Even Moms Can’t Guarantee a Perfect Life

You might think that women would be more relaxed about mothering these days. All they’d have to do is notice that expert advice changes as often as hemlines and hairstyles: Pick up the baby/let the baby cry; sleep with the baby/don’t sleep with the baby; feed the baby on demand/feed the baby at rigid intervals.

But women are insecure because there is no commonly accepted idea of what it means to be a good mother. Fathers have it easier in this regard; they just have to show up and they are automatically considered “good,” whereas mothers are always trying to prove to themselves and the world that they aren’t “bad.” If a woman works outside the home, she’s depriving her children of her constant attention (which is bad), but if she stays home, she’s smothering her children with constant attention (which also is bad). If she’s middle class, working is extremely bad, but if she’s poor, not working is even worse.

In some ways, things are getting worse. Years ago, a woman was allowed five years to mold her child’s personality. According to Freud, after the first five “formative years” ended in the crisis of the Oedipal complex, the child’s personality was set for life. In recent years, however, some psychologists tell mothers that the first three years of life are the most important, while others think that all critical events happen during the first year. Indeed, after some highly publicized studies of infant “bonding” after birth, it seemed that a mother had only five minutes in which to make or break her child’s destiny.

Likewise, when researchers announced recently what most mothers have always known--that babies aren’t passive little blobs but active learners from the beginning--you could hear the alarms across the land. Although the alarms need only have sounded for children completely deprived of intellectual stimulation and cuddling, middle-class parents overreacted. Is stimulation good? Then we’ll make sure our child is stimulated every waking moment. Is holding and cuddling good? Then we’ll never put that baby down. Is talking to the baby good? Excellent, we’ll make sure that baby hears lots of English, Spanish and Japanese.

Ironically, this panic about doing the right thing to produce the perfect child is probably the worst thing for the child, and the parent. Research in developmental psychology ought to help parents relax. Here’s why.

First, it is not harmful to children if their mothers work. Mothers who obliterate their own needs and abilities for the sake of their children do not benefit their children, their marriages or themselves.

Second, there is no key moment or stage in early childhood in which a child’s destiny is determined forever. Obviously it’s good to give children stimulation and cuddling from the start, but one wrong step will not doom the child to trauma. Children are more resilient than that.

For instance, longitudinal studies find that with adequate love and support, most children overcome even extraordinary hardships, including having been born to drug-addicted mothers, parental alcoholism, homelessness and war. Although we are told repeatedly that abused children inevitably grow up to be abusers, the fact is that while being abused increases the risk, more than 70% of abused children do not become abusive parents.

Conversely, research also finds that some children who have had the best parental care and guidance later succumb to drugs, addiction, mental illness or violence. Parents simply cannot control all the possible paths their children may take. Between the parents’ best efforts and the resulting child lie other factors: the child’s temperament, genetically influenced dispositions and vulnerabilities, experiences outside the family (especially with peers) and the child’s perceptions of events. Parents can help a temperamentally shy child learn to cope better in situations that make the child anxious, but they aren’t going to turn her into Bette Midler.

Of course, many parents are understandably worried about protecting their children and making sure their children have every advantage in today’s complex world. The news is full of stories about children who kill, teenagers on drugs and sadistic day-care workers. But the statistical reality--that violence is declining, that the vast majority of teenagers who experiment with drugs never become addicts or drug abusers, that cruel day-care workers are rarer than cruel parents--is not as compelling as the horrifying scare story.

All parents worry; that goes with the job description. But it’s time to put matters in perspective. There is no one right way to be a good mother and no secret formula for raising a perfect child. And no one can give parents the guarantee they want most: that their child will be safe from life, for life.

So I propose a moratorium on mother-blaming and mother-guilt. You can do all the right things and your kid will blame you anyway, and you can do all the wrong things, and your kid, amazingly, will muddle through.