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Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

Childbirth is a necessary issue in women's lives. Whether it is a biological function or a social role given by society, fertility is always tied to women.

In the Spring Festival that has just passed, many women must receive attention from their elders, represented by marriage urging and childbirth.

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

In the eyes of most people in society, getting married, pregnant, having one or more children, is something a woman should do, a mission they cannot get rid of.

It is often heard in society: "A woman without children is incomplete", "You will know when you give birth", "After marriage, you must hurry to have children, women should seize the best period of childbirth"...

There are many voices telling women that this is your natural mission, your moral obligation, and even the more traditional view that being a mother is the ultimate destination for a woman.

However, becoming a mom is never easy. The process of women becoming mothers, whether it is physical and mental, or the external environment of life, will actually bring about various changes.

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

Mothers are not actually limited to the traditional single narrative of "great maternal love", there is a more complex side behind this identity, which contains more diverse meanings.

"Be a mom or be yourself, these are two paths that are difficult to intersect."

When a woman becomes a mother, our impression of her is more about being a mother. When we think of her, there is only her part as a mother, as if there is no other side of her.

Mothers are always busy, working for tomorrow's breakfast, for what interest classes their children will sign up for, for the big and small things in the family, and they are making calculations.

Parenting is always their priority in life, and how much personal needs are given up behind the status of mother is rarely seen.

Ms. L:

Before I had children, I thought I was ready to be a mother, but it wasn't until the baby was about to be born that I realized that I was thinking too simply.

From the birth of the child, it is the beginning of the end of my complete sleep time, to feed the night milk, the child wakes up 4 or 5 times at night is normal, my husband is sleeping next to him, I dare not call him up, because he has to get up early in the morning to work, so I have to deal with it silently.

As long as I am at home, except for eating, bathing, and going to the toilet, I have been watching the children all the time. Later, my mother-in-law also came to help bring it, and I returned to work.

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

However, the identity of a mother seems to occupy most of my energy, because the company is close to the house where I live, and I insist on coming back every day at noon to breastfeed my children, and I have to rush home after work at noon to watch the children feed, wait for my mother-in-law to cook to change me, and then take a lunch break to go to work at half past one.

Whether I go to or from work, I feel that my life is in a state of chaos and overload. My husband also brings it with him on his days off, but maybe he usually brings less, and the child is not very willing to follow him, so the main thing is that I come.

This is still when the child is in good health and there is nothing wrong with it. Once the child is unwell, I always have to take leave, not that my husband can't take leave, but if I don't take care of him, I myself will feel very guilty, as if I am not a good mother, and I am still in the mood to go to work when the child is sick.

Before the birth of my child and after the birth of my child, my life is completely different. The birth of the child made me have to live according to the baby's routine, feeding, changing diapers, playing with him, from day to night, time is divided very finely, always in a hurry; But at the end of the day, I don't know what I'm busy with, and five minutes of wanting to have my own becomes a very luxurious thing.

But obviously my husband seems to be unaffected, there is a lot of resentment in his heart, but he feels that he shouldn't have, and at the same time he feels that he is constantly overdrawing himself, and I gradually lose interest and energy in life other than my children, and some of me slowly become dull.

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

When a woman gives birth, can she return to her pre-childbearing self? In reality, it is almost impossible.

I have to admit that the impact of childbirth on women is far more than the impact on men, whether she chooses to continue to work or not, her life and life must be cut out for children and families.

First of all, she will find that she can only have fragmented sleep most of the time, and secondly, the end of personal freedom, dare not leave home for too long and too far, and the scope of geographical and psychological activities is reduced.

As the writer Rachel Casque wrote in her book "Becoming a Mother: Confessions of an Intellectual Woman" in her book about becoming a mother: "You can't be yourself when your child is around, and you can't be yourself when your child is away." Whether the child is around or not, it is difficult. Be a mom or be yourself, these are two paths that are difficult to intersect. ”

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

Winnicott argues that a competent "mother" is actually more "secondary," and that all mothers hate their babies from the start, and that to be a "competent" mother, her true self needs to "eliminate her ambivalence and violent and awkward emotions by sterilizing, and keep her impulses to give up in a vacuum-sealed small jar."

And in the deliberately beautified image, maternal love is selfless love, people naturally become the mother's woman's personal needs to ignore and castrate, no matter what voice she makes, a sentence "children are the most important", "motherhood is not like this", "motherhood is like this" is enough to cover their mouths.

But in reality, mothers cannot be like mothers in deification, and their love for their children is a contradictory love.

On the one hand, in the process of being a mother, she is able to experience a sense of redemption, the limits of life are expanded, and the self gently wraps the new life, bringing infinite satisfaction and enjoying the happiness of interaction;

But on the other hand, they also feel that the space of self-awareness is constantly being compressed, replaced by more of the needs of children, and in the process of caring for the baby, the self seems to be dissolved.

In such a dilemma, many mothers are prone to "getting lost". She can show a gentle and beautiful side in front of her children, but she also has a tired and confused side in the process of being a mother, which is often unknown.

The emotional feeling of nowhere to release will gradually turn the identity of the mother into a shackle that imprisons them, and motherhood becomes a towering wall, Caske says in the book: "Motherhood is a wall isolated from the outside world, and I am always planning to escape from it." ”

This insurmountable wall invisibly destroys women's bodies and minds, not only affecting the connection between parents and children, but also extending to getting along with partners.

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

The life trajectories of wives and husbands are obviously different, and when the husband fails to see and understand his wife's exhaustion and troubles, the wife enters a "closed" situation, complaining that behind the husband's disregard for the home is actually powerless herself.

They hope that their confusion and struggle can be seen, that her ego can have room to breathe, that she can not be blamed after "playing badly" the role, and that she can stop self-blame.

To untie the rope tied to motherhood, perhaps we need to re-understand motherhood, see the difficulties and dilemmas encountered in becoming this identity, understand their complaints, needs and their lives that are not seen, respect the complex meaning of motherhood, and respect everyone's right to make independent choices.

At the same time, as a mother, you must also learn to take care of yourself. When the mother finds that she cannot help the child, please stop habitually feeling guilty and blame yourself for her incompetence, the mother is not omnipotent, and the mother is just an ordinary person.

Personal Counseling: Becoming a Mother Is a Woman's Final Destination?

A healthy parent-child relationship requires going through three separations.

The first separation is at birth, when the baby is physically separated from the mother, but at this time the emotional dependence still exists, and the spirit is still the mother-infant community.

The second separation is about six months old, and the separation is the physical and explicit separation again, while individualization is the psychological separation.

The third separation can last a long time, arguably from the age of three to eighteen, or even longer.

From the moment the child leaves the mother's body, he becomes an independent individual, the child will have his pain, his anxiety, there will be something he needs to overcome and, of course, his happiness.

Mothers respect their children's independence while also giving themselves freedom. In the process of being a mother, it is very important to adapt to your multiple roles, being a mother and an independent individual.

"Being a mother is a bit like participating in a relay race, a process that aims to pass on the baton of life and all the work and heat, one minute in a hurry, the next minute panting as a spectator." - "Becoming a Mother: Confessions of an Intellectual Woman"

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