“You can’t understand because you aren’t a mother.”
I’ve heard my own mother say this phrase to me many times over the years. She usually says it after I tell her not to worry about me.
“I’m sorry, Ame,” she’ll say, “but you just won’t get it until you’re a mom yourself.” For a long time it would bother me a lot when she said that. One reason it bothered me was because I used to believe I wouldn’t ever become a mother, which meant what I really heard her say was, “You’ll just never understand me.” The other reason is that I found that sentence incredibly loaded with guilt and an overwhelming sense of responsibility for how I made my mother feel. When she worried about me, I worried about her.
Now that I am in my early thirties, the majority of my friends have small children of their own, and while I absolutely love spending time with them, sometimes being around them can be emotionally difficult. They have something in common with one another that I don’t share with them: the experience of motherhood. And it isn’t that they are intentionally keeping something from me, or that they are intentionally excluding me from anything. It’s just the nature of the beast. I want to empathize with them and while I can imagine what it must be like to nurse a hungry infant in public or soothe a teething baby, I think my mom was right: I really can’t understand because I’m not a mother.
I love my friends dearly and love to hear them talk about their beautiful kids, about the habits and quirks their children have. I love to hold their kids and talk to them and play with them. I sit and I listen and I try to absorb as much information as I can from the women in my life. But there is a line that is drawn, an invisible line, and so many times when I am gathering with other women in a public space, be it the shopping mall, an office board room or a hotel ball room, it feels as though I am standing on one side of that line, and all of the other women in the room are standing on the other side.
Unfortunately, once you have children the line will still be there – you’ll just be on the other side of it.
True. So true. Was writing about this in a comment to Bad a looooong time ago: it is fundamentally arrogant and exclusionary to say ‘You won’t understand until you …’ but it’s true. Experience of it is different from thinking about it. You know, even pregnant people feel left out: everyone always tells them about how having a real baby is different than being pregnant with one and buying baby stuff, no matter how many books you read. Also true. Ouch.
@Swiggy that’s an interesting way to think about things…that hadn’t really occurred to me.
@mimi, yes, and I find it really condescending, too. I try to keep focusing on the wonderful resource my mom friends are!
There are always lines. A great many of my experiences as a mother (especially in regards to KayTar) aren’t shared by the majority of moms, but I never say “You wouldn’t understand.” It may be true, but I don’t think there is any need to point it out. None of us really understands another person, everything they experience is experienced through the lens of who they are as a person, so it is almost always a unique experience.
“They have something in common with one another that I don’t share with them: the experience of motherhood. “
I hear ya’. Not only do I not feel a camaraderie with mothers, I think my life must seem silly and superfluous compared to theirs. (Nothing really compares with giving life to another human being.) I have easier friendships with men, or younger women (where I can fall into that “hip auntie” role). My friends who have children are not actively trying to exclude me, and believe me, I don’t know one woman who wants to be thought of as “just a mother,” but there is that division there, whether we want to admit it or not. I wish there were more online resources for those of us without children, like there are for mothers. (Forums, whatnot.)
There are always lines. Child free, one child, multiple children, all boys, all girls, etc. I think it’s human nature to categorize. And of course we cannot understand – until you’ve walked in my shoes, and all that.
I think at any point, we feel those lines, like Naomi says. It might be the line between an African-American celebrating Obama’s victory and a white American doing the same. In some ways, those lines define who we are at a given moment in time, and at other times, they disappear completely.
I used to get that all the time, even as a stepmom. It bugged me so much to hear that! And then I had my son and I do understand better. There are some things that you just have to experience. I don’t think your mom (or anyone else) really means to sound condescending. It’s just one of those things you have to go through. Just like men will never *really* understand what it’s like to be a woman.
I also feel like i am on the other side and i am a mom. i can’t quite articulate it, but i feel more in kind with you than a lot of moms i know or meet. i feel like a fake mom, sort of. i obviously cannot explain it. i wish you didn’t feel that way and i wish that some mothers would make women without children feel like they can’t understand. you have a mother, you have been mothered, you have likely mothered friends and family and even pets. i don’t feel like i have incredible wisdom about children or mothering after 5 years. i think i am ok with that. i also think i am an ok mom, on whatever side of the line.
xo