Dialogue: No such being as a perfect mother

By ROANNE PARKER

One of my girlfriends coined a little phrase recently that I believe says it all. She was talking over a hot chocolate about how much she enjoyed the day off she had while her 3-year-old was at daycare, when it slipped out. Being child-free means you can eat your own marshmallows. A guilty amen to that.

There is a book by an American psychologist (aren't they always?) called The Myth of the Perfect Mother. According to the blurb, the book deals with the emotional realities of nurturing and the effects of a culture that simultaneously devalues and idealises the mother's role.

Now I have not had the chance to track this book down and buy it, much less read the thing. And if you are wondering why that is you might want to reread my first column. But the title says all I need to get pontificating, and I have plenty of first-hand experiences to draw on regarding this little hot potato.

What kind of a mother am I? Not a perfect one, that's for sure. I fell pregnant while working in a bikini store in Hyannis, Massachusetts - holiday place of America's royalty, the Kennedys. I was 20 - too young to go into the bars in that town, old enough to take responsibility for my actions.

I swallowed down the morning sickness and we headed for home, driving across the United States in a $200 Yank tank with a concave back windscreen.

Back living in Melbourne, I read all the books I could and sewed my own flowery tents. All the baby gear was second-hand. The night he was born I lay awake staring at him, completely in love, and I committed to being a perfect mother.

Despite a disposable household income at that time of about $50 a week, I never sent him to a creche. I breastfed for a year; I walked him in the pram and parked him in the garden to nap. I talked to him and sang to him and played with him.

He was a happy, healthy delight, yet I was so concerned about doing it right that I took to putting on a fake wedding band and wearing Country Road-type clothes so the imperfections of my youth would not be frowned on.

By the time I was 25 I had had a wedding and two little girls. I think I was a pretty great mum and the children were bright and clean and happy and well fed, with a minimum of McDonald's and a maximum of vegetables.

While trying so hard to be that perfect mother, I was greeted over and over again with raised eyebrows: Are they all yours? You have your hands full! How do you cope? God you are so young! Haven't you worked out how they're made yet? And my all-time personal favourite from bitchy women in the supermarket: "If you think it's hard now wait till they are teenagers."

That might well be true, but it is extremely unhelpful when you are wiping baby vomit from the trolley handle and plucking a screaming toddler from the confectionery aisle so you can take the 4-year-old to the toilet.

Here's some advice for you, you tarts: why not try, "I remember how it is to have babies all over you all day. What lovely kids you have. Well done!"

As I struggled to be a wife, paint the house, mash pumpkin, wash nappies and run a business or two, I often wished I had been born when my grandmother was, with fewer expectations.

We are told we can do anything and, of course, we can, but we can't do everything without spreading ourselves so thinly that we carry a truckload of guilt around with us as well as a spare nappy and a briefcase.

And now I'm a single mum and I'm back in the starting blocks, seeking more perfection to assuage the guilt I have for failing to provide them with the ideal nuclear family.

Being more of everything to my kids, and yet, as they spend more time with their much-loved dad, less to them, too. I have some time to eat my own marshmallows, nurture new relationships, pursue new interests and rediscover old ones.

I still read all the books I can find and I stuff it all up regularly, but I am so proud, and I'm crazy.

Forget the myth of the perfect mother: most of us are happy to be coping as the garden-variety mum. Just give us a grin and a thumbs up occasionally and we'll get on with the hardest job of all.