Just Say No to the Myth of the Ideal Mother and Good Christian Woman
Who does it truly serve to buy into something I could never live up to?
Welcome to the Trauma-Informed Take, where we discuss mental health, religion and religious trauma, patriarchy, and parenting! Today we’re going to take a dive into what is behind the stereotypes of both the Ideal Mother (secular version) and the Good Christian Mother. Can’t wait to hear from you in the comments!
What is an Ideal Mother? What image comes to mind when you read that? Is it different than the Good Christian Mother? Does the image vary based on what generation you come from, or whether you have been a mother yourself?
These are questions we’ll explore today, but I’m also here to explore why I want to push back against the image of the ideal mother. My “fruit salad” of topics in this newsletter, as I referred to the topics last week, are not so disparate at all: the way we talk about parenting and motherhood is intricately connected with patriarchal and religious influences.
My social location is as a white, middle-class, well-educated, raised Christian, woman in a heterosexual, stable marriage. My perspective, therefore, is limited. I’m also a Millennial, and I’m super curious to hear what my Boomer and Gen X readers have to share about their perspectives on these questions!
The Ideal Mother
It’s difficult as a 30-something nowadays to escape the notions of ideal motherhood that blast us in the face on social media. I read a couple of Substack blogs that focus on motherhood, one that focuses on “Momfluencer” social media culture in particular: it’s a whole thing. So, my social media influenced imagery of the Ideal Mother looks something like this:
A thin, white woman with blonde, beach-breezy hair [apparently her baby does not yank her golden locks] wears fashionable flowy clothes and maybe a wide-brimmed hat that accentuates her tan and high cheekbones. She lives in an open-model home with open-model kitchen shelves (because who needs functional cabinets anyway when you can show off your coffee mug collection on open shelves?). The home has clean lines and sleek spaces. The children’s toys are organized and generally out of sight. She perches on her hard but attractive dining chair with her hot coffee while the children entertain themselves nearby, but she also actively plays with her children because she is a Good Mother.
She uses gentle parenting techniques [I will have a post on this in the future!] and has endless amounts of patience with her children. She always has the right thing to say and is constantly able to validate their emotions without losing her own shit. She cosleeps and babywears to maximize her children’s bonding to her, yet she never feels overtouched and overstimulated, because being in extremely close contact with her children is an unending source of joy.
Oh God I feel exhausted just writing that! Excuse me while I shake off that big unattainable ideal energy.
*Returns*
Okay seriously, do you know anyone in real life like that? I know people who can give off that vibe and post the beautiful pictures on Instagram... but I also know them well enough to see that is not the full story. In real life, they struggle with postpartum depression. They struggle with unruly children. They struggle with health issues. They struggle to keep their head afloat above water when all of life threatens to pull them under.
Who does it benefit to strive after this illusive image of the “ideal mother,” defined as you may? Does she exist? Why should she exist? Who does it harm to hold out this standard of a woman with perpetual energy, patience, cleaning and organizing abilities, and an energy cup that never runs dry but constantly pours over with love and affection for the sweet attractive munchkins she brought earthside?
The Good Christian Mother
For my idea of this image, I’m going to take a stroll down memory lane, when I was a child being shaped by Christianity and raised by mothers (biological and step). And as a young adult, before I had children, watching Christian mothers parent their children and wondering what it meant to be a Good Christian Mother and do this whole thing in a godly way… wondering if that would ever be the path for me.
[religious trauma trigger warning – also, this is not the way I talk, but how the Ideal Christian Mother would!]
The ideal good Christian mother has multiple children, and they always show up to church on Sunday morning. Her husband might be the pastor, or an elder, or perhaps they’re regular volunteers in church. She is committed to serving the Lord and raising children who will follow in the faith when they get older. She somehow manages to make naptimes work around church schedules, she is calm, collected, and attentive in the church service, and her children politely sit on the pews and color quietly or listen during the sermon. When they drive home from church, they discuss the message. At lunch, they pray before their meal.
The Good Christian Mother’s life is shaped by her relationship with Jesus, who is the first love in her life, followed by her husband and then by her children. She is kind and patient with her children, but not afraid to give a swat or a spank as needed to “teach obedience.” She is sexually available to her husband, who is never not attracted to her, and she is delighted every time she is pregnant because she is bearing an image of God. The highest calling she has is raising children who love God, and she prays for them every single day.
Sigh. After writing that, I feel tired but also... vaguely depressed, I guess. In the above description, there is zero exaggeration of what I was taught it meant to be a Christian woman and a mother. For many women, this seems to work for them. But to me, it always felt so small. So little of me, and so much of not-me. And instead, of everyone else. Of not having an identity of my own but finding myself in the existence and service of others.
And for Christians, honestly, that’s kind of the point. So it’s depressing to me for two reasons: it is sad to me, the smallness of self we were supposed to have as girls and women (one could argue people in general, but that’s a little disingenuous – in my kind of Christianity growing up, males could do exciting, leadership-y things, and females could not). But also, even today, it’s ingrained in me that the Best Way to Human is to lose your sense of self and serve a higher good. And this is a notion I still wrestle with. Is it the Best Way? Is it not? What does it mean to nurture your sense of self, and can you be a Good Person if you prioritize yourself???
Exploding the Myths That Don’t Serve Us
Today's newsletter is like a prologue to other posts I will make in which I attempt more radical honesty in my experiences as a mother and as a human in a female body in today’s United States. I want to help explode the myths that serve to make women think they’re not measuring up to some perceived ideal of How Things Should Be.
Because who does it serve to stay silent? Who does it truly serve to post the Instagram-worthy pictures showing off a beautiful home and sweet children (if I were even capable of that...I’m not, lololol)? Who does it serve to pretend to have it all together? Who does it serve to act as though I have endless patience and all the correct parenting advice and that I love Every Effing Minute of Motherhood?
Nobody.
But it does serve something. It serves the system of patriarchy, and it serves the people who want to uphold patriarchy – and religious patriarchy – because it is benefiting them. When women play the role they are expected to play – when they stay silent, when they don’t complain, when they paste on a smile and do all the homemaking and raise the children and never expect anything more – it lets the patriarchy perpetuate.
The patriarchy runs on uncompensated, unappreciated care labor of women. It thrives off the notion that what, in actuality, is a whole lot of hard work is instead effortless and joyful for women. Because if it’s effortless and joyful, then there’s no need to change systems, because it’s assumed everything is working fine and dandy as is. Even when it’s not.
So let’s make the invisible visible. Let’s stop pretending to be okay when we’re not okay. And let’s also shout our joy when we are okay! We don’t have to swing wide open the doors of radical honesty, but maybe we could nudge it open at least a couple inches, right?
What does your image of the Ideal Mother or Good Christian Woman look like? Do you have another “idealized” version of who you are “supposed” to be - or if you are a man, what your role is supposed to be? Does your generation inform your thinking on this? (Like I said, I’d love to hear from my Boomer and Gen X friends on this!) How do you notice yourself pushing back against these ideas? See you in the comments!
I am also a milennial (albeit barely), and thankfully my baby and toddler parenting years were before Instagram was a thing. I suppose I always cared more about parenting than mothering, if that makes sense. I like the way I raised my child, much as I like the way I was raised, though both cases would definitely be improved if my mother and I as a parent had figured out our respective traumas earlier.
I was raised Christian, but a different enough form of Christianity that I don't think it's comparable to the Christian motherhood ideals you talk about. I was no longer Christian by the time I had my child. I liked my mother's take on the god stories, though: god-father and god-mother is the parent of everyone.
I find that most motherhood talk doesn't really talk much about the hardest part of mothering: how do you know when to pull back and when not to. This looks like something most mothers struggle with, but it's not a big conversation, as far as I have noticed. I tried to raise an independent kid, and I worry that while the attitude is there, the skill set is not. I suspect this is really common, but I don't know for sure.
Pam here, not Don.
I often tell the story of how Jesus tried to ruin our marriage. It was 1973 and Don and I had been married six years with three children under five. I was 31 and Don was 33. We had only recently come to believe in Jesus and were enthusiastically trying to do everything right. Up until then we had had an egalitarian marriage with decisions hammered out between us. The system was working well. Then came The Church.
We were encouraged to attend a five week seminar with a preacher called Ken Poure. He told us that in a Christian household the father was the Head, the mother was the Helper and the children had better behave. Mostly what I remember is his illustration of how that worked in real life. When it was time for decision making, each of the children got one vote, the Helper (Mother) got that number plus one and the Head got all those numbers - plus one. Talk about Catch 22! The Head always come out on top.
Don loved this arrangement. (Who wouldn't?) For the next two years, we tried living by Poure's teaching. It was a disaster! At last, fed up, I threatened divorce. The year was now 1975 and Women's Lib was making itself known. The final straw came one day when I was at home, after having cleaned, cooked, and picked up the children, having a glass of wine and a 'consciousness-raising session" with a fellow mother who had brought over her children for a play date, when Don came home from work. He was leaving on a business trip the next day. He went into the bedroom and come out again, furious. He yelled, "You haven't packed my suitcase!" I yelled back, "Pack it yourself!"
Things went downhill from there, with sessions at a Marriage and Family therapist taking the place of divorce filing. Eventually we emerged again into the light of day, with our new plans for an egalitarian marriage in place. No thanks to Jesus. ;)