Are you a 'born' parent?

One of the interesting things about having a child is how other people view you in relation to your role as a parent and how this corresponds, or not, to how you view yourself.

I have, for as long as I can remember, wanted children, and I have also thought of myself as a maternal person, the kind who makes faces at babies on buses, gives good hugs, always has a hanky down my bra if needed to catch tears and is happy spending a few hours doing crafts or building models or pretending to drink imaginary tea. In fact this image of myself is so ingrained that it didn't occur to me that other people might not view me in the same way, until a woman I knew some years ago and met again recently, said that she hadn't thought of me as that sort of person.

Turns out that some people were taken in by me pretending to be focused on my career above all else. And whilst it shouldn't matter how anyone else sees me. I've mulled over this comment rather a lot. It irks me that I should have been misunderstood in this way, as if it reflects now on how I am as a mother, even though it was probably a throwaway comment and even though there is no reason that this person should have ever known about my yearning for children, or my fear I would not get them. And of course because even if this were true it should not reflect on how I am now I am a mother.

At the other end of the spectrum. I was thrilled when a newer friend, one who I have known for a few years but have become closer to recently as our children are similar ages, referred to me recently on her blog as "a born mother" (at least I think that was about me). She cannot know how pleased that made me. Which is ridiculous really because whether we have always wanted children or whether our children were unplanned, whether they came quickly or took a long time, whether we are naturally maternal or have to work at it, we are no better or worse as people and as parents. After all, we all love our children. all try to do our best by them and all face challenges along the way.

Being project manager

I saw Naomi Stadlen, author of What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing speak recently at the wonderful Big Green Bookshop. She led a discussion, based on her new book How Mothers Love: and how Relationships are Born, on whether mothering is different to fathering, or whether they can both fit in to the catch-all title of parenting. And I've been thinking about this since then and why it is that mothering is different.

I don't think it is because of the tingly nipples when the baby cries or the supersonic hearing that means I am the one who wakes up at the slightest snuffle in the middle of the night or the acual carrying the baby inside you, though all of that is incredibly important of course. I think the thing about being a mother, as opposed to being a father, is, in the words of The Apprentice, you are 'project manager'.

Perhaps this is nothing to do with gender and everything to do with it being the woman who tends to be at home most, in the first year at least, but it does mean that even if tasks can be shared the task of knowing what is going on isn't. Because it's not about who changes how many nappies or who empties the bin or who gets up in the night, it's about someone needing to have a whole picture view. I know how much my daughter has eaten, because if she has several not hungry days in a row then perhaps she is ill. I know if she has taken her medicine and whether we need to get the prescription refilled. I know when she last did a poo, and whether there is anything to worry about there. It's not just bodily functions. I also know whether she is growing out of her clothes and needs new ones, whether she has enough blankets and whether her feet need measuring.

This isn't a complaint - I want to be the one who knows these things - but it goes some way to explaining why it is that the job can never be properly shared, and perhaps why it shouldn't be. After all, knowing all of this takes up a lot of brain power. For two of us to do this may be a waste of those precious cells. But there has to be someone with the whole picture, and that person is usually the mother.

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