Who Are You?

I wrote this draft post in March but forgot all about it until today, when I came across something on Twitter that got me thinking about roles and whether "Mother" is a defining one.

Basically someone was asking, in a way which clearly indicated where their own personal feelings lay on the matter, why some people feel the need to have "mama/wife/mum of two" etc on their Twitter bios.

In the interests of full disclosure, this is my Twitter bio:

So clearly I come down on the other side of the fence on this one.  Although, you may have also noticed my bio has an element of "tongue in cheek" about it so is perhaps not to be viewed as me making a statement, so much as me struggling to sum up 28.5 years of existence in a couple of lines.

Similarly, there's no way I could limit my opinion to 140 characters either (when can I ever?!) so I decided to dig out this old blog post and publish it, unaltered (aside from a couple of typos!) and here it is:

What Remains?

I think it's widely suggested, if not necessarily agreed upon, that parenthood has the ability to, at least temporarily, if not permanently alter, blur, or let's face it, completely obliterate one's identity.

For me, and I really can only speak for myself here, it started when I got pregnant. I'm sure, in fact I know, there are people out there who conceive babies and grow fat whilst still continuing with all their usual activities.  Ok, maybe they stop eating veiny cheese and switch to alcohol-free beer, but generally, whatever they were into before, be it hiking, socialising, live music, running, working themselves to the point of exhaustion in their jobs, rock-climbing, they carry on with it all once pregnant.  Ok, maybe not so much with the rock-climbing.  But you see where I'm going I think.

I was not one of those people.  For me, it wasn't that everything else ceased to exist, it existed, but it suddenly wasn't important (to me). All I could talk or think about was the fact that I was growing a human being  inside of me. I honestly could not quite believe it, and I suppose if we're delving into my fragile pysche here (hell, why not) there was probably some part of me that thought that if I did stop talking or thinking about it for a minute, then maybe it would cease to be.  A previous miscarriage can do that to a person.  But regardless of the why's or wherefores, that was me, for 38 whole weeks and 1 day.  I'm sure anyone who had to spend any iota of time with me during those 9 months will vouch for what a thrill it was.  A laugh a minute.

Ok, I'm exaggerating, but not by much.  I did watch films, and I did read books, although I really really struggled to finish any, for the first time in my entire life, my concentration was so bad, I'd read a paragraph and then have to go back and read it again.  And yes I did go to see Nine Inch Nails about half way through my pregnancy, and I did go on holiday just a few weeks before giving birth, although only to hole up in a quaint little cottage in Whitby where I slept late, ate fudge, drank tea, read Dracula (all the way through!) and walked on the beach.

I did see the world around me, I just felt slightly separate from it, seeing it differently now I was bringing a little person of my own DNA into it.

I also felt differently about myself.  I don't mean because I was incredibly rotund (and I really was)

I actually loved (most of) the changes in my body.  But I began to feel differently about me as a person, my personality, my traits, my choices, I started to wonder (some might say, a little late) if I was really someone who should be a parent, who could be a mother.  So I looked to society and the images I saw told me this-

Mothers are: married, financially stable although financially dependent on others (confusing much?) endlessly patient, selfless, and sensible.  They dress in a way that allows them to blend in, becoming almost invisible, their homes are clean, and tidy and beige, very very beige.

For my unmarried, financially messy, full time employed, impatient, selfish, silly self who dressed like an emo and could never be arsed with housework beyond the bare basics, and detested beige with as much passion as one can detest something so dull, it was bad news.  Really bad news.

So I did what anyone in my shoes might do.  I got a new pair. For the first time in our (at that point 5 year relationship) I freaked the fuck out about us not being married- although seemingly not enough to actually do anything about it ;) and we moved into a house where the rent cost about half as much to save money.  I cleaned and tidied in a way I never had before, finding myself heavily pregnant stood on a breakfast bar reaching up to dust a light fitting for example.  I also cut my (very long) hair (*sob*) and tried (in vain I might add) to dress in a way I thought that someone about to pop a baby out of their vagina might.  Because any smart girl knows that in order to play the part, you first have to look the part.

Then I actually did pop a baby out, and discovered that no amount of beige in the world was going to save me.  Faking it wasn't going to work, I was a mother and I'd have to figure out how to be one as I went along, and rely on this tiny little critter to help me work it out.

Thankfully, when he was tiny, who I was, or what I was about, didn't matter because all he required was sleep and milk and more milk and then some more milk, and we both spent a lot of time in the house, in our pyjamas, attached to one another, emotionally and physically.  It was really as he grew and as I stepped out more often into society as this new person, this new mother, that I began to question again: What was my role? Where was the person I'd been and who was I now? Especially when I went back to work, and people were acting like I was the exact same Rebecca I'd been when I walked off the unit 10 months before. Couldn't they see? I wondered, that I was a different person entirely?!  But was it that I was a different person? Or was I the same old me but improved and with accessories? Had I lost myself? Or found myself?

For the record, I still don't know, and even now as  mother of two small boys, I struggle to come up with the answers.

Being a mother is definitely a huge and defining part of my life, and when asked to describe myself and my life it's often one of the first words that pops out of my mouth.  Maybe people will say it shouldn't be so, and that in allowing it to be, I'm losing my own identity and what makes me me.  I'd have to disagree though.  We're all, to some extent, defined by the roles we play and our relationships to others.  I could tell you lots of stuff about myself, and what makes me tick, that doesn't involve my children, and if you're around me for any length of time I will, quite happily, but when it comes to summarising, I tend to list the roles I play in this funny show called life and often I'll start with "Mum" because that's a big fucking role, and I'll be damned if I aint getting some credit for it.

Children are people too

When strangers sigh, or roll their eyes because my child has dared to exist in the same universe as them. Or when my kid runs in front of someone or lets out a blood curdling shriek within their earshot and I get the look.  You know *the look*, I can't help but feel that I want to reach out to the stranger in question and caress their scowly self-important know-it-all, judgmental face with my fist. Repeatedly.

Some guy and his girlfriend were about to embark upon their grocery shopping at Tesco this afternoon when they were rudely and shockingly delayed by approximately five whole nanoseconds whilst Toby whooshed in front of the guy as he reached to take a basket.

The reason he was whooshing in such an uncontrolled teeny tiny hooligan way (under direct parental supervision) was because he had just remembered he'd left his new lego toy on the floor of the passport photo booth near the tills.

This guy gave Toby a look like he had just stomped on his puppy's face, and then me a look like my son had just stomped on his puppy's face, and then gave his girlfriend (who appeared unaffected by the whole incident) a look like "Can you believe these fuckers are allowed to share the same planet as us?!"

Right there and then I wanted to shoot laser beams out of my eyes and impregnate his girlfriend using the power of my fucking mind and then magically fast forward 2 or 3 years and say "Sorry, what was that look again? I didn't quite catch it"

Oh yeah, it's all so easy when you have all of the answers and none of the responsibilities.

Trouble is, it's not (wholly) this guys fault. We live in a society in which children are seen as a lifestyle choice. An inconvenience to everyone, something to be 'overcome' with discipline, baby sitters and school, from an early an age and with as long hours as possible.

They are the sole responsibility of their parents at all times, but on the flip side, if after devoting your body, life and soul to creating one of these little creatures you dare to be proud of your accomplishment then you're likely to get a faceful of scorn in return for boasting/"one-up-manship" or just generally, taking up people's valuable (adult) time talking about what is essentially your little selfish hobby. Not to mention clogging up your friends' timelines with photos of your adorable little rugrat.

Now I'm only going to say this once motherfuckers so listen hard and listen good. Children are not a hobby.

Cross-stitch is a hobby.

If you want to learn cross-stitch, good for you! If you're a close friend or family member I might be persuaded to be happy you've found something you're passionate about. But at the end of the day it's your thing, and it has no impact on me or the rest of the world, unless you become like a famous, world-reknowned cross-stitch-er and change people's minds and hearts with your cross-stitch talents.  In which case, wow.

It was indeed my choice to have children but that still doesn't make them my indulgent passtime a la cross-stitch.

Like or not, you too were all children once. And noisy, precocious, snot-fulled little fiends you probably were too. And look at you now, why you're positively human!* (*In most cases)

"What now?! Children are people too?!" I hear you exclaim, "well who'd have thought it?!"

Well, err...me, for one.  Raising two young boys is not my end-goal, I am raising two men.

The reason you should give a shit about children, even if you're not one and don't have any and never plan to, is because what impacts children and families impacts society as a whole, after all, children are the future.  No really, they are.

My little snoogly-boos* (*I have never actually called them that in their lives) that are pissing you off so royally by scamping around the supermarket yelling at the top of their lungs or spilling their juice all over themselves whilst you're trying to have a civilised business lunch at the next table, or whose adorable little chops are gracing your Facebook feed every other day, are in fact going to be the doctors, lawyers, teachers, politicians, scientists, bartenders, writers, actors, musicians, artists, mechanics, sportsman, plumbers, boyfriends, husbands, and potentially fathers of the future.

So you might just wish they'd be quiet, and get out of your way, or learn some table manners and you may think their existence has fuck all to do with you but if you give even one eighth of a shit about life, society or the planet on which we live, then actually, I'm sorry to say- it does.

How a society views and takes care of it's mothers, fathers, parents, families and children is important because they're necessary for that society to continue to exist. And more than that, more than existence, we know that so much of what we become as adults starts from childhood.  What we eat, what we think, how we relate to people, our health, our beliefs it all begins with family.  For better or worse.  What family looks and feels like is different for everyone, and unfortunately it isn't always pretty, but that's all the more reason to care.  The things that hurt children the things that hurt families, they hurt us all.  The things that support and nurture children, parents and families, benefit us all.

Now I'm not asking for royal treatment.  I don't need, nor wish for a red carpet rolling out every time I decide to grace the aisles of my local Tesco with the presence of myself and my kids.  I don't want my children bowed and pandered to.

I just want you to treat them like people.  Because they are.

Sometimes they're noisy, messy, tiring, unreasonable people.  But jeez, they have been on this earth for all of about five minutes.  Those of us who have been here a little longer than that, so understand concepts like the "rules of society", delayed gratification and "indoor voices", would perhaps do well to remember that we weren't always so together and we didn't always have such a firm grasp of what the fuck is going on in this crazy world (erm, still don't!) and as such maybe consider sometimes giving those smaller, and less worldly wise than us the benefit of the doubt and, while we're at it, laying off the judgmental looks too, because one day bitches, I'm going to get me some of those lasers, and then you'll be sorry. Mark my words.

Letting children make their own choices (or not)

Tonight I am pissed off about lots of things.  But for clarity's sake I've decided to focus my energies and attentions (for that read: violent rage) on one particular topic.  (You have been warned!)

Now I am the first, ok, usually second or third, to admit that I am slightly, a teensy tiny bit of a control freak.  This should not really come as a surprise to anyone, least of all myself.  I spent the first sixteen years of my life able to control precisely nothing, so these days I find it hard to pass the baton, to, well anyone.

However I was delighted this morning to discover that I am in fact a control freak lite, controlling what little I can, and worrying about what I can't, without actually stepping into the realms of Nazi-ism, unlike the woman being discussed in the article I read this morning.

The article is about whether or not Mums should be choosing their children's friends for them.  Yes, you heard me right.  Remember that old saying "You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family"? Well scrap that.  Apparently these days kids can't choose either.

I made the mistake of clicking through to the original article even after I saw it was in the Daily Fail.  So really, this seething rage I'm struggling to quell right now is entirely my own fault.

Look, straight up, I don't watch the fucking Apprentice so I don't know who Katie Hopkins is, although apparently she's the "star" of it, or some shit.  But regardless of her place in pop culture, she is a mother.  A mother who doesn't want her children mixing with, and I quote "friends that i deem beneath them".

She postulates that because "intelligence is catching" (this based on a recent study she heard about but doesn't cite) she only wants her children to mix with the clever and motivated kids at their (state) primary school.  This doesn't sit right with me, but if that was all she said, I doubt I'd have been so moved to write an entire blog post in reply.  However, the actual article begins with:

"Looking at the garish party invitation in my daughter's hand, my heart sank. The venue was bad enough: the dirty, sticky soft play area at our local leisure centre. But the name of the birthday girl told me all I needed to know.

With her pierced ears, passion for pink leggings and array of electronic play equipment, Charmaine is definitely not the sort of child I want my daughter associating with." *

Can anyone else pick out the part there that refers to the child's academic abilities and/or dedication to her school work.  Or did that just sound like she was describing your typical seven year old girl? Oh no, my bad, your typical working class seven year old girl?

Hands up, I don't personally agree with piercing children's ears but as of yet I haven't seen any evidence to suggest it actually impairs their ability to succeed at school.  I mean, she has a point with the passion for pink leggings, many a high school drop out has started that slippery slope to the Job Centre with a passion for motherfucking pink leggings.  I'm sorry for the swears.  It's just so GAH! Is this woman for real?!

What she wants to say, but seemingly doesn't dare to is that she doesn't want her semi-posh kids mixing with kids that come from families that don't have as much money and/or social esteem as hers. End Fucking Of.

It's amazing how far we've come as a society isn't it? Truly breathtaking.  We've come so far around it's like we're right back where we fucking started.

Ok, enough, I have to stop with the f-word or you'll all be thinking I'm exactly the kind of kid she is talking about.  Well I was. Working class, broken home, constantly changing schools, a whole manner of quote social issues unquote.  I was also incredibly bright and to my teacher's delight, eager to learn, I excelled academically, although Katie would apparently still have thought I was a failure because I was pretty much always late.  In primary school (all 5 of them) I was often late because my alcoholic father drank too much.  He couldn't organise himself or attend to his own commitments, i.e. me and my sister, never mind any extra-curricular shit like getting me to school on time.  Oh hang on, that would be just curricular then.  When my Mum dropped me off, I was on time, but I suffered panic attacks so then I'd run back out after her, thus the end result was very similar (late for registration and caused disruption to fellow classmates, sorry you guys!)

It would usually go something like: Mum dropped me off at school, I'd go in, take my coat off, and hang it on my little peg, which in at least one of the schools had a picture of an umbrella over it, then I'd make small talk with other 7 year old friends, sit down on then mat or carpet for register and zone out waiting for my name (always near the end)

At some point my brain would pipe up: "What if she leaves?..."

"Huh? Wtf you talking about?" (I didn't swear when I was 7, not even in my mind, I just added that in for affect, sorry)

"Well, what if today is the day she leaves your Dad?"

"She wouldn't do that, she wouldn't leave him, she wouldn't leave us"

"She might.  She might go today.  While you're at school. And you won't know, until you get home.  By then it will be too late..."

And so, tormented by the idea of being left with my loving but inept father and 2 year old sister I'd sprint out of the classroom, out of the school, out of the grounds and up the road after her.

In the article Katie says:

"If his parents can't be bothered to get him into class on time, they clearly don't care about the  education of their child - and, worse still, are hindering the learning of others. My girls are as frustrated with this continual tardiness as I am. Is it beyond the wit of a parent to get their child to school on time?"*


I'm not sure that the words "worse still" are really being used in the right context there, since I doubt many people would agree that not giving two shits about someone else's kids' education is worse than not caring about your own child's future, but I digress.

See what people like Katie might fail to realise is that for some children, school is a wonderful escape from their troubled home lives, and that was definitely the case for me. But for other children, and indeed other parents, school is just yet another load to add to their already over-burdened life.  They can't get their children to school on time because it's beyond their capabilities at that time.  Maybe they have substance abuse issues, maybe they have mental health problems, maybe they find it difficult to wake up in the mornings, maybe they are useless cretins and should never have had children, I I DON'T KNOW, but what i do know is this:  Children who come from less educated and and less priveleged backgrounds don't need judgement from those who do.  They don't need ostracising, they don't need their attempts at friendship rebuffed because their classmates parents' don't think they're "good enough" to socialise with their precious offspring.  They need nurturing and encouragement and inspiration and social inclusion.

Children don't look at other children and see earrings and pink leggings and electronic toys and sticky soft play parties and see someone of a different class, of a different culture, they see another human being.  Different perhaps, but of no more or less value than themselves.  We would do well to learn something from them.

It's a bloody good job my best friends parents didn't adopt a similar policy, I can tell you that much.  If they had I'd have been screwed! They are two wonderful, smart and kind people who I know without a shadow of a doubt want only the very best for their daughters, and yet they allowed their girls to make (and this is shocking) their own decisions about who to make friends with.  And I was one of them.  I don't know if Emma ever saw me any differently than anyone else she hung around with, because we were nine years old when we met.  I noticed her house was bigger than mine, and it was on the other side of the school, her parents didn't fight and when I went round to tea sometimes I got to eat stuff I'd never tried before.  Maybe when she came to mine she saw it was smaller and I do remember her once quizzing me on what I'd had for tea and being beyond confused when I tried to explain the concept of "savoury rice" to her.  That was the extent of it.  Because children don't think like adults.  Thank god.

I left home when I was 15 and I had nowhere to go but my friends parents took me in for a short time, and without that initial practical, and more long term emotional support I dread to think how that decision might have worked out for me.

Maybe that is exactly the kind of shit this woman is trying to avoid.  If she doesn't allow her children to mix with anyone from a lower socio-economic class then she's unlikely to have teenage girls taking up residence in her spare room for several weeks while their crazy relatives turn up causing trouble. (I'd like you all to note it was the crazy folk causing the trouble and not me)  Although she might be in for a shock, because haven't you head the latest? Turns out, children and adults from all walks of life can fuck up! I'm sure you'll all be amazed to learn that even intelligent, driven, wealthy people can fail epically! The super smart, punctual, ambitious children she's cherry picking to invite to her children's birthday parties in primary school might wake up one day in high school, decide the parental pressure is too much and start snorting coke.  But by then they'll be bosom buddies with her little ones, so I hope she has a plan B.  Might I suggest, just going out on a limb here, that she try actually letting her children decide for themselves who they want to spend time with?!

I want the best for my children.  Almost everyone who has children wants the very best for them.  The phrase "in with the wrong crowd" doesn't come from nowhere.  Sometimes kids make poor choices about what to devote their energies to, who to spend time with, and I can imagine how heartbreaking it must be as a parent to feel that your child may not reach their full potential because they weren't being inspired, and encouraged by their peer group, or at least not inspired and encouraged in a healthy direction.  I just think that our job as parents is to equip our children with the skills to make decisions for themselves, to allow them to make their own judgements about a playmates character, and to be there for them if later down the line it turns out they made bad decisions, or poor judgements.

In the meantime, I'm just grateful that, for all it's pitfalls, my childhood allowed me to socialise with whoever I chose. So that I could inspire and be inspired by other children from all walks of life, so that as an adult going out into the real world I was able to interact with people from all sectors of society, and treat each and every one as a living, breathing, worthwhile human being.




*Excerpts from Daily Mail Online published Feb 2013