Seasons of Motherhood and the Power of Flexibility
Most modern parents desperately want to be good ones. Women, in particular, invest heavily in mental loads and emotional labor in general, not to mention the added burdens of weighing one parenting philosophy against another, meeting high standards for the home environment and nutritional and educational care of their children, and seeking to keep personal and often professional interests alive. Meanwhile, community practices and infrastructures that once supported parents are waning, making parenting dramatically harder than it might otherwise be. This is as true for full-time homemakers as it is for those who also work outside the home; the stress of “getting it right” reaches deep into modern motherhood, and vehement pronouncements about good mothering around the web and on social media do much to entrench this perfectionism.
These demanding and inflexible views of motherhood miss a central reality of family life: that children are always changing, and therefore, mothers should expect change in their own roles and practices over time as well. There is not one fixed and everlasting way for any mother to “get it right,” however much any particular influencer thinks she knows the magic formula. Instead, perhaps the radical rule of mothering ought to be this: mothers should expect our roles and practices to be in regular need of new discernment and to frequently—or at least occasionally—change.
Seasonality in Parenting
In a culture that is widely resistant to seasonality, it is unsurprising that we also resist the idea that mothering changes over time. Recent discourse on low birthrates and lack of grandchildren point to many people’s discomfort with moving from one life stage to another. Becoming a parent is something that adults increasingly delay while waiting for the perfect moment, which preferably comes only after they have enjoyed a long period of young adulthood that sometimes lasts into their forties. Others wish to marry and have children in their twenties or early thirties, which are peak times in terms of female fertility, but find that today’s dating culture prevents them from finding a like-minded partner. This means that many adults never make the transition into parenthood; they never move into the next generational season of life, thereby preventing their own parents from moving into grandparenthood, as well.
As significant subsections of generations become stuck in place through this resistance to seasonality, we must take seriously the idea that the role and experience of motherhood are not fixed, but are and ought to be changing as children grow. While children never need their mothers less, they often need them differently over time. Instead of binding women’s consciences to the idea of fixed practices of mothering, we should swim against the cultural current and more fully explain and explore the concept of parenting as defined by frequent reassessment and, often, change.
The Second Decade
What do I mean when speaking of seasons of motherhood? Generally speaking, the first years of mothering (when all the children are young, all the housework falls on the parents alone, and rational conversations are few) are of an entirely different nature than the second decade of motherhood (which differs just as much, or so I am told, from the third decade and beyond). As they approach the second decade of life, children become increasingly capable people and begin to need a different kind of maternal care than they did when they were younger. They still love their mothers and need them just as much as ever, but they crave independence. Fortunately, some of this independence can come as a real boon to parents (the kids can finally do their own chores!). If parents can embrace this new independence as children grow, instead of fearing it, they can develop a different balance within parenting in the second decade of family life.
And yet as the second season of motherhood dawns, adolescent children will also begin to test parental boundaries to see whether their mothers are still interested in their upbringing. This stage requires a mediation of extremes, as teenagers need mothers to be strict in one moment but lax in another. They need hugs when a mother least expects it, and mothers need to remain carefully attuned so that such moments do not pass without their notice. But much less than younger children, teens also frequently need to be left alone. Older children and teens are interacting with the world differently now. They need their mothers less as managers and more as guides; less as problem solvers, and more as sounding boards.
Thus, the strict schedules and the tried-and-true disciplinary techniques of the first decade may have to change if mother and child are to move successfully into the next season of family life. As the child changes, so must the mother, and not just in her role, but also in how she uses her time. There’s less time spent in rocking chairs, and more time spent in the chauffeur’s seat. There’s less time spent coaxing picky eaters and more time spent making meal-sized snacks for hordes of visiting teenagers. It becomes easier for parents to go out on dinner dates, but they also will find themselves waiting up late for their teens to return from their evening activities. There’s an old saying that parenting teenagers should be mostly done on your knees, and this rings true. Your hands are needed less, and your hands-off prayers are needed more.
Yet this change from a practical role to one of prayer, projects, and guidance can also feel quite uncomfortable.
Meeting Change with Imagination
How to accept these changes is a question whose answer will differ for each mother. But this transformation is as much a part of motherhood as wiping noses and teaching preschoolers their ABCs. Here the feminine genius can come into play in new ways in a new season: as a mother’s time opens up, as her role regarding her children changes, she can be receptive to her children’s emerging adulthood in newly supportive ways. Modeling thriving, healthy womanhood becomes even more important in this stage when children begin to become aware of their mothers as whole, differentiated persons.
Instead of lamenting in this season that a hearty burping is no longer enough to soothe a child’s distress, mothers can lean into these changes and embrace new paths in this time of life. Personally, I have been shocked by how much this second stage of motherhood has differed from the first eight or ten years of parenting in my own life. Embracing these changes has required from me an entirely new level of openness and imagination.
To elaborate briefly on my own experience, I first noticed a change around the time my eldest was approaching the age of ten. As she grew, I realized almost overnight that pouring myself unceasingly into keeping the little people around me busy and entertained was no longer serving our family the way it once did. The kids were beginning to need something different, and so, I found, did I. But what was it?
This is where flexibility and imagination came into play. In this second decade of parenting, I still need to support and nurture my children, of course, but they don’t need my micromanagement in the way they once did. So I cut back on our activities, tried to let some of my conformist anxieties go, and sought to turn away from overbearing parenting experts and check in anew with my own and my children’s intuitions. I decided, with some trepidation, to risk being open to new ways of being, and I surprised myself by restarting my career as a writer and historian.
But more than just taking this new professional path, I have found myself leaning into a different type of relationship with my older children. Gone are the days of standing—both literally and metaphorically—far above pre-rational little beings. Older children bring different conversational and intellectual needs to the table, and meeting these as a mother has been an unexpected pleasure.
There are countless other examples of mothers and families who have thrived when women have imaginatively embraced these changing seasons. A favorite flexible mother of mine is the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who earned her doctorate in history in middle age and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking history of early American midwifery and womanhood. Another example is the radio host, author, and comedian Jennifer Fulwiler, who found ways to ignite her “blue flame” during a demanding season of raising several young children. Fulwiler encourages her audience to look for something to engage their passions whatever their season of life, noting that practical circumstances often require creative thinking to bring this about.
As Fulwiler argues in her work, adapting our interests and projects to fit our particular season is not restricted to professional endeavors. Many women find that as their fertility slows and the seasons of motherhood change, they can invest more fully in service, volunteering, or hobbies that enrich their worlds than they might have in an earlier stage of parenting. In one example, a dear friend of mine, a mother of several, has invested increasingly in singing at our local church and at weddings and funerals since her eldest children grew old enough to hold the baby. This service has not only blessed her church community, but it has also led her daughters to discover a love of music. Now they are a family of several cantors, and none of them mind a toddler or preschooler tagging along in the choir loft.
As the years go by, our children will always continue to need our loving care, but the way that this presents itself may well change as we go.
Flexibility as a Tool
The possibility of change in the second decade of motherhood may feel surprising after so many years entrenched in parenting young children. But this is only because accepting such change requires a little more imagination than social media and other cultural pressures usually support among mothers. We know that when inflexible strictures are placed upon mothering, both mothers and children suffer. Burdens such as the conceit that mothers should not need help in caring for infants or the high-pressure sleep and feeding standards placed on mothers of infants teach women that they should not need to engage in seeking creative solutions, but should instead abandon their well-being to a fixed idea that motherhood is almost wholly sacrificial. This strict perfectionism in modern mothering begins even earlier than the newborn period, in fact, whenever a tremendously ill pregnant woman finds her suffering dismissed as simply one of the rightful maternal sacrifices of pregnancy (and is offered no more help than a cracker). Although such safetyist restrictions are usually well-meant, they are also often counterproductive. While it is important to pay attention to safety concerns, we should not allow the goods of flexibility and discernment to be lost along the way.
In other words, to live fully all the seasons of motherhood, we need to challenge this culture of stasis and become more open to seeing motherhood as characterized by change, ongoing discernment, and flexibility. We must help mothers both new and experienced by pushing back against messaging that insists on settled ideas and perfectionism in parenting. The best way for us to help both mothers and children may, in fact, be by remaining more deliberately open: open to difference, open to change, and open to the new gifts and challenges that inevitably lie ahead for every mother.
Image by MONIUK ANDRII and licensed via Adobe Stock.