You’re not failing.
You’re not failing. You’re just trying to be successful meeting an impossible goal.
In the lives of most of my friends and acquaintances, modern parenting includes two married adults, each with a career-track full-time job of their own, 1 to 3 kids, and a house. Each of these things on their own requires a lot of care and attention, and the adults are struggling to give it all to everyone, usually at the expense of their own needs being met.
With so many demands on our time and mental bandwidth, people in this phase of life are stretched beyond our natural limits. And there isn’t any break or any relief.
Yesterday, I was lucky enough to have two really great conversations with two brilliant people. One of those people, who fits the description above, lamented about the strain of parenting and working. She’s one of the most dynamic, put-together people I know and has YEARS of professional experience working with young children. If she’s having a hard time, y’all, then we’re all in trouble. I felt the pain of her struggle as she described it to me. I have been her; attempting to maintain stability in my career while adjusting to bringing a new baby into the family.
Then later, I talked to an old friend who is equally brilliant and dynamic and does not have children. As we chatted on Zoom, they apologized for moving around the kitchen to prepare themself lunch. I had had a similar inclination to prepare myself lunch before our noon call, but instead I boiled a mug of hot water and ate that for lunch, because I only had the mental bandwidth to meet one of my needs and dehydration was speaking to me more loudly than hunger. It’s absurd, but that’s how I felt. At the end of the call, which was heartwarming and intellectually stimulating, I asked what they had eaten, for inspiration. And they described a meal that had multiple food groups, including TWO plants. I jokingly said, “Oh! I’m so inspired! But I’m probably going to go eat a bowl of cereal.” They laughed and said, “Tell me that you’re a mom without TELLING me that you’re a mom.” So.True.
And I’m not comparing these two people or their situations here in the spirit of judgment. To the contrary. I’m glad that my old friend is feeding themself well. I WANT that for them because I love them. And I want that for everyone. Feeding yourself well is a basic right. And when we are denying ourselves good food because we’re too busy or too overwhelmed to think about it, then we’re highlighting the level of self-denial that makes clear that there are too many other things/people/tasks demanding our care and attention.
The solution, of course, that society puts forth, is to buy things to make your life easier, more convenient, more beautiful, and to make you feel more successful. A bigger house, a new washing machine, a day at the spa, a lunch box that will make you WANT to feed yourself well, a new beauty product that will hide the bags under your eyes/wrinkles/graying hair, a $7 coffee to treat yo’self to the much needed pick-me-up. Corporations are making BANK on our stress and overwhelm, and we don’t see much solution other than to buy into it. We’re gasping for survival, after all, not thriving, and anything that might make that feel slightly more manageable becomes a viable option.
Of course, the more money we spend, the more we think we need to earn, so we stay tethered to advancing our careers, so that we can make enough money to sustain the lifestyle that we’ve achieved (which was FAR easier to achieve before children). We’re still acting out the myth of “having it all,” even if we don’t believe it anymore.
The myth was never a reality, but is based on an amalgam of “ideals” set forth by previous generations. Yet, we’re in a fully unprecedented situation, and carrying the past along with us is just too heavy! Many of us need two incomes, but our career doesn’t have to be our identity, which was glamorized in past decades. We can chill about the type of work we do or how we show up as our best selves at work. Second-wave white feminism invites us to juggle parenthood and career at the same time! Instead, we can take turns with what we prioritize. This phase of life is for career. The next phase of life is for family. And then back again. Family-focused ideals of the ‘50s and ‘60s encourage us to put a hot meal on the table every evening. Recent decades have told us that screen time will poison our children, but is it really that bad? We’re also panicking about our children’s long-term success, often at the expense of their current well-being. I feel like the ‘90s left us with the expectation that children need to be excellent students and have a wide range of interests and extracurriculars to get into the best colleges and be financially successful. But what if we moved the mark on what a successful adulthood looked like, and we relaxed our image of a good childhood. Would that make things a little less stressful for us? And where is this village that we were told was necessary to raise a child???
We’ve got so much baggage! And inflation has made just existing more expensive than ever, we’re dealing with the uncertainty and fear of a a global pandemic, we’re socially isolated and turning to our phones for our connection with others (which can be great, but also can be a huge energy suck), we’re unpacking the traumas of our past and trying to make sure that our children turn out minimally emotionally damaged. It’s not hard to see why we feel like we’re failing.
So what’s the real solution?
I don’t know.
Personally, I’ve found some peace and balance in completely abandoning certain areas of my life and starting over. That’s not feasible for everyone.
But here’s where I believe we can make progress. We have the power to change how we FEEL about where we are. You are not a failure. You are doing the absolute best you can do. It doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough. It means that you’re in an impossible situation. You don’t need to feel guilty about that. You don’t need to try harder.
Here are a few tips to encourage this type of thinking:
Be kind to yourself. Start noticing when your self-talk is not kind. And then say, “Hey. Be nice to my friend.” (Sonya Renee Taylor’s work can help with this! Dr. Becky Kennedy’s too!)
Rest! Normalize taking breaks. (Tricia Hersey’s work can help with this!)
Reframe your challenges. This isn’t a “you” problem; this is a societal problem.
Look at areas where you can slow down or make things easier. Can you give up making dinner and serve healthy snacks at dinner time for a few weeks? Can you cancel an extracurricular for the next few months? (Just because your kid loves it doesn’t have to be reason enough to allow it to cause stress to the whole family unit…)
Work on your boundaries. Practice taking a beat to reflect on how you feel about a request before you react or respond to it. Developing better boundaries will help you get to know yourself better. (Nedra Tawwab’s and Prentis Hemphill’s work can help you with this!)
Make yourself a nice lunch. You deserve it.
