Don’t let “pretending to be a good mother” get you down

“Pretending to be a good mom” is really tiring. One day you may be completely overwhelmed by the high \”emotional cost\”. Because in addition to physical labor and mental labor, raising children also requires a kind of hard work called \”emotional labor.\” Have you ever been like me and found it strange that your child is older and doesn’t need to be breastfed, fed, or held, so why do you feel more tired than before? One day, I told my colleague sister (she has a Ph.D. in the Psychology Department of Beijing Normal University) about a lot of hardships, and she mentioned a concept that suddenly made me realize it. She said that as a mother, in addition to physical and mental labor, there is also a hard work that is often overlooked. This is what American sociologist Hochschild calls \”emotional labor.\” Holding the child, feeding the child, dressing him, bathing him… these are physical labors. After a long time, we will have backache and body fatigue. Read together with your children, teach them to read and learn English, accompany them to learn Mathematical Olympiad, learn piano, and play chess… These are mental tasks. After a long time, we will feel dizzy and have brain pain. We are tired of \”pretending to be a good mother\” in front of our children for a long time! The naughty boy has thrown his rice on the ground for the tenth time. I started yelling and acting bad in public again. I have been doing homework for 20 minutes, laughing and joking, and haven\’t written a word. … Do normal people have to be anxious and angry? However, as a \”good mother\”, we must not be anxious, angry, scolded, or violent. We must suppress the surging anxiety, anger, sadness, etc. in our hearts, and try our best to show the emotions and attitudes that a mother should have, such as gentleness. Her posture, motherly smile and tone, this extremely hard work is called \”emotional labor\”. However, why do some mothers lose control of their emotions when faced with naughty children, while others are fine? Sociologists Glomb & Tews decompose emotions into two dimensions: one represents our true mood, called emotional feelings; one represents the emotions we show, called emotional expressions; the greater the difference between emotional expressions and emotional feelings, the greater our The more emotional labor you put in, the harder it is. Faced with various disobedient and devastating \”bear behaviors\” of children every day, we feel very bad emotionally and want to be angry and violent. However, the \”standard of a good mother\” requires us to be positive, happy, optimistic, gentle, How to make up for such a huge gap in calm emotions? We have only these two choices: one is to change our emotional expression, which, to put it bluntly, is all kinds of superficial \”pretending\”. We pretend to be happy, pretend to be fine, and hide bad emotions. This choice requires more emotional labor. The second is to change emotional feelings, which is to persuade ourselves and tell ourselves that bad emotions are not our only choice. No matter which method of emotional labor you choose, as long as you put in the labor, you expect something in return (the smiling waiter will definitely want you to buy something). Don’t ask for gratitude from your children, just ask them to behave appropriately, be a good boy. But efforts may not necessarily be rewarded, or the rewards may be pitiful. The child may continue to throw away the food for the eleventh time; continue to cry in full view of the public; continue to be idle and not study seriously. Since the return is so uncertain, we can only reduce our efforts as much as possible, because any effort that is higher than the return will be difficult to persist. \”Pretending to be a good mother\”, one day, the dam will be burst by the surging anxiety, anger, sadness, and loss, and the result will be a complete emotional loss. In daily life, we see some mothers suddenly losing control of their emotions, or acting extremely out of control in the news. One of the reasons is that emotional labor exceeds the limit. Therefore, changing emotional expression can only cure the symptoms (which may be feasible in the short term). The fundamental cure lies in adjusting our emotional feelings. But can emotional feelings change? The theory of positive psychology believes that bad emotional feelings seem to be uncontrollable on the surface, but in fact they are our subjective choices and we rationalize the existing results. For example, in this math test, the child scored 60 points, which is far from the 100 points we expected. If we \”choose\” to think about a dozen classmates in the class who got 100 points in the exam, our disappointment may continue to intensify and even turn into anger; if we \”choose\” to think about the fact that he only got 50 points in the last exam, this time By passing the test and making progress, our disappointment can be diluted. Difficult facts cannot be changed, but we can choose to \”view the facts more positively\” in order to adjust our bad emotional feelings. Thinking more about how lovely our children once were and exploring the \”comforting\” side of things will greatly reduce the hard emotional labor and make our lives much easier. In the process of raising children, each of us wants to be a \”good mother\”, and sometimes we \”pretend\” from the bottom of our hearts that we are. But I want to say that it is not terrible to be unable to control our emotions occasionally. What is terrible is that we control our emotions every day. A business that cannot make ends meet is unsustainable, and one day it will be overwhelmed by high costs. And here we only include the emotional cost of children\’s projects, as well as husbands, parents, parents-in-law… Therefore, you must be more positive, more open-minded, and be kind to yourself to make yourself truly happy.