to praise and support them. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself if they’re still turning to me for those things. I currently feel far removed from that yummy mummy image, that sleek scootering career mother, but perhaps I did get something right in this business of being a Mum.