At a birthday celebration for a one-year-old, I found myself surrounded by old college friends. One of them asked a question that caught me off guard: “How are you doing?”
“It’s really tough,” I responded, my voice wavering as tears threatened to spill over. “I just feel like I can’t make my baby happy.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not your responsibility to make him happy,” he replied.
I dismissed his comment internally. What did he know? He didn’t have children and had no desire to have them.
How could I not feel accountable for my four-month-old’s happiness? After years of fertility treatments and longing to be a mother, it felt like my duty. The titles of popular parenting books loomed large in my mind: The Happiest Baby on the Block, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five. Or was it simply the American obsession with happiness, embedded in my psyche?
In her 2014 book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting, Jennifer Senior explores the confusion parents face regarding their roles. With many traditional parenting responsibilities now outsourced—education, healthcare, nutrition—what was left for us?
As a first-time mom to a particularly fussy baby, I was still navigating what motherhood meant to me. The only task I felt certain of was to make my son happy.
Words like colicky, demanding, and spirited perfectly described him. Experts claimed colic should dissipate within three months, but my son didn’t follow that timeline. He continued to cry for about thirty minutes daily for no apparent reason, long after the typical period had passed.
He loathed the car seat yet was equally displeased to be taken out of it. He resented diaper changes and face washing but also didn’t want to be held. There were brief moments of smiles and laughter, but overall, he didn’t seem content. I was miserable too.
When my son reached eight months, I began to reconsider my friend’s perspective. He needed a medical procedure to clear his blocked tear ducts, which involved stainless steel rods and a team of nurses holding him down while he screamed. The doctor assured me it wasn’t painful, yet I could see the fear in my child’s eyes when we were reunited.
“How did you make sure he wasn’t traumatized for life?” my sister asked when I recounted the experience.
My heart sank. I felt I had failed him by allowing him to endure that fear. It only reinforced my belief that I was incapable of making him happy.
In a support group for mothers, I shared my feelings of guilt. A therapist offered a revelation: “A parent’s role isn’t to shield your child from negative experiences but to guide them through those challenges.”
That moment changed everything for me. I realized my purpose as a mother was not to merely stop my son’s crying but to foster resilience. This approach was gaining traction in both psychology and parenting discussions, emphasizing the importance of teaching children to cope with life’s difficulties.
Focusing on resilience reshaped my parenting and improved my mindset. I learned to show my son that he wouldn’t always get his way and that sometimes we must endure things we dislike, like diaper changes or doctor visits.
This shift also allowed me to prioritize my own needs. While my son wanted me to be his constant playmate, I needed to carve out time for myself. I even braved the idea of part-time daycare, supporting him through his initial separation anxiety. This gave me the space to pursue my passion for environmental communications. With just two days each week dedicated to writing rather than fretting over tantrums and sleep schedules, I felt revitalized and more patient.
Slowly, I began to rediscover myself as an individual and as a mother—one who was imparting valuable lessons about resilience to her son. I found happiness, even if my child wasn’t always “The Happiest Toddler on the Block” (yet another parenting book title).
One morning, while driving home from the grocery store, my son suddenly asked, “Mommy, Daddy was a boy and now he’s a man?”
“Yes, sweetie,” I replied.
“And I’m a boy now, and then I’ll be a man?” he continued.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Ahhh, I don’t want to be a man,” he whined. “I want to be a boy forever!”
“Why do you want to be a little boy forever?” I inquired.
“Because I love it,” he said.
In that moment, I realized my worried thoughts had been misplaced; perhaps my cranky little boy was indeed content. Most importantly, I was finally finding my own happiness too.
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In summary, relinquishing the burden of solely ensuring my child’s happiness allowed me to rediscover my own joy as a mother and individual. Embracing resilience not only benefited my son but transformed my outlook on parenting and life.