My husband could tell when I’d been reading parenting guides, as I always looked gloomy,” an older friend told me recently. It was reassuring to hear that the “parenting-guide face” is not new. I know I was guilty of it when I had my first baby in 2013. At the time, I’d been lent “baby bibles” by Gina Ford and Penelope Leach. They were a terrible combination, because they had opposing views on everything. Gina, a routine fanatic, made you feel disorganised and weak-willed. Penelope, the original earth mother, implied you were heartless if you put your child down. For each worry I looked up, there were two contradictory, equally plausible solutions. I also usually came away with five new worries.
Then again, I’m used to being a fretter and finding neurosis funny. I think we take low-level anxiety too seriously. It’s now discussed in reverent tones, pathologised with therapy and “addressed” with diet overhauls, manic yoga practice or colouring books. I think we’d do better to laugh at our angst — and ourselves. It’s hard to be scared of something when you can see the funny side. Luckily, maternal worries are some of the most absurd. Besides “Is it meningitis?”, they’re usually a product of cosseted, first-world perfectionism.
My personal low point was the time my son’s nanny (who I was able to semi-spy on) changed his morning’s itinerary by taking him to the library, rather than a Spanish singing class, without telling me. I worked myself up into a private frenzy, imagining what else — besides illicit library visits — she might be hiding.
Another day, I hung a tiny wooden aeroplane over his changing mat, determined he shouldn’t miss a second’s opportunity for stimulation. But I hadn’t secured it properly and it fell on his eye. I spent the next hour, crazed with guilt, dropping it on to my own face from the same height to determine how much pain I’d caused him. Even worse was the time I read, in tiny print, “not suitable for infants” on a packet of flaxseed I had been sprinkling on his porridge, having read it was a good source of omega-3. Cue a feverish night Googling flaxseed overdose, and kicking myself for not giving him Weetabix. At 7am, in panic, I rang a paediatrician friend, who had just returned from treating ebola in Africa. I was her day’s comic relief.
This was the start of my book Worry with Mother: 101 Neuroses for the Modern Mama. Mothers today are bombarded with more goals, checklists, tips and paranoia than ever before. It comes from the internet, the “parenting” industry, NCT groups and one another.
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I spoke to mothers with children of all ages and ended up feeling comparatively rational. One woman fixated on her slender son sliding down the gap between the train and the platform, unnoticed, on his way to big school. Another insisted her children call their bubble gun a “bubble hairdryer”, for fear they might get into gun crime. Creating a Facebook account as the family pet was normal practice among mothers of teenagers as the only guise in which their spawn would befriend them.
I deliberately left the worries in the book hanging, unanswered, because the essence of maternal anxiety is that you can’t win. Besides, the last thing the world needs is more parenting advice. I take more comfort in discovering that someone else is as neurotic as me. This is where Google is great. Finding you aren’t the first mother to ask “Is it normal for my child to hump things?” (high in Google’s predicted searches) is far more helpful, and entertaining, than Gina Ford or Penelope Leach.
Of course, one of the many perks of having children is that you finally stop obsessing about yourself. After years of worrying about your cellulite, your work emails, your Twitter following, your anxiety problem and so on, you start putting someone else first. Fretting about your child’s digestion and insomnia, rather than your own, may be nearly as narcissistic, but at least you can tell yourself it’s a noble cause. Now, does pesto (homemade, not jar) count as one of my fussy eater’s five a day?
You know you’re a neurotic mother when…
Worry with Mother: 101 Neuroses for the Modern Mama (Portico £9.99). To buy it for £9.49 (inc p&p), call 0845 271 2135 or visit The Sunday Times Bookshop