Mad Cow Mothers - Enduring Stereotypes
Jan 27 2012 9:13AM
If you have ever been made to feel that you are going bonkers, you might like to read on .......
When a tired, tearful woman questions a powerful wisdom, only two conclusions can be drawn:
1) The tired and tearful woman is right to question the received wisdom and the powerful ones must admit they were wrong and adjust their view.
2) The powerful ones were right all along, equilibrium is preserved and she is revealed for what she is, a crazed and hysterical drama queen (medicate her at once).
Sometimes the line between being judged either sane and capable or barmy and unhinged is a fine one. I found myself walking this particular tightrope four years ago. I was an adoptive mother, four years in and managing what is euphemistically referred to as 'challenging behaviours' at home and fending off the fallout from similar behaviours at school. I was certain that these behaviours were typical in a child who had endured neglect and abuse within his birth family; the books told me so, social workers told me so and other adoptive parents recounted strikingly similar experiences to my own. So I felt no pressing need to wear my sanity on my sleeve. That was until, in search of help, I had appointments with a pediatrician, a GP and a health visitor, all within a few weeks.
I was tired, frazzled and tearful. They were polished, professional and on their home turf. They each listened with varying degrees of concern and then each delivered a variation of the following,
'He's been with you for four years you say. He should be alright by now.'
For a statement not based in modern science in any way, it has a remarkable potency and many who parent children like mine will have heard the same. It sounds innocuous enough but delivers a number of blows; it is your fault, you are parenting badly, you lack perspective, your mental health is under question. It also undermines the child's experience, the sympathy for them is time-limited and once the bell has rung they are no longer seen as a damaged victim of abuse but as a naughty, disruptive child.
My GP handed me a box of tissues and opened his prescription pad, the pediatrician was even quicker with his prescription pad and tetchily questioned my motives when I refused his offer of Ritalin for my son. The Health Visitor was careful with her words,
'So things are not working out quite how you had imagined they would,' she belittled as though it was all just a matter of perspective.
I was lucky that I managed to summon up the fortitude to shake off the growing assumption that I was mentally ill and/or deluded and have since found the right kind of help for Jamie and our family. But I felt like I came close to something paternalistic, controlling and kind of Victorian (mad mother in the attic). I sense that attitudes are changing, but then I might talk to a another parent or read a frightening account on the Adoption UK message board and see that progress is very slow indeed.
Us tousle-haired, tearful, frazzled women might conform neatly to the outdated stereotype of the mad woman witch. But we do a difficult job which benefits the whole of society and the last thing we need is to be drowned when we are asking for help.
Comments are most welcome and will always be responded to. As always there are comments (from other mad mothers) and other information on my website www.sallydonovan.net. Thanks for reading.