When my first child was born,my mother-in-law said to me:'Motherhood is wonderful just as long as you remember that A Mother's Place is in the Wrong.No matter what you do,your children will blame you.
Since that time,almost nine years ago,I have carefully monitored mothers and their growing offspring to verify this maxim,and found that indeed it contains much truth.
For example,if a mother stints herself to the point of starvation to send her darling to a good boarding school,the darling will turn round years later and accuse her of being a snob who deprived her of everyday family life.
If ,on the other hand,a mother sends her little lamb to the local neighbourhood school,the little lamb will grumble years later that his parents did not give a fig for education and that is why he is illiterate and on the dole.
If a woman has a job her children will speak mournfully of the experience of being latch-key kids who never knew what is was to come home to the joy and security of a mum baking bread in the kithcen.
If a woman does not work,her daughter will afterwards describe her old mum as a 'suburban cabbage'who never'fulfilled herself.
If a woman endures a painful and difficult marriage for the sake of the children,she will be told by those children that she was an absolute fool to put up with it and should have walked out years ago.
If she considers it to be best to end the marriage,they will accuse her of causing them'paternal deprivation syndrome'and obliging them to grow up in 'a one-parent situation'.
If yoiu try to shield your children from the weary realities of life,they will say your were absurdly overprotective.
If you try to share your troubles with them,they will say thar you overburdened them with responsibility and cheated them of their childhood.
If you have but a single child, the child will say say afterwards that you selfishly deprived it of siblings, and will tell sad stories about the lonliness of its childhood.
If you have two children, they will describe their family background as typical, steretyped, neurotic, introverted -- a nuclear family.
Truely, a mother's place is in the wrong -- and, yet, it goes on even unto the third generation.
When your children encount trouble or difficulties as adults, in their own marriage or in their personalities, whom do you blame? You've got it in one: mother!
