How Baby

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest, particularly the large ‘homemaking’ sections. On one hand, it’s a good place to go if I need inspiration for a cool project I probably couldn’t come up with on my own. On the other hand, though, it’s kind of like drinking from a firehose, and the net result is this overwhelming guilt  that I’ll never live up to this fictional mother I’ve created in my head, who saves scraps of fabric for crafts, makes sensory bags for her baby, only eats seasonal produce, and always has the right holiday decorations up in her house.

I think that there’s always been pressure to live up to a certain standard of motherhood — first, because your family would die if you didn’t, but later, simply because culture had gotten so pervasive and memetic that these standards could be enforced on a societal level. June Cleaver was just as much of an unattainable ideal, sure, but there are <i>so many</i> Junes on the internet, it’s hard not to feel like you’re the garbage mother if you’re not making customized bentos or teaching your baby a second language or whatever.