"They got married and lived happily ever after."
 
The prince had acquired a small fortune by investing in mutual funds, and he and Rapunzel were able to live independently of his parents’ money.  When little Princes and Rapunzels came along, the Prince’s sister watched the kids once a week so that the happy couple could have time together or with friends, and the Prince reduced his work hours so that he could be home early in the afternoon and Rapunzel could have some time to herself in the attic, which had been converted to an art studio.  Having grown up in a tower, she felt very at home in this space.  Rapunzel’s mothering years were full of idyllic, precocious children who made their own beds and despised candy.  She always knew exactly how to answer their questions and never made a harmful decision.  All of the little Rapunzels and little Princes grew up well-adjusted and socially conscious; among them were two Nobel Laureates and no jealousy.  The eldest little Rapunzel was a gifted writer and dedicated all of her books to her
 mother, in gratitude for guiding her to becoming the independent, self-assured woman she was.
 
Ah, fairytales.

A girl’s relationship to her parents, especially her mother, forms her expectations of what kind of adult she should become.  Psychological theories abound, but whether you idolize your mother or have what feminist Adrienne Rich calls, “Matriphobia,” the fear of becoming like your mother, what’s certain is that she has an immeasurable influence on how you develop into an adult.  This is undoubtedly part of why so many people are in therapy today.

The mother figure in our lives is our model for our conduct in the home and the world.  To some extent, so are the mother figures portrayed in the media.  How many of us had tea parties, made up of various friends—real or imagined—enacting the social ritual of sharing food and gossip? In makeup and plastic jewelry, we did our best to mock the grownups we saw in life or on television.  But how realistic is this picture?  I know my mother and her friends seldom had time to sit and chat, pinkie fingers pointed stiffly toward the air gripping a teacup, in a room with white carpeting.  The closest it came was family gatherings, when they’d run each other over in the kitchen while the kids played and the men stood in a circle around the barbeque.  The women would socialize while cleaning up spills and children, eating last, and then cleaning the house in a collective effort.

Are these the only two choices?  Our mothers tell us they want us to do better for ourselves than they did, but what does this entail?  Having more children?  Getting an education?  “Marrying better” on the financial ladder? Climbing the financial ladder ourselves?  Does it mean none of these?  Does it mean all of these?  For all her importance in shaping our perception, how supportive will she be if our idea of “better” differs from hers?

During motherhood, the pressure to be perfect does not go away. Rather, a person’s children become one more measure of their success.  In addition to being youthful and attractive all her life, a woman who is a mother also has to be wise, protective, encouraging, disciplinary, cautious, adventurous, suspicious, trustful, and a million other contradictions simultaneously in order to raise a functional, well-adjusted human being in addition to herself.  In a sense, you are a large component in the assembly line of producing a quality product.  A complicated, individual, (possibly stubborn) human product.  The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.Often a mother’s hard work to provide for her children goes unnoticed and unacknowledged, because sacrifice is an accepted component to parenting: mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off.  They are the vacationless class. The rise in single-mother families means more women are raising children without a husband’s help, complicating the job even more.  
Children are a lifelong commitment, and it’s hard to say if you can ever really be prepared for how they’ll change your life.

~Liz Leøn