“I’m afraid I’m not a good enough mother – that’s what almost all mums have told me” [FRAGMENT]

In “Moms to talk to” we listen to the voices and stories of mothers from all continents, from over 90 countries around the world. They talk about motherhood, parenting, its hardships, challenges, unconditional love for children and traditions related to raising children in their countries. Anna Pamuła shows that despite significant differences – cultural, social, economic – we have a lot in common all over the world. They fear similar things, think about similar things and fight for similar things.

What are mothers afraid of?

When I am with my daughter in the park, I do not leave her step by step. I’m afraid she’ll be kidnapped,” Hianeya, a Mexican mom, told me. I immediately thought he was exaggerating. I was wrong. Every year in Mexico on Mother’s Day, thousands of women, instead of enjoying cake and flowers, march through the streets demanding the government find their missing children. According to unofficial statistics, since 2006, when the war of drug gangs began, 80,000 people, including children, have died in our country. You know what we fear the most? That a child would be kidnapped for an organ. There are kidney cartels! Or those that make children work like slaves. Are you surprised I keep my baby on a leash? It’s sad, but it’s a very popular way to take a child for a walk in our country.

Hianea’s novel was too scary and I didn’t want to believe her. So I started searching the internet and discovered that, indeed, several thousand children are abducted every year in Mexico (this number increases significantly if one of the parents is taken into account). In European countries, it is several cases a year. I haven’t been able to find any data on organ trafficking (police say it’s rare, but widely reported in the media), but I’ve read a few articles about child slavery, such as a July 2020 CNN story where 23 The children, aged between three months and 15, were found by police in an abandoned house in southern Mexico. They were imprisoned by the cartel and used as slave labor.

In Europe and the United States, the problem of kidnapping is not so widespread, but parents are still afraid. I was reminded of the story of the “worst mother in the world”, Lenore Skenazy. In 2008, she launched the Free-Range Kids movement.

“We fight the notion that children are constantly threatened by perverts, kidnappers, exhibitionists, bacteria, school grades, frustration, failure, men, all-night slumber parties and grapes that are not organic.” This manifesto was written right after a television crew burst into the school looking for nine-year-old Isaac, son of Skenaza. “They wanted to interview me because I took the subway home myself,” the boy later explained. His mother provided him with a subway map and ticket and allowed him to walk from school to his home in Manhattan on his own. The boy was thrilled. America shaken. Skenazy took advantage of this situation and started calling for “freeing the children”. “Even if a parent wanted their child kidnapped, statistically they would have to leave them alone on the street for 700,500 years,” she told The New Yorker.

According to the American psychologist Peter Grey, if in any country playing the child will be kidnapped, the victim will fall? harassment or dies at the hands of a stranger, the media blows these? stories? and kindle? adult beds. In fact, misfortunes of this kind do happen. myself? very rarely, and recently less and less. In most countries in the world, including Poland, child abductions most often have the so-called parental character. The mother or father abducts the child because he cannot get along with his partner or because he is a victim of psychological or physical violence. In the report “The great (fake) child-sex-trafficking epidemics” published by “The Atlantic”, the journalist cites a terrifying story that went viral on social media around the world in 2020, that the US military operation was to rescue 35,000 “malnourished, caged and tortured” children from the tunnels under New York’s Central Park and other US cities. It was obviously fake news, but it effectively activated the fears of parents around the world.

“In some ways, it’s just the latest expression of a fear that has been part of the American landscape since the early 20th century, when children came to be seen as economically useless but emotionally priceless,” writes Tiffany. The journalist shows how in the 1980s, in response to social changes and the murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who was abducted from a Sears department store in Florida, an avalanche of moral panic set in motion. Politicians, obsessed with “family values”, used inflated figures in speeches about drug trafficking, pornography and crime. Mothers, encouraged to work by second-wave feminism, went to offices, but not without guilt and anxiety about leaving their children home alone or in the care of strangers. Divorce rates soared and child custody battles became more common, leading to complex legal situations such as parental kidnapping of children. In 1985, the Denver Post published a report for which journalists won a Pulitzer. They laboriously debunked myths about missing children: the actual number of children abducted by strangers, according to FBI records, was 67 in 1983. With more reliable information, the panic is over. I understood Hianea’s fear, although I’ve never experienced it myself, because I live in a country where kidnappings don’t happen so often. But I realized that I have other fears that I either inherited or created over time, reading the media, books, watching movies. Since then, I’ve started asking all the moms in the world what they’re afraid of.

Shazia from Pakistan with daughters Noor (left) and Imane. In her country, fear is part of everyday life for many mothers. Walking with a pram is not recommended, so they spend most of their lives at home, they are most afraid of terrorist attacks. Alexandre Saada / promotional materials of the Agora publishing house

• The child will get sick and I will not be able to help him – that’s what mothers from all countries and continents told me.
• The child will get sick or I will not be able to be with him – that’s what two mothers told me, one from Poland, the other from Cameroon.
• I’m afraid that when I go to work, the child misses me a lot. I’m afraid that I don’t spend enough time with him and he feels it – a mother from France, where you return to work after three months of maternity leave.
• I’m afraid that when I go to work, the children don’t miss me because I’m a terrible mother who is constantly screaming and stressed that they are better at kindergarten – mum from Germany.
• I’m afraid to leave my child with his dad. Will you be sure to bathe them in water at the right temperature? Will she change his diaper? – mothers from countries where childcare is not equal, i.e. everywhere except Scandinavia.
• I am afraid that I will not find a job / I will not be able to run my own business because the state does not care about pro-family policy, there is no room in nurseries, and babysitters are expensive.
• I am afraid that I will have no choice but to become a housewife – mothers from Korea, Poland and all other countries where there is no real help for parents at the institutional level.

Mother with a child on a walk – illustration photo photo. Małgorzata Kujawka / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

• I am afraid that I am a worse mother than my mother – a mother from China.
• I am constantly afraid that my children are hungry, and I always carry a banana or cookies in my bag. When they come home from school, the first thing I ask them is what they had for lunch. I’m afraid that they don’t eat enough vegetables and will be weak, weaker than their colleagues – moms from the United States, Israel and Algeria.
• I’m afraid I’m not a good enough mother – that’s what almost all the moms I’ve talked to have told me. I have this feeling too, it accompanies me almost every day: did I really buy a good toothpaste? Does this juice have too much sugar? Shouldn’t I sign up Josie for more English classes? Or less? Does he watch too much TV?
• I’m afraid I’m too strict with my children – mum from Martinique.
• I am afraid that someone will hurt my child – this is also mentioned by almost all mothers, being afraid of pedophiles and kidnappers or aggressive classmates.
• I am afraid that after returning from maternity leave I will lose my job and have nothing to live on – this concern was mentioned by mothers from all countries that do not provide stable care for mothers or paid maternity leave, for example from the United States or Korea.
• I am afraid that my partner will cheat on me and I will be left alone with the child – this fear was often told to me by mothers from South American countries, where there is a high percentage of single mothers abandoned by their husbands who do not receive support from the state.
• I’m afraid that if my child got sick or if I got pregnant again, I would have a lot of debt – mothers in most countries in the world worry that there is no social security or there is, but you can’t count on it. Moms from Poland, from African, Asian countries and from the United States mentioned it. The French or the Canadian didn’t worry about that.
• I’m afraid that my husband will lose his job and we won’t be able to afford the best education for our child – mom from Korea.
• I’m afraid that my child will suffer and experience racism, because life is really hard and unfair, and I can’t give him all the tools to make him better – mother from South Africa.
• I am afraid that my child will be mistreated by colleagues at school, that he will experience psychological violence – many mothers have experienced this, so they worry about their children: in Brazil, in England and in India. Mothers from Scandinavian or Asian countries did not mention it.
• I am afraid that my children will grow up in a terrible world: polluted and chaotic due to climate wars – mum from Norway.

Pregnant women also told me about their fears: they are afraid that they will not know what to do when the child cries, they are afraid that they will not have enough time to take care of the child (mainly where maternity leave is short or does not exist) and worry that they will miscarry through their own fault or that they will not love the second child as much as the first.

The mother begins to worry about the pregnant child and does not stop until the end of her life. Of course, there are degrees of relaxation – or lack of it – and they depend on many factors: family history, the course of childbirth, our temperament and environment. (In New York, there are even jokes about the Jewish mother, who seems to me very similar to the Polish one: neurotic, always worried and feeding). Fear has no rational basis. Sometimes it seems to be sewn deep within us, as if the generations before us left traces of their experiences. There is something touching about the fact that all mums in the world have similar fears. We all write the same dark scenarios, because children are often the most important thing in the world for us. Regardless of country, ethnic origin, religion – we love and fear the same.

We have to talk promotional materials of the Agora publishing house