Guilt - Issue No. 12
MOM GUILT AND LIZZO
It’s the new year, a season full of opportunity, cold days, and long nights. It’s a time to bundle up, long for greenery, be grateful for the mosquito respite, and oscillate between fighting and succumbing to our body’s desire to hunker down in a resting state. It’s a time to reflect, start anew, and make changes. At least for me, change and guilt seem strangely connected. And, as I’ve found my guilt to be abounding, I’d prefer to start this year with less of it. So, for 2023, I am setting out to recognize the surprisingly radical idea, first brought to me by Dr. Becky, that two things can be true. Here are two examples of this idea in parenting and in my marriage. My daughter doesn’t like what I’ve made for dinner and wants pasta instead. Two things can be true: one of my jobs is to serve meals that nourish our bodies, and this is what I’ve prepared, and within it, I know she can find something she’ll eat. It is also true that my daughter feels frustrated because she lacks power in choosing what is on her plate. She is in charge of her feelings and is allowed to feel disappointed that we can’t eat pasta every night. Two things can be true: My husband can want me to be more direct in voicing my needs, and I can want him to know what I need without me voicing it. Neither is right. Rather, if both things can be true, instead of getting so wrapped up in defending our own case, we can listen to hear instead of listening to respond, which results in the most magical of feelings: feeling seen. Then, we can work towards resolution together.
But back to abounding mom-guilt in the new year. My two-year-old son started school this month, and from 8:30 to 1:00pm, three days per week, I am in my house by myself for the first time since my daughter was born four years ago. We are three weeks into this new routine, and here are some discoveries I’ve made at this point. Two things can be true: I can feel so excited to drop my kids off, and also find my house eerily quiet while I’m missing them. I can find this recharge time necessary for being the mom I want to be, and I can also question whether I should be un-pausing my career now that I have any time that is my own. I can be astounded by how consuming my two little humans are, and I can question whether I want one more. I can want to clean and exercise and sleep and veg and meal prep and get coffee with a friend and read and walk the dog. I can want to write as much as possible, and also want to sink into my couch, uninterrupted, and watch every steamy scene of Outlander on full volume. I can witness a messy home, a dishwasher ready to be unloaded, laundry ready to be folded, a dog desperate to be walked, a counter covered in the remains of breakfast, and decide that the best use of my time is blasting Lizzo and having a solitary dance party in my kitchen. And, sure, I can still feel guilt, it seems inextricably linked to motherhood, and I can also feel so incredibly good letting go of the “should haves’” and “need tos” and dancing. I can wish I had more time before picking up two cranky kids, who will resolutely refuse the naps they need in order to not have the biggest of feelings for the rest of the afternoon, and also know that there is nowhere else I’d rather be as they run into my arms in the school pick up line. Two things can be true: I can love being a mom and love the moments of not mom-ing. I can work to improve myself while accepting myself, I can want to get it all done and want to get nothing done at all, I can listen to my gut and hold value in each of my truths.
THE FATEFUL FORESKIN
In 2020, when my son was born, like the majority of other parents in the United States, we chose to have him circumcised. Here were my three main reasons:
This is what the majority of people do in our country, and that way he will feel “normal.”
Circumcision reduces his risk of contracting HIV and other STDs.
A circumcised penis is easier to keep clean.
We went back and forth on this decision several times. I felt certain from the beginning that we should circumcise, but my husband questioned whether or not we should leave our son “intact.” So, while we debated the name of our unborn child, we also, like many, debated the fate of his foreskin.
Two years and one circumcision later, while driving to Target and listening to what I’ve otherwise identified to be a fairly inconsequential Podcast called Flightless Bird, my perspective shifted.
In the United States, the default is circumcising penises. This is basically what my OBGYN said when I asked her for her insight on what we should do with my son. According to the Flightless Bird Podcast, “at least 70% of American penises are circumcised, that’s about 150 million men, and some studies have that number even higher at 92%.” However, a 2013 C.D.C. report that “analyzed decades of hospital data found that the national rate of newborn circumcision dropped from about 65 percent to about 58 percent between 1979 and 2010.” However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the true percentage is higher because circumcision isn’t “routinely documented on the hospital discharge sheet used to collate the data, and, furthermore, post-neonatal circumcisions for religious or medical reasons are not captured. Community surveys have found higher neonatal male circumcision prevalence of 76–92%.” Whatever the actual percentage of male circumcision is in the United States, it is significantly higher than the 30% of males with circumcised penises worldwide.
Circumcision is one of the oldest and most common procedures done in certain religions, mainly among Muslims and Jews. And, likely, as a religious practice, this is something that will continue. However, circumcision as a cultural norm is much more recent and complicated, and it begs the question, who are we circumcising for? Throughout history, certain sects have promoted circumcision in effect to reduce sexual desire and enjoyment. In the Victorian era, circumcision was promoted in large part, because it was believed that sex for pleasure instead of reproduction was wrong. The removal of foreskin, some believed, would lead to less masturbation and more focus on studies. Many men for centuries since have worked hard to disprove this theory. Then in the 20th century, according to the Flightless Bird podcast, when medicine became more of a “procedure-enterprise – the more surgeries done, the more money made, circumcision became a big business.” So, in an effort to go beyond the “they’re all doing it, so we’re going to do it too” approach, here are some of the most convincing reasons I have found to circumcise or to leave a penis “intact.”
PRO-CIRCUMCISION:
Reduction of HIV and Other STDs - According to the CDC, “Male circumcision can reduce a male’s chances of acquiring HIV by 50% to 60% during heterosexual contact with female partners with HIV, according to data from three clinical trials. Circumcised men compared with uncircumcised men have also been shown in clinical trials to be less likely to acquire new infections with syphilis (by 42%), genital ulcer disease (by 48%), genital herpes (by 28% to 45%), and high-risk strains of human papillomavirus associated with cancer (by 24% to 47% percent)... In observational studies, circumcision has also been shown to lower the risk of penile cancer, [and] cervical cancer in female sexual partners.” Circumcision has also been shown to reduce the risk of infant urinary tract infections in boys under 2 from 1 percent to .1 percent.
PRO-INTACT:
Medical Promotion of Circumcision Could Use More Conclusive Research - According to this New York Times article, “the studies that showed how circumcision reduced the transmission of H.I.V., were done in Africa, where overall H.I.V. rates are much higher, and where, unlike in the United States, heterosexual sex is the main mode of transmission. (Studies investigating whether circumcision helps protect against H.I.V. in men who have sex with men have been inconclusive.)” And ultimately, “researchers don’t yet fully understand the mechanism by which circumcision reduces H.I.V.” While circumcision has been shown to reduce the risk of certain health conditions, UTIs, and sexually transmitted diseases, it has not been shown to reduce it enough for the American Association of Pediatrics to officially recommend circumcision, though they have said that "the medical benefits outweigh the risks."
Keeping it Clean - An argument that I had heard and then subsequently used in support of circumcision is that it helps to keep the penis clean. This seemed like a sound argument, as most do, until you hear a convincing counter. And here it is: Just like cleaning your feet, you are taught basic hygiene as a child and are assisted with doing it until you can be trusted to do it yourself. You don’t cut off a child’s toes to protect against fungus or pull their teeth, so they don’t get cavities. Rather, you simply teach them and work with them on effective and sustainable hygiene practices.
Matching the Crowd - While circumcision is the norm in the United States, it is not for so many other areas of the world. And, who is to say whether it will continue to be done with the same frequency here. Similar to any other kind of peer pressure, just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t seem like the most compelling argument to do it too. The United States’ propensity for polluting, producing highly-processed food, and not supporting a woman’s right to choose, clearly shows that we don’t have it all figured out yet.
Cost/Benefits Analysis - One of the main arguments I have heard in defense of circumcision is that the “health benefits outweigh the risks.” However, this is actually a pretty complicated comparison to consider. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, or in this case, eggplants to bananas. The foreskin is packed with nerve endings, it is an epicenter of pleasure and a natural lubricant. How can one conclusively know if an elective genital modification surgery to reduce potential risks is worth how it will forever impact the pleasure that a person feels from their penis? Especially, when the person whose penis will be forever altered has no say in it?
Ultimately, this is more than I ever anticipated writing about penises, especially the one that belongs to my son. Similar to so many areas in the field of maternal health, I’ve been surprised at how difficult it has been to find information on this subject, and what little accessible research is out there. This is certainly not a call to action and I definitely don’t have all of the data or the answer, I’m not sure we ever do. But, at the risk of proselytizing and with very little recourse, this is the information I wish I had had when we were deciding the fate of a foreskin.
COLLECTING WORMS
"Do you know how much I love you?" I often ask my daughter. She’ll peel her arms apart, lengthening her wing span, “this much?” She’ll ask. To which, I always respond “more.” And then we try to stretch our arms as far out and back as possible, which is more of a testament to flexibility than anything, our shoulder blades inching closer together, failing every time to have our wingspan encapsulate our love. But, perhaps, instead, the acts of service I’ve found innately tied to parenthood, might better demonstrate my devotion. For instance, rising every night from the deepest measure of my sleep to find “Sparkle,” the tiny-limbed unicorn, who habitually performs a vanishing act beneath my daughter’s covers around 2am. Or cleaning up my daughter’s things from the kitchen table before lunch time because “[she’s] very busy writing a song about milk and [she] needs to go practice outside.”
Or having spent the past four months jackhammering, pulling up roots and fencing, hauling away hunks of cement to the dump, leveling the dirt, installing a playground and adding woodchips to our backyard, and then, on the first weekend after the playground has been fortified, instead of standing back and watching our children enjoy it, we are on the ground digging for worms. This is a metaphor for the humbling nature of parenthood. You pour your time and resources into erecting the most perfect of playsets, only for your child to discover a newfound fascination for the worms that have always been there. The week prior I had taken my daughter to the zoo. She didn’t care at all about the elephant having breakfast twenty feet from where we were standing, the baby monkey riding on the mama monkey’s stomach, the lions’ synchronized roars. She wanted only to ride the train and the merry-go-round. But, these worms, she is captivated by their wriggly bodies as she squeezes them between her fingers. So, I participate in the worm massacre, introducing dying worms to dying worms in a mason jar which will become waterlogged when she leaves the container out that night next to our neglected play set. “Do you know how much I love you?”, I want to say, that no matter how hard I work, what I give, how I try, it never feels like it could possibly be enough.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
This past week, I swallowed my “I would nevers” and my “how am I damaging him later ons” and had my husband turn my son’s doorknob around so we could lock him in his room. Prior to solitary, there were eight long weeks in which my son had been free-range, not confined by a crib (which he started climbing out of at 20 months old) or a “parent-grip door knob” (which strangely seemed less cruel and worked until eight weeks ago).
In short, he let the power go to his head. Our little dictator of the night, with reign of the house, had been found nightly upstairs, downstairs, and on the stairs with a befuddled look of boundless freedom and exhaustion on his face. This occurred after having to put him to bed roughly 37 times in a given night. When he wasn’t wandering around the house, he was creeping into our room in the wee hours of the morning, without a plan upon arrival. The first time he scampered to my side of the bed (he has two paces: still and scamper) I pulled him into bed, and we fell sound asleep, with his head on my shoulder, within minutes. I hadn’t felt the stillness of his busy body on me in so long. Listening to what Sylvia Plath once deemed “moth-breath” and feeling his warmth against mine was a lovely mistake. Because then he expected the same experience night after night, but with less sleeping and more somersaults on my head. I shouldn’t have let him crawl into bed, I set a precedent and sacrificed our sleep. He left me no choice; it seems that I couldn’t have the snuggles and the sleep.
The first couple of days were a heartbreaking test of endurance, watching him scream “help me! I need you” on the monitor as his tired head held up his body by leaning it against the door. Then he’d try the doorknob again and scream “it’s broken”, without the understanding that those he was calling on for help were those who had locked him in to begin with. My rationalization has been: the world is a fascinating place with so much to explore, and we are giving him the gift of boundaries on when and how he explores it. We are eliminating distraction and giving his body permission to sleep. And, within a few days, we were all sleeping again, soundly and deeply and in the confines of our rooms.
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
I set September 30th as our “due date” to decide whether or not we would have a third and final child, a “caboose” of sorts. I put it on our calendar in April, which probably says a lot about me, but I wanted to make sure we had many months to anticipate the decision day. Spoiler alert, it is roughly three months past September and we have yet to decide whether we should create and raise a whole third human. So, every few weeks, my husband and I have been checking in. We have both gone back and forth for a multitude of reasons. Generally, my heart says yes and my head says no during these check-ins. Without disclosing the deepest inner workings of our family, here are some of my thoughts.
Heart - Bring On That Baby: When I picture our family, I picture three; I’d like to do it all one more time; I’m not ready, in some ways, to be out of this chaotic stage of our life.
Head - Two is Plenty: Everything, including ourselves, would be spread thinner. Would I be the mother to three that I could be to two? Could we travel like we want to with three? Would our marriage be getting the time and energy it needs? Would three limit my ability to pursue my career? Three pregnancies, three c-sections, and nursing three babies is a lot for my body.
So, the other night, my husband, for the first time during our check-in, voiced that he was feeling more definitively “no” than he has before. That night, I dreamt that my son and I were in the backyard with a few other people, and I lost him. He went out of our back gate and then was gone. I began frantically searching for him, going door to door and to schools and hospitals, but nobody was taking me seriously. I felt like he was getting further away and I was losing my ability to breathe. I woke up, saw his little body in the monitor, knees tucked under him, his butt up in the air, and realized that the dream was perhaps not about him but about the idea of losing a child I’ve never had. Letting go of an idea of what could have been and what might never be. I suppose we all do this when we make decisions, not have crazy anxiety dreams like me, but, rather, envision our lives one way and then have to continue living and breathing and moving forward when we’ve lost part of what we thought that picture would look like. Making choices without resentment, trying to find resolution without regret, feeling loss for something you’ve never had, realizing that more of your life is out of your control than you’d like. Like so many things in life, I think I was unrealistically hoping that someone would plop an answer on my lap on September 30 that felt complete and right. And as it turns out, yet again, that’s not how life or decisions work.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
In the winter, while I still love eating salads, I like them to be a bit hardier and more filling. This is one of my favorite "fancy salad night" recipes for this time of year. While I have yet to accomplish the feat of having my children enjoy a salad, they do like the parts of this salad. I usually put the farro in a cast iron with a little olive oil and parmesan on medium-high heat before adding it to the salad to give it a little more flavor and texture. To add some protein, we sometimes eat this salad with grilled salmon on top. Here is the recipe from Delish.
