The ideal of the mother, who is always there but should never complain about the strains of motherhood, is still far too present for the Berlin author Lea Streisand. Now, in a column, she has called on mothers to complain publicly.
Berlin – “Howl!” Is the standard response from young people in this country when a complaint gets on their nerves. Whining – that has an unpleasant aftertaste. It sounds like exaggeration, like drama. Who wants to be branded as someone who complains all the time? Better be silent then.
Many mothers know the feeling of not being taken seriously and prefer to keep dissatisfaction and overload to themselves. If you complain publicly – in your circle of friends or on social media – the strains of your motherhood, it often echoes back blankly: “You have all day, you are at home all day …” Such an echo comes from the best friend Parents and sometimes from your own partner.
The Berlin journalist Lea Streisand also became aware of the topic through a Twitter post, as she writes in her column for the taz. It says that mothers should complain less. In her column, Streisand also reports on the debate that followed the tweet, the tenor of which was: “In the war, in the GDR, in Senegal, it would have been much more difficult for women”. “A position that was supported primarily by women from the East who complain about West German middle-class mothers from Prenzlauer Berg,” writes Streisand.
Mothers bashing is contempt for women
But mother bashing is also popular in the here and now. As an example, Streisand cites numerous catchphrases that her aunt always launched: “Latte macchiato mothers” *, “1,000 euro prams”. In the aunt’s opinion, the mothers are “far too visible in everything they do”, whether breastfeeding, shopping or sitting on the bench in the park. “They don’t even go to work!” For her niece, such statements are a form of hatred of motherhood – “the most consensual form of contempt for women”.
But the Berlin author may not agree, instead she understands stressed mothers and points out that the often-heard sentence “Let me through, I’m a mother!” Could also mean in a broader sense that the child is at home with a fever lying in bed. Streisand thinks that mothers should speak out loud about their exhaustion these days. Away from the eternal ideal of the “invisible mother” who always only helps but never complains.
“I don’t feel like being accused of treating my child differently today than mothers in the GDR in 1976. I would only like to have half as many childcare options * as there were back then,” Streisand shoots at notorious mother complainers .
She is “very happy to live in a time in which a public discourse about exhaustion is possible and is not immediately delegated back into the private as complaining”. A situation that she would have allowed the mother generations before her. And so Streisand demands: “So whine, mothers, whine in public!” Because: Whining is a privilege. “* Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA
