On Losing Yourself in Parenthood

We found out weeks before my son was born that I would be induced the evening of January 24th, so I had plenty of time to prepare for the inevitable: he arrived the next day, on my 36th birthday. The irony was that I’d privately had a plan to bear my first child by 35 (I do not recommend having such plans), and this felt like the universe was playing a little joke on me. 

I’ve always been someone who believes in never letting a birthday go by without celebrating yourself, since most of us don’t do this enough in life without the excuse. I’ve always thrown myself a birthday party before anyone else could even think of it; a surprise party for me would be next to impossible. In the Before times (Before Covid, and Before Kids) I’d lean toward the creative, one year hosting indoor mini-golf and another ice skating, but at the very least I gathered friends and embraced the annual opportunity to pause and bask in the simple awe of being alive.

My son entering this world 36 years to the day that I did has always been a source of bonding for us; it’s a special thing, and will forever be our shared gift to each other – and to our family members who only have to remember one date instead of two. But there is also an undercurrent of sadness to it for someone like me. Eventually I know my son will be grown, or just a surly teenager, and birthday parties for him won’t be a thing anymore. But for over at least a decade of my life my birthdays aren’t really mine. For years I’ve put all that party-throwing energy into making whatever birthday fantasy my son had come to life, and somewhere in the planning process I usually realize that I haven’t given my own a thought. I’ve scrambled to throw something together at the last minute, usually an intimate meal – and usually during the day so I don’t have to worry about someone else trying to put my kids to bed – determined to still claim some small space for myself on what used to be “my” day. Sure, I have Mother’s Day, but so does every mom on that Hallmarked day – I enjoyed having one that was unique to me, and based on the actual event of my having been born. It’s not just about parties and celebrating, either – it’s a chance for reflection, for thinking about what I want for the year ahead, for my life as a whole. Given my birthday is at the end of January, which kicks off with a communal urge to name our desires for ourselves and our world, I spend most of January in a kind of introspective headspace for this reason.  

Last year, for my first birthday in a pseudo-post-pandemic world, after a couple of years of celebrating Covid-style online or just at home, I was desperate to clink glasses in a physical space with humans again. Figuring out how to manage childcare for what ended up being a fun “disco” brunch gathering took almost as much effort as planning the brunch itself. And after that brief and glorious gathering, the rest of the week was focused on my son, who opened presents for several days in a row, got his bedroom room upgraded, and had yet another soccer-themed party which cost us about five times what my brunch did. But it’s not about the money.

The unwinding of this part of my life has felt like a slowly emerging allegory: this is the story of modern motherhood, as told through the karmic accident of my son stealing my birthday. 

The books and the blogs and the mom-fluencers generally don’t talk about this: there is a loss you go through when you become a parent, and because no one really wants to tell you that before you do, it’s a confusing experience. It’s a quietly growing grief, and a mounting realization that (as Dr Becky, the parenting guru, says) two things are true: you have no regrets about becoming a parent, and you miss the parts of you that are gone. 

The day my son was born, I received the best birthday gift I will ever receive, and I lost a little of myself in his arrival – my birthday, yes, but more significantly, I lost a rare opportunity to claim space for myself. Over the years, the symbolism of that has only become more clear. Parents these days, especially mothers, seem to only feel like we’re doing our job if we’re giving a lot – if not most – of ourselves over to our parenting. 

The message is everywhere: schools pressure us to be as involved as possible and send home a thousand tasks for us to stay on top of, from pajama days to book fairs to drama clubs; Pinterest and Instagram are littered with images of homeschooling crafts or snacks designed to look like animals that make any uninterested mother feel deficient; our kids’ sports and activities schedules are deemed necessary for their enrichment no matter how much of our lives (and bank accounts) they suck up; and even our parenting gurus, like Dr Becky (whom I adore) require us to put quite a bit of time and energy into the “work” of parenting. 

I do prefer the version of parenting in which kids are full people deserving of respect and empathy to the preferences of former generations, which sidelined most kids as performers of obedience, and shaped the psyches of millions of adults, who in turn have relied on therapy and medication to untangle their invisibility complexes and bottled rage. Yes, this feels like better parenting. But if parents are losing themselves and burning out at increasing rates, we haven’t gotten it right yet. We’ve collectively overcorrected. 

Plenty of journalists and activists have documented the lack of a structural support system in the U.S. that would lighten the burden of modern parenting; this is not new. It’s also not new that our government is actively deprioritizing the building of such a system in favor of protecting an exploitative, capitalist, patriarchal, and racist system instead. Nope, not new at all. 

But even if tomorrow an infrastructure of care support popped up and all of a sudden we had a permanent child tax credit and universal childcare, we’d still have a powerful culture to shift. That cultural pressure is what bored into me that good mothering involves monumental sacrifice, and since it’s not only acceptable but expected of my generation (and necessary) that I will also have a job that pays me money, generally that sacrifice is in the form of my personal time, my energy, and my mental (and sometimes physical) health. 

I don’t relinquish all this easily, mind you. I fight to hang onto these assets, which is generally impossible without sacrificing in other areas, like career ambition, or sleep. I’ve diagnosed myself with what I’ve learned is called Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. This is an actual thing. It essentially means that you stay up later than you should out of spite for not having enough time to yourself during regular daytime hours; apparently it’s most common among parents of young children. Finding out that my late-night impulses for finding things to do so I could have more grown-up alone time is a kind of disorder was both validating and depressing. 

While it takes a village to raise a child, most of us do not have villages surrounding us. Of my friends with kids, about 5% live close enough to their families to count on them for regular childcare support. Many of us have already lost a parent because we’re older parents in the ‘sandwich generation’, squashed in between expectations of caregiving our older and younger generations. A parent couple that we’re friends with whose families live several states away had their first night away from their kids when their oldest was eight years old. My husband and I getting away for a night or two requires an astounding amount of coordination between multiple sets of grandparents, because none of them is equipped or young enough to deal with my rambunctious children on their own for very long. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve carved out a personal day for myself on a Friday, only to have a kid get sick or a snow day announced, thwarting my attempts at self-care yet again. 

I began the draft of this post last year on my actual birthday (and my son’s), on which a snow day was declared, and I spent 90 minutes of my evening on a Girl Scout cookie-selling webinar. That’s right, for some ungodly reason I co-lead a Girl Scout troop, somehow convincing myself that I’d find the hours and it was a worthy cause, at the very least to give my daughter some wholesome memories. And here we are a year later, and my writing which has been such an outlet for me has fallen by the wayside, drafts of never-published posts filling my Google drive, another loss that I’ve promised myself to recover. 

My son turns 10 today, officially entering almost tween-dom, and with every year it seems to matter more to him that his mom shares his birthday. He understood when I told him I wasn’t up to a party this year – we’re sending him to a theme park with two friends instead. We also have a tradition of taking time on this day for a mother-son birthday date, usually over some baked treat in a favorite spot. He’s inherited my penchant for celebrating life’s moments, reveling in every holiday and ritual, and I love this about him. There is something to be said for excavating meaning from days that could otherwise just pass by. Does it have to be a birthday? No, I suppose not. Maybe the meaning of my particular story is that sharing my birthday is meant to force me to find other days to carve out for myself, come hell or highwater.

So, tomorrow, my first un-birthday of the year, I’ve taken off work. I have no plans outside of reading in bed, and who knows, maybe another piece of writing will pour out of me. And if a kid gets sick, or it snows, and the rug gets pulled out from under me again? What is there to do but spend that time with my quickly-growing children making hot cocoa and watching Sing 2 for the eleventh time, and to find another day to call my own.