🥒 Soul Snacks

7 min read

Dear Snackers,

I once read an article titled, “How Not To Raise Boys Who Are Assholes” which, to me, implies that most boys/men are somehow inherently assholes. Call me crazy, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that most of the men I know are not assholes. I’m not married to an asshole and if anyone called either of my sons an asshole, they would probably find out what an asshole I can be…I might just go ahead and rip them a new one…asshole, that is. 

If you’re over 30, many of us, men and women, are still struggling to shake the pressure of some deeply rooted gender roles observed throughout the course of our lives – most women have absorbed the notion they were essentially born to be nurturing caretakers, while men have historically absorbed the pressure of providing, or being viewed as “not man enough” if they are unable to do so. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t make some knee-jerk judgements based upon these gendered expectations or, indeed, apply them to myself at times. Based on today’s reality that about 76% of mothers work outside the home, and that raising children has reached an all-time level of insanity between the amount of information and imagery infiltrating our minds on how we should parent, and the ways in which their childhoods have been monetized (i.e. sports, activities, clubs, camps), the pressure on women has mounted extensively.  Our “progress” feels a whole lot more like extra fucking expectations. 

Before having kids, I had no idea how this would all make me feel. I had no idea the amount of pressure I was going to put on myself to be a certain kind of mom – missing a beat on anything child related has made me feel like a failure more times than I can count. I had no idea how much I was going to beat myself up for making mistakes or not doing it all perfectly. I never imagined feeling so guilty all the time. While I can alert my husband to the ways he can be more helpful, and while he is learning more about the mental load, the consequence of feeling like a failure if something slips through the cracks with the kids is foreign to him – that underlying pressure is simply not there. Take packing for example…particularly during the baby years…I’m going crazy making sure we don’t forget a single item for the kids, and my husband just helps pack. I feel stress and rage in those moments because I know that when we get to where we are going and something is left behind, it’s not just the inconvenience, it is the feeling of having fucked up. My husband doesn’t care….if we forgot to pack the diapers, he’s just all calm and collected like, welp, let’s go get some new diapers and I am like, “ARE YOU CRAZY, DON’T YOU KNOW I NOW NEED TO BE ANNOYED WITH YOU FOR AN HOUR BECAUSE NO ONE HELPED ME FREAK OUT ABOUT PACKING!”

What I am starting to absorb is the power of the words “no” and “fuck it”. Yes, dads need to pull their weight, but also, do I really fucking care what kind of mother or woman I am seen as by society’s standards? I’ve been taking a deep look inside to make sure the things I absorb are things that truly serve me and my family, and have nothing to do with the martyr complex I adopted in early motherhood to prove my maternal, and therein, womanly worth. I am learning to look WITHIN for my validation, knowing I am a worthy and incredible mother, based solely on the strength of my bond with my family. Getting worked up about that other shit is simply feeding into society’s unrealistic expectations of me. 

My husband works his ass off, but of course there have been times that I have been compelled to articulate the breadth of the shit that is on my plate as a mom, and I do, but because this is both of our first rodeos and he is not an asshole, I understand that he, too, is going through a learning curve ….and I’m not trying to start a riot here, but there are a few gendered tasks I wouldn’t mind staying in place….just saying, we happen to have a wasps’ nest under a gap between the shingles and the siding of our porch and SOMEONE needs to get up on a ladder, and SOMEONE needs to close that gap with some outdoor weatherproof caulking so that the wasps don’t return before August, and if anyone sees my husband today, please remind him. 

— Caitlin

• FOLLOW: On the note of ‘not man enough’, this account is a nice follow.

• LISTEN: In honor of Father's Day. a playlist of your songs that remind you of your dad....Enjoy!