You know the saying, motherhood/parenting doesn’t come in manual, right?
Well, imagine if it did. Imagine if there was a manual written by some scientist that had all the answers and tricks and hacks to everything related to motherhood? Covering everything from breastfeeding/formula feeding to teething to schedule/routine management to reflux to naps to transitioning from one child to two - I mean EVERYTHING.
Will you buy it?
I for one, probably will not simply because even before I became a mother, I knew that motherhood means different things to different people. I knew that parenting looks different in some parts of this country than it does in other parts of this same country. In the same light, parenting in remote and desolate parts of Africa and south Asia significantly differs from parenting in the UK and Canada. There simply is not, and cannot, be a one-size fits all book. There are way too many factors that affect our parenting choices/styles/beliefs/methods. This multi-factorial foundation of parenting makes the existence of a one-sized fit all approach to parenting impossible.
So, thinking of it from that angle should encourage us to embrace the fact that motherhood CANNOT in fact, come in a manual.
Inherent in the blessing of motherhood is the ability for us to bask in the joy that comes after we can figure things out ourselves. After we have learned our children the way they ARE as opposed to how the handbook told us they’re supposed to be.
After we’ve mastered the art of dealing with tantrums (do we ever really ?)and have perfected little hacks for calming our little(s) down. You know those little hacks that help the baby eat a little more food and go to sleep just a little faster? Yes, those certainly cannot be memorialized and put in a book.
Simply put, the blessings/struggles/ joys/ trials of motherhood are too divergent to be in a book, and that in and of itself is worth celebrating.
Now a book celebrating motherhood that I will buy for sure.
What are your thoughts?
If there was a handbook about everything about motherhood and parenting, would you buy it?
Does it matter if it was written by a man or woman?