Mommy snobbery is not a new subject in my blog ... but I don't know that I've ever dedicated an entire blog to it ...
There are a lot of things involved in mommy snobbery ... the mommy wars definitely are a large part of it ... for those that don't know ... the mommy wars are the arguments like breast vs bottle, co-sleeping vs crib sleeping, baby wearing vs detachment, spanking vs not spanking, etc., etc., etc., ... but my main issue with mommy snobbery and the kind of mommy snob I used to be didn't have much to do with any of that ....I married young ... had my oldest when I was barely twenty-three ... none of my friends were married ... none of them had kids ... they were in their early twenties ... living it up ... drinking ... partying ... bar hopping ... they invited me for a while ... but after I pretty much flat out said something like "don't you understand I'm a mother now, I have a baby, I don't have time for those childish things" ... they stopped inviting me ... it was funny because in the season finale of How I Met Your Mother Marshall and Lilly have their baby and suddenly they tell their friends they don't have time for them unless they have something to say that is ranked "an 8 or higher" ... I looked at the lemon man and said "see mommy snobbery" ... they even talk about it in sitcoms ... I digress ... for a while I was glad my friends had stopped inviting me ... but then two more kids later I started to realize some things ... and I give credit to a speaker
at a MOPS group for enlightening me ...
When we become mothers ... it adds to what we are ... it doesn't take away things ... we are still wives/girlfriends, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, nieces ... friends ... and most of all ourselves ...
Looking back I know that I was guilty of pulling away from my childless friends ... after all I was better than them ... they didn't understand where I was ... I didn't understand where they were ... it was just a big old mess of not understanding ...
Back to the MOPS speaker ... she (being a religious minded group) explained how it's actually possible to worship our kids to the point that we break the second commandment "thou shall have no other gods before me" ... even if you're not religious the point is still there ... we can actually get to a point that we put our kids SO far ahead of everybody and everything else that it's a bad thing ... moms need time of their own ... a social life ... quiet time ... romantic time (the all important date night) ... and it's healthy for our kids to see us have those things ...
Now I see this all from a different point of view ... now I am the friend that my friends used to be ... I might have had a midlife crisis of sorts where I realized how much I had given up to be a wife and mommy ... how much of me had been suppressed ... how much I missed my active social life ... I started having girls nights out ... I had two amazing friends that joined me at first ... we kind of had a local bar/club that we hung out at on a regular basis, but we did other things too ... one of them was in a similar situation as me ... the other was married, but wasn't a mom yet ... the first of those friends "crisis" was much worse than mine ... she spun out of control ... drinking too much ... making out with strange guys ... sometimes she went home with them ... the other was fine ... but then she had a baby ... and now she has had two ... and she actually told me recently she had "outgrown" going to the bar/club we used to frequent ... what's ironic about that to me is that I'm two years older than her and my kids are eleven, nine and seven ... while hers are both under three ... which leads me to the conclusion that it is her own mommy snobbery .... it's not that she has outgrown it ... she has redefined herself as a mother ... and a mother only ... and, well, that's just not the kind of thing mothers do ... so I tamed down my girls nights out ... neither of them comes anymore ... ever ... my friend that landed hard in a pile of midlife crisis went through treatment for alcoholism ... and remarried ... so even though girls night out has now been at least sometimes changed to a local restaurant where we can actually hear each other talk and that's what we do (with an entirely new group of girls) ... they don't come ... the friends that wanted me to go out and party with them in my early twenties now have "outgrown" going out with friends as well ... so I see things from a different point of view ...There is nothing wrong with doing what makes you happy (as long as you're not hurting anyone) ... if what makes you happy is to go sit in Starbucks and read a book ... whether you're a mom or not ... do it ... if what makes you happy is to go dance the night away at a techno club until the wee hours of the morning then make sure you make time for that too ... there really aren't many things that fall into the category of "mothers shouldn't do that" that actually hold water when put to a test ...
If you had fun going out and dancing a year before you became a mom ... you probably still would ... but something inside you says "I'm a mom now ... I can't" ... that little voice needs to go away ... you are allowed to be all the things you used to be (unless of course you are an alcoholic, drug addict, child abuser) ... despite the fact that you are a mom ...So go ... leave the mommy snobbery behind ... be a wife ... be a sister ... be a friend ... be a daughter ... be a granddaughter ... be a niece ... and most importantly ...
Be You ....
