How millennial moms look at mothers
We’ve all thought about how we would be as parents given a chance. “When I become a parent, I would never take away my kid’s phone.” or “When I become a parent, I wouldn’t force them into Engineering.” More of such statements would follow. As the latest generation to become parents, I think millennials are given much-underrated attention.
Millennial Moms. The abstract ideas we anticipate when we talk about these new-age moms are somewhat along the lines of ‘strong,’ ‘perfect,’ ‘fussy,’ ‘cool,’ or ‘balanced.’ When we usually think about mothers, it is an overly generalized picture of a lady with 5-6 hands, each devoted to various domains of life and perfecting it, and that’s where we believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with this depiction.
Motherhood is seen as a duty that naturally comes to all mothers where they flawlessly just know what their baby needs, or she has a perfect sleep schedule despite waking up in the middle of the night to calm her baby, or she’s never tired of picking up left crumbs, toys or changing diapers.
This is an utter lie! Every 1 in 5 mothers deals with postpartum depression and anxiety about becoming a new parent, and this is why we have faith in our millennial moms who will prioritize their mental health; will take enough needed breaks and become even better mothers who are not mentally and physically drained and well-equipped to take care of their babies.
Now let’s talk about a much broader issue that women today face: this societally conditioned dilemma to choose between careers or their babies, and those women who’ve cracked this balance are utterly glorified in a way to prove that, oh, now she’s complete. Subconsciously they are made to accept that if you want to continue to work or enjoy a career of your own, you will have to work twice the time and create a “work-life balance.”
WHY?
Why are women trained to reflexively think that they will have to “manage” or “adjust” if they decide to have a baby? Here, our millennial moms will break this glass door of societal pressures asking women to take complete responsibility for motherhood and how it will complete her. We think these new-age parents will realize the unjustness of these harmful practices of being perfect and share the parental load equally.
Today, a good number of organizations offer paternity leaves, where the significant other can take up leaves to take care of their child. If the mother wants to rally back and forth so that she doesn’t remain absent in her child’s initial life years, I think it is definitely going to be difficult. At some point, she may fall short, but that is what motherhood is all about; but that’ll be a choice she’ll make on her own and not do something that is expected!
Millennial Moms will be different, and when we say millennial moms, we’re not talking about just a specific gender with human babies only. Motherhood is not just a unique gender-specific role; the term is undergoing thorough renovation. The terms ‘motherhood’ or ‘fatherhood’ is no longer defined by chromosomes offered or the reproductive organs but by the gender, we choose to identify with.
Cossouq believes that anyone who identifies herself/himself as a mother for either a human baby or a pet deserves to celebrate this Mother’s Day.
