Raising three children messed up this mom’s perfectionist parenting
June 4, 2010
Francine Kopun
FEATURE WRITER
It’s easy to see why Amy Wilson’s one-woman play Mother Load is an off-Broadway hit.
Her writing is light and layered, funny and tender, in the tradition of Erma Bombeck, a writer Wilson’s mom loved, posting her columns to the family fridge where they stayed until the edges yellowed and frayed.
Women writing about motherhood abound. The bad parenting confessional has become a cliché, but the quality of Wilson’s writing — doubtless honed by her off-Broadway performances — separates her from the pack.
When Did I Get Like This traces her journey from successful and obsessive career woman to mom of three covered in vomit, sweat and tears, riding an airport monorail, eyed with pity and disgust by fellow passengers.
What was your life like before your first child was born?
I was always very much the Girl Scout and the “A” student and trying to do everything well. I was an actress, which is sort of a preposterous career choice for anybody but I had managed to get somewhere with it.
How old were you when your first child was born?
I was 33.
You mention in the book that you had been trying to conceive for 18 months.
Yes. It was a new experience for me that I couldn’t set my mind to something and just do it.
It wouldn’t have occurred to everybody to regard themselves as infertile after 18 months.
Frankly, I started worrying about it much sooner than a year, probably after about six months I was already panicked. I didn’t want to wait and see if there was something wrong. I wanted to find it and fix it.
You didn’t have the problem after your first son was born.
I had undefined infertility. What was wrong with me was never figured out, other than I had an extremely irregular cycle. Once I had a baby, my cycles became incredibly regular.
I think a lot of women find themselves in the situation you found yourself in. It’s a very painful situation for them to be in.
I immediately went into panic mode and started reading every book that I could because that was my personality. I’m not sure that was the most productive thing I could have done, but at the time it just seemed that I had no other choice.
How was it not productive?
Since I got pregnant with my second and third children naturally, it might have happened without any of that the first time around. I just wish I could have told myself to take a deep breath — this is going to take as long as it’s going to take.
At what point did you begin to think that you were over-managing being a mom?
When I reflected on everything that I was doing to try to give my children what was best for them, I realized how much energy and focus that was taking away from my kids, that if I was giving them the healthiest dinner I could give them, that meant 10 or 15 minutes left to play with them before dinner, and really, they would much rather me play with them before dinner and have macaroni and cheese.
It’s easy to find moms who obsess about every spoonful that goes into their children’s mouth. How do you think things got this way?
I think it’s the media. I also think it’s later parenthood. My mom had me when she was 23. Now we’re very career-oriented and we try to bring to motherhood that same sort of drive and achievement-based notion that we brought to our career. And the same rules don’t apply.
How is making motherhood work different from making your career work?
Reading 10 books on how to take care of your baby may not make you more capable of doing it. It may just confuse you and freak you out. Sometimes doing less and being present and not multi-tasking is, at least for me, the way to parent my kids, and that’s so contrary to the way I spend my professional time.
This feeling you describe, of having to be a perfect mom, has it gotten worse or better for you?
It’s gotten better, but I feel it’s a continual process. Just yesterday somebody said to me, “Isn’t your son playing soccer?” There’s a bunch of first-graders playing soccer after school and I said, “You know what? He’s not. He already has two other activities after school and I thought that was enough.”
But there was part of me that thought I am supposed to be giving him what the other kids are getting, even though my internal compass is telling me: “No, no, no, he doesn’t need a class every day after school; he can come home and play with his Lego, that’s what he likes.”
Are you still acting?
I still have the show called Mother Load touring the country. It’s not on tour right now; it’s going to start up again in the fall. I’ve never been to Canada, but maybe it will get there.
Do you have any advice to offer new moms or moms trying to get pregnant?
The most important thing I wish I knew then is that every stage is just a stage and that if something is difficult, it’s not forever, it’s just right now. Also the wonderful stuff is just a stage. It’s so bittersweet.