Parent Talk / June 2006
Minimal Mothers
By Kathryn E. Brown
Maternal icon June Cleaver would have frowned upon the latest memoirs and other non-fiction books overflowing store shelves today. A new popularity in motherhood has emerged–the minimal approach to parenting–and it has sparked yet another area of conflict between women.
Once divided by whether or not they worked outside the home, modern mothers are now separated by philosophy regardless of how their workday is defined. Is the idea of giving children less in order to teach them more a better parenting strategy, or is the bare bones approach a way for mothers to mask laziness?
Minimal mothering is not as simple as buying a box of cookies rather than baking them from scratch, or slicing them off the roll for that matter. Minimum moms find it easier to buy new clothes for their children rather than washing the heap of tops and bottoms in the laundry basket. The minimum mom has her daughter’s hair cut in a cropped style to eliminate knot-and-tangle hair brushing tantrums.
There is no such thing as hovering mothering when it comes to sons, either. The minimum mom watches her boys roughhouse rather than breaking up the wrestling match. The minimum mom reports that she never neglects her children, but she does refuse to overprotect them. Experiencing a scraped elbow and a carpet burn leaves more of an impression of cause and effect than a mother’s nagging, some writers claim. A few extremely honest minimum moms admit that old-fashioned hand smacking stops undesirable behavior better than the negotiation tactics professed by the country’s leading child psychologists. Perhaps minimum moms have more in common with June Cleaver than they think.
Shortcuts are designed to make tasks easier and less time consuming. Critics believe that there is nothing wrong with taking a back road to avoid rush hour traffic, microwaving meals, or relying on a different way to solve a math problem. However, when it comes to setting examples for children, mothering should not be a role in which effort is saved. Why wouldn’t a mother want to give her children the best she had to offer? Similarly, does a minimum mom still expect the best from her children at home, in play, and most importantly, at school?
Devoted readers of these books write in reviews that once again, mothers have overreacted. Supporters argue that this is a way of reminding women not to take mothering so seriously and to rely on the basic building blocks of parenting to rear healthy, happy children. Fans of these new parenting books stress that mothers have simply lost their sense of humor. The stress of trying to be a perfect parent takes all of the enjoyment out of an extremely precious time in a woman’s life.
Melissa Stephens is a part-time legal assistant in a busy corporate litigation practice for a large West Virginia law firm. Although her life appears well balanced and picture perfect, she still feels as though she doesn’t do quite enough as suggested by parenting magazines and other family coaching books.
“Overall, I think I’m a pretty good mom, but I’m sure there are people who think I’m a slacker because I don’t stay home all week, home-school our boys, spend two hours a day on crafts, or schedule the kids for weekly sporting events and piano lessons,” she explained. “The biggest gripe I have is the way in which parents overindulge their children with toys, games and clothes to pay off the guilt they feel,” she said.
Practical versus perfect may be the new war between mothers. However, supporters and critics manage to agree on one main point, which is that loving a child unconditionally is the most error-free way to parent.
Kathryn E. Brown is the managing member of The Write Word, LLC, a professional writing and editing agency based in Charleston. She can be reached by calling 304-444-4248 or via e-mail at thewriteword@charter.net.
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