Gill’s parenting blog: Where is the job description for being a Mum?

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 Where is the job description for being a Mum?

Embarking on a new role, particularly one with infinite scope and a completion date of a lifetime, you would expect a clear job description, yes? As time passed, you would measure your success against clear milestones, gain feedback and be presented with awards to reflect your performance.

So how is that we can potentially spend our entire lives as parents, not examining our performance or expectations about the most important job we undertake?

Maybe for you, being a Mum is something you inherently just know how to do and you are happy you do it well. For me, infinite love for my boys came naturally, but I became a Mum after twenty years in business leadership. I was disoriented without clear objectives and goals. No feedback on my performance bar tears, tantrums or a beautiful dribbled smile or cuddle.

I was missing clarity about how well I was doing as a Mum and at yet at times I was inexplicably feeling I had somehow failed.

We all form an opinion, an expectation or vision of what a good mother looks like when we are in our first few years of childhood. We create our desired outcome of what a “Mummy” is from what we observe from our own mother or primary carer.

What we may not realise is that as much as we may have accepted, adapted or rejected our parents ways as individuals growing up, we may never have deleted them from our beliefs and views of parent. Add to that the media images of motherhood and the drive for parenting perfection the last ten years have brought, realising that we unconsciously compare our performance to those images as much as we may consciously disassociate with them.

I discovered that had I written a job description in my mind forty years ago as a child. It was formed around my stay at home full time Mum, not one who left in the morning and returned home at the end of the working day as I do. I had also absorbed a picture of the ideal Mum from the world around me and found myself falling short of an imaginary measure.

By examining what your innate vision, your instinctive expectations of “Mum” are, you can highlight any self doubts you may have and reinforce belief in your own parenting ability. Discover whether you are actually working to a job description for being a Mum which was written when you were a child, or based on a woman in totally different circumstances to yourself?

Ask yourself;

• What traits do I remember admiring in my Mum?
• Were there any characteristics or actions that I saw in my upbringing that I would now choose not to use as a Mum myself?
• What influence do those views have on how I see myself or my performance as a Mum now?
• Are there any traits I would choose to no longer show in my parenting, now I have awareness of them?

I’m not proposing that you change who you are as a Mum. On the contrary, my work is to encourage you to accept and embrace who you are as individual Mums.

What I am advising is that you clarify whether you are judging yourself against an unwritten, unconscious, possibly out of date job description called Mum and finding yourself failing?

Gillian Campbell is an expert in emotional resilience and maximising personal potential and author of Love You Mum: Stop trying to be the Mum you think you should be. Start enjoying being the Mum you are. (To be published by Barnes Holland in March 2011, £9.99).  She runs workshops for Mums nationally.  For more info visit: http://www.theonlymum.com/

Tags: Advice for working mums, Gillian Campbell, Mothers and daughters, stress, working mums

Posted by Gillian Campbell on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 6:03 am.

Filed under Ask an Expert, Careers, Features, News, Parenting, SMEs, Tagged as: , Advice for working mums, Gillian Campbell, Mothers and daughters, stress, working mums.