The Mother’s Voice

The Mother’s Voice: Strengthen Intimacy in Families by Kathy Weingarten. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company , 1994. 237 pp. If you’re the average parent of young kids, you’re already overextended. It may be your exposure to a book is limited to a quick perusal at the bookstore or a review in the local paper. But here is a book so arresting, it’s worth adding to your short list—the one for books you are determined to read. There is so much idealizing in our culture about what a Good Mother is. We talk hollowly about the stresses of motherhood, when most of our cultural messages still reflect the notion of the selfless, endlessly generous and loving mother. In the fifties she patiently lead scout troops, knit sweaters, and baked cookies. In the nineties, she directs a staff of twenty, attends twice-weekly aerobics classes and still bakes cookies. Just look at the cover of any working woman’s magazine. Or look at the most popular child rearing books. They include much valuable advice about loving your kids and cultivating their self esteem, but how many of them have chapters on finding ways to take care of yourself in the midst of juggling a multitude of roles. Psychologist Kathy Weingarten was the mother of two preteen children when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her subsequent experience, and the flood of ups and downs that attended her cancer treatment, caused her to examine this issue—through the dual lens of parent and professional. The result is her book, The Mother’s Voice. The description on the book’s inside cover lures you in, perhaps because it poses a dilemma so obvious you wonder why you never asked it before. As a result of her experience with breast cancer, Weingarten writes, “I wanted to understand why I was so willing to let my children express themselves, but so uncertain how to express myself with them.” Weingarten exposes the double standard that advocates encouraging our kids to share and express their scary feelings while we, their mothers, suppress our own. This message—what’s said, as well as what’s left unsaid—is damaging. Our kids are entitled to know, in fact will benefit from knowing, who we really are, as long as we share it in a way that is appropriate, in a way they can handle. Instead, we doctor our experience in our telling of it, so that the image we present is acceptable, if not accurate. We lose the truth and ourselves in the process. And we confuse our kids by telling them one thing—that they should take care of themselves—and doing another, sacrificing our own selves. Our behavior also sends the not-so-subtle and questionable message that revealing your darker feelings will somehow injure your child. When in fact these feelings, and the experiences that generate them, are part of the lives we all lead. If we can share some of our darker moments, we may actually be helping them to acquire the emotional tools they’ll need to handle the curve balls that come their way. Weingarten’s message about marriage is sobering. Whether we realize it or not, tacked on to our educated, post-feminist ideas about marriage is much of the baggage that’s been handed down from previous generations. Our cultural rhetoric about marital equality—you can do it all, you can have it all–rarely matches our experience, as we often find ourselves at the mercy of the same unspoken realities that governed our mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives. In actuality, much of what we learn from our parents is what they don’t, rather than what they do, tell us. We hear what they say, but intuitively, we are equally influenced by what they SHOW us through their own behavior, or through their silence. Routinely, we continue this practice of silence, failing to voice our feelings about the inequities in our family lives. Many of us can identify with Weingarten’s own struggle, “Though I was not silenced,” she writes, “ I silenced a level of discontent I did not allow myself to know was accumulating.” As women, we silence ourselves from disclosing even amongst ourselves our deeper conflicts. We are reluctant to be perceived as failing to live up to the cultural standard.  We don’t want to be seen, or see ourselves, as inadequate mothers. It is a possibility too painful to contemplate. The Mother’s Voice reassures us that conflicts and negative feelings are normal. This breaks the barriers to self-disclosure and discussion with other women. Ironically, sharing our dark sides can diminish their power, alleviate our guilt, and potentially, motivate us to grow and change. Kathy Wiengarten, Ph.D., was educated at Smith College and Harvard University and has been a family therapist and clinical psychologist for twenty years. She and her husband live with their son and daughter in Newton.