Moms have a very tough job. I wouldn’t want that job for anything. They are required to be loving but stern, playful but practical, and occasionally they have to be, um, please excuse the term, they have to be complete bitches. It’s true. It is actually written in the job description of being a mother. They have to do it. Because if the character of loving, caring, sweet mother didn’t occasionally morph into an insane angry female Beelzebub, then nothing would get done around the house, ever.
You see, fathers and children (in most cases the term “father” is synonymous with “immature child”) need mothers to survive. When it comes to dads, other than wrestling with kids in the house (resulting in broken furniture and bruised kids) and playing catch (breaking windows and hitting kids in the face), fathers are darn near worthless. Children are nothing more than little mobile trash entities that eat all day long and leave garbage everywhere they go. If kids and dads were allowed to roam the earth alone, the end result would be a huge wrestling match on an enormous pile of garbage. Now you can see why the WWE is so popular; professional wrestling has tapped into the pulse of dads’ and kids’ primal idiotic urges.
Luckily, we have mothers. Mothers walk into the living room and turn off the TV when they see dads and kids vegging out while watching a guy on steroids hit another guy over the head with a folding chair. Mothers say things like “brush your teeth,” “comb your hair,” and “clip your toenails.” And that’s just when she’s talking to dad. Kids are told to “pick up their rooms,” “rinse their dishes,” and “eat some fruit.” Kids and dads need to hear these things, but nobody enjoys being nagged. And that is the crux of motherhood. You tell your husband to brush his teeth because you are saving him the agony of getting a cavity filled at the dentist, and does your husband thank you? Nope. He rolls his eyes, looks at the kids, and mocks you. Motherhood is the ultimate thankless profession.
At my house, the teams are always kids and dad versus mom. No question. I always play good cop to mom’s bad cop. I let her do all of the heavy lifting when it comes to parenting, while I do the fun stuff, like build train sets. The completely unfair part of it is, I allow her to do the things that need to be done, like disciplining our kids when they do something wrong. But then, when she isn’t around, I throw her under the bus and let the kids know that I’m on their side and that I think, “Mom was being a little extra mean today.” I recognize that this behavior is totally uncool. Mom is just trying to raise the best kids (and husband) she can, and she gets sold out by her own spouse, her partner. It sucks, but it’s the job of Mom.
Here is an example of how it happens. Last week, the end of summer, my kids and I were doing a whole lot of nothing. We lounged around in the heat, eating food that mom cooked for us and leaving ice-cream wrappers all over the living room. Mom realized that nobody was doing anything productive, so she planned a last-minute camping/water skiing trip. I immediately balked at the idea, because I knew getting the motor home and ski boat ready to go would be a ton of work for me. Yes, I actually complained about going on vacation. The kids complained, too, because they would have to get off the couch and do stuff like bicycle and kayak and other fun things. Mom came up with a good plan, and we rewarded her by whining.
Then it was time to get ready to go on the trip. Preparing for a big excursion like this takes an enormous amount of pre-planning, reservations, directions, budgeting, laundry, cleaning, packing, and shopping. Mom does all of this. In return, all Mom asks is for the kids and dad to help her unload the groceries from the car and fill up the motor home. A simple task, right? Wrong. Kids and dads are unable to recognize all of the hard work mom has done up to this point to make this trip come together. All they see is mom nagging at them to do trivial labor. This is when Mom, my wife, whom I love, becomes “the bitch.”
“I need you guys to get me all of the cold groceries out of the car first so I can get them into the RV refrigerator.”
My kids bring her a bag of chips.
My wife begins yelling from the RV: “Where is the yogurt? I bought 10 things of yogurt and I only have one! Where is the rest of the yogurt?!”
I show up at the RV door with a case of beer: “This can go in the refrigerator.”
“No. That goes into the ice chest! Where is the yogurt?! I bought us some yogurt!”
All the kids and I hear is Mom losing her mind over yogurt. To us, she sounds crazed. But it isn’t about yogurt. She’s frustrated with us and she knows that if she doesn’t start yelling, we will wander around in the front yard for a week and never make it to the lake. She needs to kick things up into bitch mode for us all to eventually make it to our vacation and have a good time. She has to be the bad guy for her family, which she cares about, to enjoy themselves. Do we appreciate what she is doing for us? No. Of course not. The kids and I just look at each other, make faces behind her back, and use our fingers to make devil horns on our heads and laugh. Like I said, Mom is the toughest job in the universe.
At the lake, Rob’s wife cooked in the RV while Rob played catch with the kids outside and showed them how to have a good time.
This article appears in Aug 19-26, 2010.