Intensive Mothering

During the Mothers of Twins Convention, the guest speaker enlightened us on the history of mothering. It was really quite interesting, but I'll spare you all the history lesson because I think the really important thing here is that there is actually a sociological term for the type of parenting that is prevalent today:

Intensive Mothering 

"child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive" 

*The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, Hays (1996) pg.8

I can almost guarantee all you mommies out there are feeling like that is a pretty accurate description of your life. Until now, I'm not sure I could clearly articulate exactly what it is like to stay at home and mother every minute of every hour of every day. Well, now I have a word for what it is like: intense . . . it is intense . . . really intense.

Mate and I figured out early on that neither of our jobs could be the more difficult one. Admittedly, I have tried to insinuate more than once that what I do everyday tips the difficulty scale in my favor, but, honestly, that's just not fair. Mate's got some mad skills and a whole lot of responsibility. Not to mention, a lengthy commute and a not-so comfy dress code (he does look pretty cute dressed all doctor-like, though). It can be easy to overlook all of the things that make his job difficult because it also comes with weekends and validation and parties and a paycheck. While all that is happening, I'm here . . . mothering . . . intensively . . . all the time. Even when I'm not actively mothering, I am thinking about mothering. I'm running errands and worrying about how long I've been gone; I've got to get back home. I'm working on household tasks while the girls play; I should be playing too. Are they eating their vegetables? Have they heard 700 words this hour? Did they play on the iPad for too long? There is no break . . . ever.

Nowhere in the description of intensive mothering does it say that those of us parenting this way are crazy. You can all be sure I was glad about that. So, I'm not crazy.  I'm mothering intensively, which sounds kind of sophisticated and important, if you ask me.