When you’re a mom, it feels natural to put others’ needs first. Of course, you get up every two hours to feed the baby, even though you’re deliriously tired. Naturally, this segues into letting the hungry toddler eat your snack and letting the preschooler pick the music for the car ride (K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack on repeat).
Before long, there comes a family movie night where you want to watch “Coco,” but everyone else wants “The Nightmare Before Christmas”…so guess what you all end up watching? It doesn’t matter; you tell yourself as long as everyone else is happy.
Eventually, there are flashing multicolored lights on the Christmas tree instead of elegant white ones. You wear the itchy sweater gifted by an elderly relative. You get stuck on a zip line at Treetop Adventures because you ignore your fear of heights (this happens enough that they grab a stepladder and rescue you without batting an eye).
In extreme cases, after years of children’s pleading, you get a dog.
Repeat for five, 10, 15 years. 20 if you caved on the dog.
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And there you are, careening down the slippery slope of pleasing others. It’s no wonder that by middle age, some of my Gen X friends and I have lost touch with what we actually enjoy. By prioritizing what our children, pets, and elders want, we’ve forgotten to consider our own likes and dislikes.
I recently had a wake-up call from a headline on the satirical humor site The Onion: “Mom hasn’t ordered favorite pizza topping in over a decade.” These ten words and their accompanying illustration of a resigned-looking woman with a practical short haircut pack as much punch as some novels. When was the last time I demanded everyone eat my favorite pizza topping? What even is my favorite pizza topping?
This headline is in opposition to the popular saying, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” But what if momma doesn’t know if she’s happy, because she’s putting her own needs aside to keep things running smoothly? What if Momma has forgotten what her favorite pizza topping is (onions? pineapple?) because there was no point thinking about it?
I don’t want to be a martyr. I want to take up space in my own family. I want my needs and opinions to be respected and valued. But sometimes I’d rather eat pepperoni pizza in peace than my favorite topping (sausage? olives?) with grousing and eye rolls.
I’m not the only one who was jolted by this headline. My friend Kelly, a fellow Gen X Belmont mom, would love to have fish for dinner sometimes, but no one else likes it. I, of course, texted the Onion headline about our poor pizza-deprived mom and how I think about it all the time. “Oh my God,” agreed Kelly. “I remember that one, and it hit me so hard!”
For Kelly, it was a wake-up call. “I started ordering what I wanted after that article,” she says. It’s true that family life flows more smoothly in the short term when mom puts her own needs in the back seat. Family life is a marathon, though. If you want to keep going without burning out, you need to be the one to pick the topping sometimes. That’s why Kelly and I will be enjoying our favorite pizza (mushroom!) in the near future.
Jessica Barnard has lived in Belmont since 2010 with her husband and two children. She is an administrator at Harvard University, a writer, and a Town Meeting member. Her website is jessicaclembarnard.com.
