3 kids (or more)

Since just before my 40th birthday I’ve had two overwhelming responses from friends and family about this special new decase and coming of age. The first response is a giddy sense of excitement that life is about to get a whole lot more fun and not at all bounded by the same stresses and self conscious anxieties as the thirties. I often think that these people, often women, often at least a decade older than me, have forgotten about the tumultuous 20s and how your front cortex only fully develops by 25, and probably (I cannot know for sure because nobody says this out loud). I see their interiors, almost wholly hysterical with joy that the childbearing years are pronounced shut by 40 or soon thereafter, as wiser and less burdened. They strike me as the crowd I should be listening to.

The second response I’ve received, mostly from age mates, can only be described visually (And none of it is untrue):

You’re going 200kms an hour on a rollercoaster. You’re unsure whether it’ll stay on course… goodness, who knows if it has the right mechanical make up to even be a ride in the first place. It’s going so fast you cannot think let alone breathe. You manage to turn your head as the cold whipping wind swishes through your gums and you get free, temporary botox to your eyelids and forehead… Your shock sends your already high, pulsing heart rate through the proverbial roof - the children are with you!!!! Who allowed this to happen? The only sigh of relief is when you manage to look at your rollercoaster ride partner and there they are, holding on tight, trying to hold your hand but also holding on, holding on, holding on. You try to speak about the future but with the botox in motion and the lack of clear signposting as to when this will end, all you can really do is be there, moment to moment, day to day, and hope. Just hope. And plan a little but mostly hope and mine your heart for trust - in the speed, the wind, the kids, the partner, the nearly touching hands, the fumbling nature of it all. Until it slows… and who knows what that even looks like when you’ve gotten used to that pace and my goodness, your nervous system is equally used to all that adrenalin.

You get me?

Some of the real life things that I infer by the rollercoaster are the never ending worries of capitalist life, the debt, the lack of control, the lack of ease (seemingly ever), the purpose or the perpetual lack thereof because well, time… the insistence to be calm and enjoy it all.So whose real do we choose to trust? Because you know, there’s always a choice.

In my ongoing research about mothering, focussing on the particularly sad and dark world of post-partum depression throguh to psychosis, I kept having a nagging feeling I was missing something. There’s something inarticulate about what mothers are feeling and experiencing in our contemporary world. My answer came in some readings on capital and the development of world systems that rely on capital and labour. It simply became unfashionable and unnecessary to have big families… While there’s a bigger answer, quite simply, 2 children is neat. 3 children is wild. More than that, unwieldy… and, uncategorisable.

Why is it fashionable for some to have big families? Well, for those who have money, quite simply, what comes in equates to enough capital to sustain those families, and perhaps even some of those families have generational wealth available to them. For those who don’t have money and much access to resources, as is the case for most South Africans, there might be an ongoing belief that these larger families, as was the case for pre-industrial Europe as it’s written about, are practically useful and that these children offer a kind of old age insurance to their parents. For middle class folks who aren’t inheriting land and valuable material assets, what they bring home does not/ cannot sustain a middle class life and lifestyle, certainly not in a hyper consumerist, individualistic and highly privatised middle class existence such as we find to be real in South Africa. While in larger families more of the household contributed to the creation of wealth and whatever was needed in the household, now, we have entire families and extended families, and helpers and their families who rely on 2 people in a dual income household. The assumption, from the outside, might be that those two income producing people can afford to keep everyone afloat and keep them happy. I’m learning that this is not only true but largely impossible. And so, aspirations of happiness and wellness remain a desperate myth or do they?

I’m sharing some of my rambling thoughts here today as I’m aware that mothers are often seen as apparitions when they’re not outwardly perceived as happy or ok or great or happy to life for the happiness of their children. Their ghostlike statuses are pathologised, problematised… But it’s not their fault! Ever!

It’s hard to live solely for the happiness of everyone around you and not know what will happen in the future… because, whether you’re the older moms who know it’s not perfect but the recognition of each other in a meaningful way is enough to keep you going OR, if you’re with my anxious age mates who are (fair) worrying about retirement and the lack of the promise of that useful family insurance in your kids… well, there’s just no good way of doing it, it seems.

So, even if just for today, take a moment to do 1 single thing you want… because no job is ever going to pay you enough. And nobody is going to get you off that rollercoaster but you.And man, most of us stay on it for a looong time, just trying to figure out the way off, the way to make it stop, the way to ensure that everyone on it with you is ok too. So just forgive yourself! I’m trying that today!