British Parent Bloggers

A friend and I were discussing MumRage recently and I think it’s one of those things that people don’t speak about because it’s considered an unnatural instinct.

MumRage is born of frustration, exhaustion and the whole feeling of being trapped. Never having any grown up conversation about world events; always feeling as if you’re drowning in the minutiae of children/pregnancy-related topics which are of no interest to proper grown ups.

I can remember at a family dinner party, my newest brother-in-law saying: ‘Can’t you talk about anything other than children?’ Excuse my language a moment but: BASTARD!!!! Talk about rubbing it in and driving it home. It made me not want to talk at all in polite society. Because, no, with two offspring under five years old, I didn’t seem to have opinions relating to anything much other than children, poo, breastmilk and vomit.

My friend spoke of wanting to hit out and I can empathise completely. Sometimes I just wanted to slam cupboard doors and throw things… and, to my shame, I did. Children’s toys and once a paring knife across the kitchen. There is still a savage mark in the fabric of the sink.  Completely unpredictable outbursts of explosive irrational uncontrollable anger that sprang from nowhere on the back of a relatively minor irritation.

The advent of the online supermarket shop was a great help in alleviating one of the trigger points for me personally but you still have to be organised enough to book that slot sufficiently in advance to get your delivery when you need it! When I first had my kids, I had to make the time to get to the supermarket complete with two children, the first of whom would be removing her outerwear as fast as I was able to dress the baby in his.  Sometimes something so simple seemed to evolve into such a mammoth undertaking. And that doesn’t even start to deal with having to decant the kids into the double-seated trolley and push it around, complete with all the shopping therein, followed by unloading the car and putting everything away with two scratchy and tired children.

So, what with the weekly shop, the disturbed nights because my son would not sleep for very long on his own and my seeming obsession with trying to be the perfect wife and mother, keeping on top of the housework/laundry, whilst wading through rooms that were suddenly knee-deep in wall-to-wall lego when only moments previously my efforts had left them relatively tidy, I was permanently exhausted.  My Husband never seemed to be able to understand why the house wasn’t pristine when he got home in the evening or why there was a distinct absence of dinner once I’d got two children.

Juggling time and children, ferrying them to try this or that activity for fear they would miss out on the one thing that could have changed their lives forever, feeling guilty for sitting them in front of a video so I could at least get some housework/laundry done or just sit down and have a cup of tea.  Looking back, I remember fondly that we did so many things together, both at home and out and about.  Painting, playdoh, shops, colouring, puzzles, games, cooking, trips to various local amenities.  I don’t think there was ever an entire day when they had to make their own entertainment by themselves.

Yes, I did have parents who could have helped but my mother was looking after her mother who was bedridden and over 90 years old and my father was caring for my step-mother who was in the early stages of Alzheimers so I didn’t like to call upon them too much as they were already wilting under the strain of their own caring responsibilities.

It was only when my son went to nursery school when he was almost three (my daughter was already in the Infants) and I started to get a little ME time that I started to be able to control those feelings of frustrated MumRage. Not totally, there would still be incidents where it all got the better of me and, to this day, I feel deeply ashamed for the times when I shouted or smacked bottoms, when there was definitely a better way of handling things, but I just didn’t have the patience left to find it.

MumRage is horrible and we all need to recognise its existence so that we can put in place procedures to help ourselves. We need a certain amount of ME time at least once a month. Something to look forward to that is just for us. Even if it’s only getting your hair done without a child in tow or sitting down for an hour ALONE without someone jumping all over you or shouting ‘Mum’.

And yet I wonder whether MumRage is a modern phenomenon?  Did it exist in my mother’s day but they were too well mannered to express it?  I’m sure my own mother didn’t attend to me and my sister 24/7 and certainly didn’t feel guilty for not having spent the greater part of the day satisfying our every whim. In those days, we didn’t have videos and children’s entertainment was PlaySchool at 11am, Listen with Mother at 1.45 on the radio and a short period of kids TV between 4.30 and 5.45, culminating in The Magic Roundabout or Hector’s House. The rest of the time we had to provide our own entertainment, helping Mum with the chores or playing by ourselves or with a sibling; we certainly read more books. There wasn’t a social network of coffee mornings and mother’s groups the way there is today.  Maybe because there were less distractions, the children were less demanding in their desire for entertainment as provided by Mum so she had more time to get the jobs done.  But I also think that there was less laundry.  People wore clothes more often because it wasn’t just a case of sticking it in the washing machine, most laundry was done by hand… on a Monday.  By seemingly making our lives easier, the mechanical improvements have also made them harder because we place greater demands upon ourselves, set higher standards of cleanliness and housewifery.

We have built a culture of baby first and foremost to a degree where they learn to wait for nothing, their needs are satisfied immediately and they are not encouraged to use their imagination to pass the time.  We have allowed ourselves to become slaves to them and to our own pernicious fear that if we do not fulfil their every desire, we will somehow be shortchanging them.  Add this factor to the demands of being a domestic goddess and it allows us no time to be anything other than Mum.

And sometimes that is an overwhelming burden.