I Am My Kid's Mom And I Like When You Call Me That
Some outspoken moms are offended that their names are erased from public interactions as parents and replaced with "Mom." I cannot relate.
Hello Individualistic Joiners (the most clunky and odd greeting I hope to ever greet you with),
I’m just in heaven over here with all of you new subscribers coming in (I’ve gotten more than a dozen alerts while writing that half a sentence – and believe this, I open every single one to see who the subscriber is and what else you subscribe to and then I look at your Substacks if you have them and marvel at the amazing work you’re doing there and pretty often then write you a note about how the work is so awesome that I greedily want it here on AJPT. I’ve made three assignments that way today. It’s the giving and taking season, after all! And clearly I’m obsessed with you….).
I’m also in heaven over how many of you AJPT newcomers I already have long loving histories with, dating back to Sassy magazine, or Jane, or their oft-maligned and misunderstood little sis-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks, xoJane. And the reason I started this with that awkward greeting is because I was attempting to summarize how much it has meant to me at all of these publications that people (you) who are so independent minded and so NOT followers would come together in these places. It creates the most unique community and a comment section that’s never dull and never filled with, “Hey, great story! Read mine!” though that is allowed too. Some of our best content is in the comments, for sure. (And you regulars all know that I particularly love the fights, er debates and disagreements, there.) Anyway, I admire you all so much and appreciate you bringing your uniqueness here to make AJPT the weird and wild world it is.
Now. For those of you who are brand spanking new here but read any of those past publications, Sassy, Jane or xoJane, I made a little reading list the other day for fans of those who are just joining AJPT, in case you missed that. I’ll also point out for anyone who has found AJPT more recently that if I had to suggest one thing to read, which is hard, it would be actually four things because it’s a four part series from a writer who uncovered her husband’s affair and the unique and bold way she dealt with it. It starts here (when she was still using the pseudonym Amelia and not showing her face) and you’re luckier than me because those of us who read it in real time had to wait grueling weeks between entries, but you get to binge it all at once. You’re welcome! Also, if there’s anything else you find while you’re looking around that you particularly like, let me know in the comments. I read every single comment that comes in on the site whether it’s on an old piece or a new one. To reiterate, I’m obsessed with you.
So, it is a super happy holidays for me, thanks to all of you! And now let’s get on to this interesting piece. I relate to a LOT of it, with my one kid and my thrill still 23 years later at being called “Charlotte’s mom.” (I also call my own mom “Jane’s Mom,” alluding to the title of her advice column in Jane magazine, which many, including my best friend Michael, find creepy - and which also causes me to accidentally call James Frey constantly - it happened again yesterday - because Siri mishears my direction. But that’s a different issue and a name choice I can’t stand firmly behind.)
One thing I am already thinking about in terms of Rachel’s argument today is that both she and I have gotten our fair share of professional and public attention using our full names (she even gets three versus my two!). I wonder if this would feel different for people who had not established their own identities as strongly and felt that being someone’s mom is all they were being given credit for. In any case, what I love about Unpopular Opinion columns is getting to talk (or even fight) about all this stuff in the comments, so I will wait to continue and talk to you all more there about this topic and about any other things you have on your mind, big or a little or petty or deep. How’s your day going so far, for example? See you there!
I worship you all, newcomers and old faithfuls alike.
Love love,
Jane
PS About those evil doers who did not give you the perfect present of a Sassy T-shirt for Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever day they should have given you a Sassy T-Shirt: in here also are the details for how to get one of your own on us (that would be the royal us – it’s only me here, as some of you already know), just by commenting.
By Rachel Kramer Bussel
Recently, I saw a social media post that now eludes me, but the gist of it was that the mom posting was offended that her name had been removed from social interactions around parenting and been replaced by “Mom,” such as at the pediatrician’s office or with her kid’s teachers.
I saw her point—that women’s individuality so often gets erased and subsumed once we become mothers—but on a personal level, I couldn’t relate. After spending almost 20 years wanting to be a mom, few things bring me greater joy than identifying myself as “___’s mom.” I don’t mention my daughter’s name publicly out of privacy concerns, so I realize that sentence doesn’t have quite the same punch it would if I had included it, so if you want to read it more fluidly, you can read the end as “...few things bring me greater joy than identifying myself as Alice’s mom.” (Alice is not her name, though I will use it below for the sake of an easier read.)
I lived in New York from my early twenties through my mid-thirties, and for all those years, “What do you do?” was the first or among the first questions anyone asked upon meeting me. I asked it too, because what someone did, either for a living or a creative calling, was how I identified people at the time. It was as natural a question as asking what neighborhood someone lived in or their favorite restaurant.
I was proud to answer, “I’m a writer,” especially because when I arrived in 1996 with a freshly minted bachelor’s degree, I was attending law school at NYU and thought of writing as a side hobby I did for fun, not something I could concoct a whole career around. I wound up not graduating from law school despite being there for three years, and managed through luck and tenacity and experimentation to become a hybrid writer-editor-consultant-writing instructor.
There were years where I grossed six figures, and I had many professional accomplishments: being a columnist for famed alt weekly The Village Voice, running a reading series for five years, starting a cupcake blog that landed me on The Martha Stewart Show and as a judge on Throwdown! with Bobby Flay
But by 2012, when I met my current boyfriend, I was in my mid-thirties and eager for a different kind of life, a quieter one in a slower place where I wasn’t tempted to go out every night, and in which my work wasn’t my only measure of my worth. Fast forward to the present, and I have that slower life. I’m a mom to a rambunctious, curious, funny, and smart 1-year-old daughter, that dream of mine fulfilled, but the reality different than I had expected.
I spent most of my weekdays taking her to classes and library story times and meetups with other moms. When I meet her teachers, the librarians, and other moms, I may use my first name, but never all three that make up my professional byline, but more often, I’m “Alice’s mom,” and I always experience a thrill saying it. That thrill is often tempered by a surrealness, like I still can’t quite believe that I get to play this role. Because my daughter is adopted, I didn’t have the months of pregnancy to gradually adjust to knowing I’d become a parent at a specific point in time. Instead, I waited a little over two years (after spending a year gathering the necessary paperwork) before getting a call that our daughter’s biological parents had picked us to raise her, and then meeting her the next day.
I’m prouder of being her mom than I am of any of the things I’ve done before—not that work and motherhood are in competition or that there should be a hierarchy. It’s more that at this point in my life, she is my focus, my first priority.
It’s not just motherhood where I enjoy being seen for my role in someone else’s life. My boyfriend is an abstract artist, and I’ve traveled with him to several art fairs. Recently, I was emailing an artist colleague of his who I’d met at one of the fairs, and wrote, “I don’t know if you remember me but I’m Drew’s girlfriend.” I’m a caregiver for my mother, and I’m often calling her doctors or other specialists and identifying myself as her daughter, because for the duration of that interaction, that’s my job.
I own a photograph from an artist I met while taking a walk on Main Street in Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard about a decade ago. I wandered into his little kiosk and was admiring his prints of places I’d been visiting since I was a kid. When I bought the one I liked best, of the Oak Bluffs tabernacle with light filtering in through stained glass, I was very proud to say, “I don’t know if you knew her, but I’m Shirley Smith’s granddaughter” and have him know who she was because she was very active in that town, where she had grown up in the 20s and 30s.
I want to be clear that I’m not looking to erase my public identity. I wouldn’t want to only be known via my association with the people I’m close to, but as a separate part of my identity, I welcome it. I love the work I do and have been vain enough to love seeing my name in print since I was a teenager. But sometimes being a professional writer who writes about her life and is expected to be on umpteen social media platforms to promote said writing makes me want to take a break from being the public version of “Rachel Kramer Bussel” and be someone less self-focused and more other-focused.
The other day, I called the catering company my daughter and I frequent to ask how to cook a chicken pot pie I’d bought the day before. “Were you with Alice?” the woman on the phone asked. I laughed. “Yes, I’m her mom,” I said, marveling at the impression she makes everywhere she goes.
When people remember my daughter, and my role as her mom, I’m proud of that. As a shorthand, that’s also how I think of the dozens of moms I encounter every week, who I mainly know as “___’s mom from music class.” I’m grateful when I can remember the kids names, because there are around 20 kids we see on a regular basis. That’s challenging enough to recall, let alone each parent’s name. I have some of them saved in my phone as “___’s mom,” which isn’t to say I only talk to them about parenting topics, just that that’s how I know and remember them.
On the other hand, in my local moms group, I know the moms’ names and, because we primarily socialize as adults, and I haven’t met some of their kids, I know those women by their names.
I think both things can be true: It can be offensive to some to never be referred to at the doctor’s office or in other situations as your name and only as “Mom,” and it can be seen as an honorific, and a break from our professional selves. In my twenties or thirties, I may not have been ready for that, but in my fifties, you can call me “Alice’s mom” any time we’re talking about my kid.
Beatrice got in here and liked this piece before me or Rachel could even open it - and we are both ON TOP OF IT! (Especially Rachel.) Thanks Beatrice and thanks for this piece, Rachel!
When I was a little kid, some 80+ years ago, my friends would call my Mom: 'Sheila's Mother'. I think none of the mothers ever told us what to call them, so we had to improvise. When we got older we called our friend's mothers: "Mother B", "Mother O", "Mother L" and the dreaded "Mother W". Only my mother was Mrs. Marks, and even her neighbor of 50 years called her that. I always go by Sheila, no matter what, even when I was teaching, because it was friendlier, and one of my life's goals is to accept my name. And friends still call me Jane's Mom. when they need advice. But the thing I really cannot stand is "Mother" - not "your mother" - but as in "What would "Mother want?" A woman who was managing an account for my Mother asked me that, and I would never, ever give her any money because she called her "Mother".