Who will think of the mothers?

Or, finding time for yourself

Our girls need to see us taking a healthy interest in our own activities, health, creative time, spirit.

Raising Girls, Steve Biddulph

The Mother
Of course I love them, they are my children.
That is my daughter and this is my son.
And this is my life I give them to please them.
It has never been used. Keep it safe. Pass it on.
Anne Stevenson

I came across the Steve Biddulph quote recently while flicking through my notebook looking for something else. It stuck, and I kept turning it over in my mind.

Several days later (you see the pace at which my brain works), the Anne Stevenson poem popped into my head.

A friend told me a couple of weeks ago that what really got her into the habit of flossing her teeth was being told about flossing’s anti-aging powers. (This may not be true. How We Homeschool has no official views on flossing or anti-ageing. My only view on ageing is that it’s better than the alternative.)

What do these things have to do with each other? (Especially the flossing.) I have never really liked the Anne Stevenson poem, I think partly because I don’t like its kernel of unpalatable truth. There is a potent intensity to parenting (perhaps especially to motherhood, but I’ll try to stay away from too many gender stereotypes). Your old life is over, and your new life revolves entirely around your child. Particularly for homeschoolers, the only time you may get to yourself is once the children are asleep. By which time you’re obviously too tired to enrich your own spirit, and anyway, someone has to clear the kitchen ready for the fast-approaching morning.

I also don’t like the poem because of the crushing futility of ‘pass it on’. Do we only have children in order for them to have children, forever and ever amen? In one sense, of course. Mother Nature has one aim in mind.

But when we held our babies, in the minutes after they were born, we hoped for more for them than simply producing the next generation. And our parents did for us. Steve Biddulph is saying that if we want our daughters to value themselves and their own time, then they need to see us valuing our own. ‘Do as I say not as I do’ isn’t really good enough. We can’t expect our children to reach for the stars if we ourselves rarely look up from scrubbing the latest stain from the carpet.

And this is where the flossing comes in. Of course you know you should have your own life, that your health and your interests and your spirit matter. But it’s very difficult to prioritise yourself, isn’t it? As parents (and dare I say it, especially as mothers) we come at the very bottom of the pile, we give everything we have to everyone else and there’s often nothing left over for us. But if we want something different for our daughters—and if we want our sons to expect something different from the women in their lives—we have to find a way. And just like my friend who knew she should floss but couldn’t find the motivation until she heard it was anti-ageing, maybe our motivation can be that it’s the example we need to set for our children. Plenty of parents give up smoking or take up exercise more for their children than for themselves. Look after your spirit for the sake of your children.

Looking after your spirit may seem daunting, expensive, or time consuming. Things that would be on my list, that contribute to a life well-lived, are long walks, paddle boarding, making things from clay, gardening. The realities of single-income family life in a rented flat with a patio garden and two children who share every moment of my days means these are things that cannot happen on a regular basis. The same is probably true for you. But don’t give up.

Here’s my recommendation: Go to a bookshop. If you can’t go to a bookshop then go to your Amazon wishlist or basket, which may be full of books you’ve liked the look of over the years but couldn’t quite justify at that moment. Buy (or borrow) a book (please, not a book about child development, home education etc). Tell the children they can read or play or whatever but you are going to read a book for ten minutes, or however long you think you can swing. Read the book. When they interrupt you, tell them you’ll be done in ten minutes and you can talk about it then.

To the children, you are doing something for yourself. But if it helps, you can also tell yourself that you’re doing it for them.

Some books I’ve loved that you might too

I’m only one person and I my tastes aren’t very broad. This list is largely twentieth century British women’s fiction. There might not be anything here for you. That’s fine!

• Rough Magic, Lara Prior-Palmer (biographical account of the first woman, and the youngest-ever competitor, to win the Mongol Derby.)

• Any Maigret book, Georges Simenon (Classic French detective stories)

• Invitation to the Waltz, Rosamund Lehmann (the build up to the first dance of a girl on the threshold of womanhood)

• Saplings, Noel Streatfeild (a middle class family falling apart in 1939. Sounds bleak but I hate bleak and I’ve read it twice)

• Elizabeth and her German Garden, and Expiation, Elizabeth von Armin

• Miss Buncle’s Book, DE Stevenson (cosy, funny, English village life)

• Make Lemonade, Virginia Euwer Wolff (coming of age story set in America)

• Brother of the More Famous Jack, Barbara Trapido (another come of age story, British, a little bit sexy)

• Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively (a woman looking back on her life and loves)

• One Fine Day, Mollie Panter-Downes (a day in the life of a British woman just after WW2)

For more suggestions, here are a couple of my husband’s posts about his favourite books:

The books I have enjoyed most this year

The books I enjoyed most this year

I’d love to hear your suggestions of great books to lose yourself in too. And, what else do you do to look after yourself and make sure your children see you doing it?

---