On the way home from work today I
stopped at the shops to grab some groceries. In the fruit aisle, a young mum
was blocking the apples with her buggy and little boy, so I waited for her to
finish what she was doing. As she moved away, her little boy hung
back a little and she grabbed him roughly, telling him off for not moving. I
told her it was okay, but she continued to shove him forward and walked off.
The incident made me squirm a little,
the boy was about three or four and not doing anything wrong. But I couldn’t judge the mum, because her
manner and words made me think of myself as a younger mum. All day every day with your little one, often
without help or support gets exhausting and you can find it harder to be
patient and loving in every situation.
Layer over that a level of social
anxiety from being constantly judged as a mother. Your child’s every word,
action and mannerism becomes a reflection of the way you are raising them.
Anything less than perfect behaviour makes you a failure and a bad mother. Half the time it feels like everything makes
you a bad mother – letting your child watch thing on your phone, giving them
treats, losing your temper with them – all of those things that you do when you are struggling or to help you
cope.
Then layer that over with racism and Islamophobia – whether real or perceived.
We are not just mothers, we don’t live in a vacuum, our own experiences and the trauma we experience contributes to who we are and how we parent. Racism doesn’t just deny us opportunity or
make us fearful of the world, it shrinks our worlds. When we are scared of places, of people. We limit ourselves in where we go, what we do and who we engage with. When
we become anxious, we might see malice or dislike when none is implied.
As a younger mum, I lost count of the number of times
people made comments about controlling my children, or having "so many" children or just
being given a dirty look. It starts to wear on
you and impact on how you behave in public.
Always herding your children out of people's way, constantly telling
them to be careful, "get out of the way", "don't touch!". Being extra polite to people,
smiling and ignoring slights. After so many years the underlying anxiety makes
you unsure - is the grumpy old lady just grumpy, or is she being grumpy because
she is racist? Sometimes it's obvious
and sometimes it's not and you start to doubt your judgement.
That's on top of the exhaustion of
trying to care for your little ones as a mum, and trying to ignore all the
judgement that rains down on you as a parent.
Sometimes you are barely aware of the racism interspersed with our interactions in public.
So when I saw the mum being overly harsh
with her little one, I felt like a knew exactly where she was coming from -
maybe just tired and harassed, or maybe suffering from a type of social anxiety
that comes from being overly self aware and feeling as if you are being judge
harshly or disliked because you and your little ones are different.
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