Zoe Williams - The Madness of Modern Parenting

F ROM THE OUTSIDE , the madness looks like something modern parents do to themselves. It looks like martyrdom, self-righteousness, old-fashioned showing-off. They make such a big deal of it, from the minute they conceive. Immediately, they are repudiating cat faeces and mercury, things the rest of us hardly ever eat anyway. They cant just abstain from alcohol, they have to tell you endlessly how much they are abstaining, how important it is for the future of their progeny, how sacrificial it is of them, and yet, at the same time, incredibly easy, of course. Their buggies cost more than a second-hand car, and they huff and glare at you if you get in their way. Its impossible not to be in their way, because these buggies are also the size of a second-hand car. The world is in their way. They cant just breastfeed because they like it: it has to be a matter of life and death.

Everything is undertaken with this declamatory defiance, as though it is only their superiority, their learning, their altruism, their strength, standing between their baby and the infinite threat the world wilfully presents to it. Who died and made them the keeper of the species? How has humanity managed to keep itself alive this long without people being so preening and uptight about it?

And then it gets worse. When junior has graduated to eating food and sleeping normally, as all animals are wont, his or her every waking hour has to be filled with education and improvement. His or her progress must be chanted constantly; the boasting is shameless. All considerations of modesty and simple manners are instantly jettisoned, in favour of telling near strangers that you think your five-year-old might have an aptitude for Mandarin. Every hour must be distended to contain more opportunities for growth. It looks weirdly unnatural, lightless, this kind of parenting; I imagine it producing etiolated children, their knowledge incredibly long and thin.

How is it that parents managed perfectly well before for centuries before without this laboured intonation of Its the most important job in the world? It has never been anything more or less important than it is right now. The sowing of your genetic seed in the soil of the future has never felt less vital than it does today. Excepting a bracket of the English upper class, nobody has ever wanted anything less than the best for their children; nobody has ever just shrugged their children off and not been that bothered. How do parents in the developing world today manage to raise children who, if they make it past cholera, become rounded adults without all that expertise? Why do todays parents have to make such an almighty fuss about everything?

Then you get pregnant, and the first thing you realise, before long before you have any concept of baby, is this: the perfectionism and neurosis dont come from you. They come from outside.

I got pregnant with my first child in 2007. It wasnt a planned pregnancy youre not allowed to say that when you have children; unfortunately, I already said it before he was born, so its a matter of public record now. That being the case, I think it bears a bit of discussion. Youre not allowed to say you didnt plan your pregnancy because people assume that means you love your child less than someone who did plan theirs. Everybody who has ever had a baby knows this is rubbish. An unplanned pregnancy is not the same as an unwanted pregnancy anyway. But even an unwanted pregnancy will, uninterrupted, turn into a wanted child. Thats why adoption isnt the easy alternative to abortion: your pregnancy may have been an accident, but your baby is as desperately loved as anybody elses. Some people can conceptualise their baby before they meet it and even love it before they meet it but many people cant. I know I never did.

Then you have your baby, and you love him so much that you basically think hes the Messiah. Indeed, I think when youre hit by the force of maternity. I genuinely did think Id just saved the world with my vagina. I was expecting the shepherds to arrive any minute.

Thanksgiving in Mongolia, Ariel Levy, New Yorker, 18 November 2013.

T HERES NOTHING INCOMPATIBLE about being an ambivalent pregnant person and a devoted mother. But because society is often daft and people wont tell the truth about themselves for fear of societys off-beam, idiotic judgments you dont often hear people say that they were ambivalent during gestation, in case the world thinks less of their bond with their babies. You can think of it as the parent trap, like a Chinese finger trap: inescapable even if you dont believe in it. You hear experts comment on maternal ambivalence, you hear a lot about it on Womans Hour and you read beautiful novels about it; but you rarely hear people say it of themselves. So the minute you get up the duff, in other words, you feel as though youre being policed inside out not just inside your body, but inside your mind. And this, like any unwanted intrusion, leads to a lot of feelings of inadequacy, vulnerability, dissemblance and anger as you try to be the pregnant person the world wants you to be, where previously you were your own person who didnt care what the world wanted.

Oh yeah, also: I was horribly afflicted during pregnancy by something that I only read about last month with both my children now at school. How I wish I could go back in time and read about this before it happened. Pregnancy is, basically, a hyperinsulinic state, energy. Orexogenesis, the energy storage state, is sluggish; anorexogenesis, the energy burning state is, as you would expect, lively. This is true for all humans, but, naturally, were also individuals; some people are hungrier and more sluggish in orexogenesis than others. Adolescence is another hyperinsulinic state, as you lay down fat for menstruation become fertile, basically.

Now, I remember from adolescence that I am basically bovine in orexogenesis: all I can think about is food and sitting down. I remember one journey home from school when I bought a bar of chocolate at every sweet-shop I passed between Hammersmith and Wandsworth. For those who dont know London, this is 6 miles of prime retail real estate. I mean, sure, I was on a bus for some of them, but it was not pretty, this behaviour.

Anyway, I was exactly the same in pregnancy, famished and lazy from the word go. I couldnt walk past a Greggs. Every day, I ended up in tears of frustration about the crap Id just eaten. Every other day, Id hear some doctor, often a man but not always, pontificating about how you dont need extra calories until the third trimester because baby doesnt. The last thing baby needs is three sausage rolls and a slab of Tottenham cake. I remember the burning indignation at being told what to eat by somebody who had never been pregnant and had no idea how it felt. Couple that with burning indigestion and you can get some picture of my mood. I was in a terrible slough of despond both times for nine months. I put on 4 stone with my first child, didnt properly lose it afterwards, got pregnant again, put on another 4 stone. It was grimly hilarious with my second child, hearing midwives say how great it would be when the baby was born and I wouldnt feel so heavy: I was carrying 5.5 extra stone, of which my daughter composed only 9 pounds.

The short version of this story is that I was just not in the mood. I was not in the mood for cosy misinformation. I was not in the mood for being told what to do. I was definitely not in the mood for the patriarchy.

Risks during pregnancy are so overstated now that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service reports women These were babies born from mothers who were on the point of starvation. The idea that you can harm your baby by not eating enough carrots is just preposterous.