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I’ve been thinking a lot about Laura’s post on Ayelet Waldman, in fact it’s been quite stuck in my mind. So much so that during my recent “girls weekend” to Vancouver it became quite a topic of conversation at the dinner table (West–great restaurant.) In between the foamed tomato puree in a cup deemed to cleanse my palate (don’t forget to dig to the bottom for the small cucumber chunks) and my big, fat juicy steak, the conversation turned rather polarizing.

Three out of the four of us have children and I would say are all quite devoted to them and our families. And while we all agreed that whatever Ayelet said was most likely taken somewhat out of context, just the simple presumption that she could love her husband more than her children (all four of them) was quite disturbing–to at least two of us. I say that mainly because I think there’s a slightly different way to look at things than just what’s at the surface.

Allow for a moment that we lived in a culture, as Judith Warner suggests in her book, “Perfect Madness” where our entire existence isn’t wrapped up in our children. She talks about her life living in France where women could work in an office, work out at the gym, even steal away for an uninterrupted dinner with her husband—even a short vacation without the kids and not feel like a guilt ridden mess. It feels to me that this mess is particularly US centric. That here in America we’re completely wrapped up in our children being our “life’s work” and insuring that we’re successful with that work, rather than making sure that each part of the family unit receives enough care and nurture for the relationship to thrive. It feels to me that sometimes we feel we will be judged by our peers as not very good mothers if we go more than two nights without tucking our kids into bed. Has it become all about quantity and not necessarily about quality?

So back to this idea of loving more…My take. I don’t love my husband more than my children but I do love them differently. The conditions that apply to my husband are lost on my children and that’s a good thing. At the end of the day I want my children to feel loved and I want my husband to feel loved and I want to feel loved. We all want that unconditional feeling that makes us feel secure in a world that is slightly less so. And while I personally can’t see myself ever making that particular statement, I do think we should give her the benefit of the doubt and not write her off quite yet as a terrible mother.

Posted on June 7th, 2005 by Sam
Filed under: Guilt and Getting Over It