Day 58: How to Abandon Your Children

I recently read an article in the New York Times about a new cultural antihero: mothers who disappear. It cites movies and books featuring mothers who leave their children to pursue careers, love affairs, or a chance to do that most blissful of activities: nothing. 

These pieces hint at an unsettling feeling among some mothers that their lives would be better without the role, a feeling of not having signed on for quite this much commitment, a balking at society’s insistence on mothers’ constant self-sacrifice. Also, they call out the double standard women face in this area. The dead-beat dad remains a well-worn trope, it argues, but the missing mother, not so much. 

Underneath this beats a deep longing for a life many moms have subjugated for so long, in which the only person we must take care of is us. 

In the interminable grind of pandemic-motherhood, these movies clearly strike a nerve, a sort of fear/fascination point from which we can't look away. We long to know what happens to these missing mothers: Do all their dreams come true? Or do they meet an untimely end, because the world does not allow mothers to abandon their children?

Well, my advice to all moms who have considered abandoning their children in favor of work, love, or themselves (maybe this includes all moms everywhere?): do it. 

Do it—frequently and in small doses—then come back, and re-engage your children, your family and your life. 

Do it so often and with such relish it becomes expected. Do it enough that being both a mom and a person no longer seems like a contradiction to you or anyone else.

Do it without guilt, remorse or inadequacy, and without fear of societal retribution or what other people will think (they will probably feel jealous and wonder what you have figured out that they haven’t). 

Just do it. 

Then, come back.

A New Mom 

I remember staying home with newborn Rebecca in her first few weeks. When I had to shower or use the bathroom, I brought her in with me and peeked out every few minutes to ensure she was fine in her carseat.

She was fine. 

And, of course, she would have been fine in her crib for 15 minutes while I took some human time, but as a new mom, I didn’t know this and no one had ever bothered to tell me. 

I also vividly remember one night in those first few months when Jesse came home after 7pm to find me at my wits’ end. Rebecca had fussed all day and refused to calm or sleep, so I had not taken any breaks, either. 

Jesse walked in to see me with the baby strapped to my chest and a crazed look in my eye, a la Katniss Everdeen, “If we burn, you burn with us!” The Hunger Games not being a great place to raise a baby, he carefully but forcefully extracted her from the Bjorn and sent me out to take a walk. 

Then, realizing how near I had come to a breaking point, Jesse started taking Rebecca for early morning walks so I could get some extra rest. These morning walks became some of his favorite times with Rebecca, too.

A Privileged Fantasy

Now, a valid criticism of the article holds these fantasies remain the province of mostly upper-middle class, privileged, white woman, and that for single mothers without “nannies, housekeepers and husbands willing to take up the slack” even the fantasy of abandoning one’s family is foreclosed. 

I agree with this. In fact, isn’t part of the reason the work-from-home class feels so squeezed by the pandemic their lack of access to previous childcare supports, such as older family members, schools, nannies, babysitters and daycares (staffed almost exclusively by non-white women of significantly less privilege)?

But mothers of color, single mothers, poor mothers and immigrant mothers also deserve time away from their responsibilities and the burdens of mothering. They also deserve time and space to be human—though their lack of privilege may make them feel less entitled to or hopeful about getting it.  

As Rachel Cargle, activist and founder of the Loveland Foundation which connects black women with black women therapists and funds their sessions, says, women of color deserve to be taken care of, nurtured, and have their needs met: without explanation or justification. 

It’s Mutually Beneficial 

So, Jesse, my parents, my in-laws, my friends, and a long list of daycare teachers, school teachers, aftercare teachers and babysitters have afforded me time away from my children, and, knowing they will receive competent care, time to take breaks.  

As long as you leave them someplace safe, leave for a reasonable amount of time, and faithfully come back, abandoning your children can rightly be called taking a break.

The time you can take will grow and change as your children do. Perhaps, as a stay at home mom of an infant, you can only undertake a 15-minute shower break or, with a bit of help, a quick walk around the block. Even if it is just an extra hour of rest each morning, take whatever tiny increments for yourself you can manage. 

The practice grows from there. As when experts recommend saving money by rounding up spare change or moving $1 at a time to savings, the amount matters less than getting in the habit, which, in this case, means separating from your children, your family and your duties.

Yes, in the moment with baby Becca strapped to my chest, I felt getting her to sleep was utterly urgent. I experienced her newborn emotional ups and downs so viscerally I could not rest until she did. 

But children’s needs and wants are relentless and their emotional ups and downs extreme (have you met a ‘tween? Homeschooling during a pandemic?). What children really need from us is consistent (notice I did not say constant!) presence, emotional placidity and a degree of emotional separation.

As our little ones (or medium ones, or even how-did-they-get-so-big ones) cry, rage or stress, they need us to acknowledge and validate their feelings, without actually feeling those feelings ourselves. 

They need us to be emotionally non-reactive and regulated when they are dysregulated. We act as a secure base they can return to, so they can calm down. 

Now, I am not saying you can't be in your feelings, too or you shouldn't attend to your children's feelings. Simply that your feelings and your children's should not always rise, fall and change in tandem—or in opposition. They should, in fact, be independent variables. 

The more you can meet your own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs, the better you can calmly and non-judgmentally assist your children in managing theirs.

So, for me this means taking breaks, separating, recognizing when I feel fried and reminding myself: although this, that and another thing may seem urgent, taking care of myself provides the base for making everything else work.

Healing in Relationship 

One of the books cited by the author features the main character leaving her family to “confront her troubled upbringing.” This becomes one of the most difficult parts in staying—and going. 

We have to confront our lives—our baggage, our insecurities and habitual responses, our trauma and anxiety—while we live them. While the novel questions what happens when a mother trades her current family for the chance to grapple with her past, and I bet we can imagine a mother who dotingly cares for her family but denies her past ever happened, we all face the challenge of reconciling our past while keeping our lives in motion. 

Maintaining your boundaries while also maintaining an intimate connection with others requires constant negotiation and balance. It proves so difficult that giving oneself up completely (the path of emotional martyrdom) or actually abandoning your children (for good) seems easier. 

But, when mothers do leave their children (unlike the white, wealthy, privileged visions presented in these stories), it’s often not a dalliance—and it’s often not even a choice. It often results from sexual abuse, drug abuse, adverse childhood experiences, racism, institutionalization, incarceration, mental illness, and generational trauma they have not had the resources or support to address. 

Children lose mothers every day to addiction, suicide, intimate partner violence, the state, and now COVID, which experts say has orphaned 175,000 children in the United States. And it does not look glamorous at all.

The Gift of Being Alone 

“Being alone, that is a mother’s reasonable and functionally impossible dream,” Hess writes. But I wonder what is stopping her, me or any of us? Have we set boundaries? Are we attempting to hold them? 

What kind of support would enable us to let go of fantasizing about leaving our children? And how can we line it up, go out and get it, or ask for it? What kind of breaks would we need? Rest assured, taking those breaks would cause a lot less damage and heartbreak than leaving for good. 

Taking breaks is necessary, healthy and completely okay. And by taking them, we offer ourselves a chance to heal old wounds and help our children learn to stay. 

It also offers the twin benefits of preparing us and our children for the future. It prepares us for the eventual day when our children become old enough to leave us, G-d willing, so we can confidently walk into a new future knowing our identity extends beyond kissing booboos and buttering toast. 

It also models for our children, especially our daughters, how to function as mothers themselves. Whenever I question whether to take time away from my family or not (a weekend at a silent retreat, yes please. Doing a workout in the morning? Um hm. Taking a walk with Jesse on the weekends, absolutely!), I imagine my children grown up with children of their own. 

Do I hope they will deny themselves pleasures like this? Do I want to doom them to a lifetime of “selfless devotion” and see them practice asceticism when it comes to getting what they need? Of course not. I want them to advocate for themselves and establish their lives so they can get their needs—and a lot of their wants—met. 

You see, the choice between abandonment and selfless devotion isn’t binary. It should not and cannot be.

Perhaps instead of running away from motherhood and running toward other things—work, affairs, addiction, escape—the path forward isn’t about running at all. Perhaps it is about staying put, holding one’s space just exactly where and how you are. 

Perhaps it means abandoning whatever expectations and societal learning makes others wants and needs so much more important than our own. 

And, yes, perhaps it even means abandoning your children—when your own needs cry out for attention, when your heart needs succor and rest, when the overwhelm threatens to overwhelm you—and taking a break. 

Take a timeout. Rest and regroup. Make a new game plan. Ask for help. Just breathe for five minutes. Then, come back. 

In the intricate dance of a self in relation to loved ones, give and withhold, set boundaries and feel expansive, love them and yourself. 

And, over and over again, come back.