I grew up with a “harder is better” mentality, and I’m still unlearning it. Part of that process was the pendulum swing toward avoiding suffering bc I was actively working against that martyr mindset. Where I’d like to end up is in a place where I can focus on the correct “ends”; I’m moving forward in my vocation with an eye toward the good things I’m called to, which will likely involve some degree of suffering, but the suffering isn’t what I’m seeking. I hope I can accept it as peacefully as possible as part of the journey and not focus on it as a sign of God’s approval or a sign that I must be on the right track.
For me, the most effective pushback against “the worse the better” mindset has been accepting that some suffering and hardship will happen. I have found that a bit of stoic pragmatism is a good check against running towards suffering as a measure of goodness but also a check against missing out on greater goods by trying to avoid difficulty (which often leads to its own suffering further down the road).
A close friend of mine is struggling with several chronic fertility conditions (PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and then some) that cause a whole host of symptoms and pain, and I felt rightfully called-out by the paragraph in Ross's book you cite about the relative ease of rising to an "occasion." I've found it easier to be there for her in moments of specific, acute need, such as the aftermath of a surgery, than to be present for the daily grind of her feeling ill in various ways. And I've noticed that it's easier for me to keep a "vigil," as you described, while she works through her *emotions* about these conditions and what they imply for her hopes about children, etc., than to be there for the embodied aspects of her suffering. I think because those things feel like something I'm actively giving, in a way that brings us closer, whereas things like recognizing that sometimes she'll want to cut an evening short because she's not feeling well, etc., just feel like they pull us apart.
I think it's harder... because it's harder! So I hope you don't feel too guilty about it being hard, the question is what support you can come up with to make support more sustainable.
My alternative to "the worse the better" is the wry words of Flannery O'Connor - "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."
I have always been skeptical of measuring commitment by pain endured. It always seemed to me that it was presented as a trap of martyrdom, and especially for women.
I used to be Roman Catholic, and it seemed to be a particulary Roman Catholic thing, for women in particular to be like Mary, patient in suffering, again, how meritorious a woman are you by how you have suffered.
Nope, I never bought into it and especially since I'm now Protestant.
There is always pain in life, this is a fallen world, but to seek meritocracy by pain endured? Nope.
As for helping those who need constant help because of their situation. Yes, it's boring, but if it's a close relationship, ie., familial, it's just a matter of helping where you can, as you can. Suffering just exists, it's just part of life. You're just doing what has to be done, the support work of caring, because of the mutuality of relationship.
I think there's an important distinction between embracing what good for you there might be in suffering vs. seeking out more suffering than has already come to you/saying that suffering is good.
In Eve Tushnet's new book, Tenderness (https://amzn.to/3kjyNsj) she says there are two truths we can see on the Cross. 1) Our suffering can always unite us more deeply with Christ in his Passion. 2) He endured the Passion to free us from all suffering to be fully united with God in Heaven.
And (1) can be a tremendous comfort, but it shouldn't lead us to forget that we (rightly!) long to be freed from suffering.
Oh my goodness, I very much did measure my capacity to love by the degree of attachment parenting my babies, of whom I had four in four years, including a set of twins. I'm a different parent today, 15 years later. I would be more flexible today with cloth diapering, cosleeping, breastfeeding exclusively despite terrible challenges. Every one of those choices can be part-time, and doing them full-time, with newborn twins and a high-needs two-year-old, does not prove how much a mother loves her children. I spent years desperate for sleep and horribly depressed, in part due to these choices.
I'm still working on "the worse the better." My 17yo daughter is chronically ill, and her experience parallels your descriptions of Ross's in many ways. It's a challenge for me to be present to her day after day, in the knowledge that there are choices she needs to make to heal that she isn't making. I have to remember that I don't know what it's like to go through what she does, and maybe she actually can't make those choices.
Analisa, I'm also a twin mom and I think it really saved me from the meritocracy of, as Leah puts it, "measuring love by pain endured." By nature I am a perfectionist and people pleaser and the realities of life with two babies (my twins were my first children) meant I was practically kicked out of my own head and into the world of, "Is this sustainable? Can I keep doing this, twice over?" It allowed me to discard a lot of parenting advice because it just wasn't physically possible for me! I sometimes joke that God gave me two babies because He knew I couldn't handle one ;-) I am praying for you and your daughter today.
I think the "is it sustainable" question is key. Even with one baby, it was easier for me to make some choices (Is it ok for her to fuss outside the bathroom while I go?) when I think not in terms of "should I wait _right now?_" but "Can I really say this is a sane sacrifice to make _every time?_" If it's ok/necessary for me to do some of the time, it's probably ok to do now.
I think your Kantian instincts are useful and valuable here! And they help bring focus to my question which is broad and sometimes hard to apply in specific context. I will give an example; our twins struggled to gain weight and the easiest way to put them to sleep at night (for the first longish shift of 3-4 hours) was to nurse them until they were out. cold. Not dozy, not sleepy, but in deep sleep. Some nights I was tandem nursing for 2+ hours! Meanwhile my husband was washing bottles and dishes and taking care of the dog and filling my water jug and feeding me bites of food over their heads. This sounds hard (and it was!) but there was no not-hard option available to us. In our calculation, it was less hard and more sustainable to have me sit on the couch wrapped in a double nursing pillow and at least rest while they nursed. If we had each had one baby and we had been walking or rocking them to sleep it would have been physically more tiring for both of us AND we would have still had to wash and sterilize all the bottles (their weight gain issues meant we had to supplement with hi-cal formula) and wash the dishes and walk the dog etc., etc., AFTER somehow getting them to sleep! We couldn't do it. Both ways were hard, but one we felt we could sustain until the time came when two hour nursing sessions would no longer be necessary (and that blessed day did come!) and so that's what we did.
For that matter, you could also think about whether it is sustainable for multiple children in the future, although that gets into some complications with the way some children are legitimately higher-needs than others.
I really like reminding myself that I can make decisions *for the short term* and reconsider them later. I said no to a possible surgery that might help us with our problems with miscarriage, and my doctor would have made the opposite decision herself, I think. But she was supportive of our reasoning, and up to reopen it when we wanted. (We ultimately did it about six months later). But there are some things we've said no to and stuck with a no.
One of the things I have drilled into my children (four teens) is that almost no decision is irreversible. If you really can't decide what to do, just choose something and try it on for a while.
It's a different thing compared to physical, medical, embodied pain-- but I think the everyday routines of housekeeping can be a place where "love performed as suffering" shows up, even for those of us with ultimately good intentions of care for our families. Anyone else ever cleaned up *at* their spouse or children or housemates in the evenings, bubbling silently with resentment at the others' restfulness while commending themselves for being the ONE person committed to a functional, tidy household, and silently awarding themselves the otherwise un-forthcoming praise they're sure they're worth?
I've seen a video making the rounds in which a woman's hand holding a Sharpie draws a short line between "husband feeling tired" and "going to bed", and then a long, jerky, angular, backtracking line that snarls its way through half a dozen chores before the woman goes to bed. A) The joke lands; it's funny cause it's true; but B), it seems like a visual representation of that dark "worse is better" mindset we can get into when the demanding routines of caregiving tempt us to borrow suffering and breed resentment.
(There can be real imbalances around household labor, and I don't mean to ignite the embers of that important conversation; just to describe the relational or psychological "pain" we can gin up for ourselves by tying up the worthiness of our commitment with the routine chores we attend to in service to ourselves and our loved ones.)
This calls to mind unmedicated childbirth vs. medicated childbirth. After having one c-section with no labor involved, I was "tempted to measure [my] capacity to love or [my] moral worth" by saying that I didn't get to suffer in the way God intended women to suffer to bring children into the world. On the surface, I know why I had the c-section, and I *also* knew that having the surgery brought up many unique opportunities to suffer compared with a typical vaginal birth. Deep down, I felt less worthy than other women in my Bradley method birth class who actually managed to have the unmedicated births for which we prepared. They got to feel the pain of contractions, and I somehow had a baby without feeling a single one.
Fast forward two years, I and also had the opportunity to have a 48-hour long unmedicated VBAC. I felt the raw power of every contraction. Objectively, my second birth was significantly more painful than the first.
It's tempting to say that I can love my second baby more because of how he was born ("the worse the better"). It's tempting to say that I'm a better mother because I suffered for a longer period of time than I did with my first birth.
Perhaps more accurately, my capacity to love has increased slowly over time by being a mother to my first son, not the challenge I undertook to birth my second son. The births were different and each had their challenges, but my capacity to love my family cannot be measured by pain endured.
Oooh, this is a very good example. I once had a woman ask me why I had fought so hard against a C-section for my twin pregnancy and I answered very honestly, "Because I have been told the recovery from a C-section is harder than a vaginal birth." By the look on her face I can tell that was not the answer she expected, though I couldn't tell you what she was expecting! I'm not sure I would say that anymore, but I was definitely not in the "the worse the better" mindset!
Recovery from a c-section is awful! It's definitely not an easy way out (there isn't one for labor).
Crystal, I also did Bradley prep (with a book, not a class), and I found it really helpful, but it definitely implies you can be "good enough" at labor to avoid a c-section. I had *nearly* all of a natural labor before an emergency c-section after 1h15m of pushing. (We had great midwives we trusted to make the call).
We're aiming for a VBAC, and I would expect, if we succeed, for it to be a lot easier than labor + c-section. But either way, I'd be happy for it to be easy! The baby isn't rooting for a hard labor, she just wants to be loved and welcomed when she's born.
And Crystal, if anyone gives you lip about the c-section, I will kick them in the shins.
No one, including the instructor and fellow attendees of the class, has ever given me flack for having a c-section, so I'll have to pass on your kind offer. :)
The mental preparation I did with my doula before my birth was incredibly helpful as well - before the first birth, like Amy, I would have said I wanted a natural birth because I wanted an easier recovery or wanted a smoother start to breastfeeding. Our doula encouraged me to dig deeper than that, and I went into this birth with a different mindset less focused on specific outcomes.
As it turns out, my VBAC recovery was more difficult than my (perhaps unusually easy) c-section recovery, so I'm glad I didn't latch onto that reason too hard.
I had a VBAC after my twin c-section. I agree it would be easier than labor and then c/s. But you are so much better off psychologically by not putting pressure on yourself to have the "perfect" birth by some narrow definition of that word!
I grew up with a “harder is better” mentality, and I’m still unlearning it. Part of that process was the pendulum swing toward avoiding suffering bc I was actively working against that martyr mindset. Where I’d like to end up is in a place where I can focus on the correct “ends”; I’m moving forward in my vocation with an eye toward the good things I’m called to, which will likely involve some degree of suffering, but the suffering isn’t what I’m seeking. I hope I can accept it as peacefully as possible as part of the journey and not focus on it as a sign of God’s approval or a sign that I must be on the right track.
For me, the most effective pushback against “the worse the better” mindset has been accepting that some suffering and hardship will happen. I have found that a bit of stoic pragmatism is a good check against running towards suffering as a measure of goodness but also a check against missing out on greater goods by trying to avoid difficulty (which often leads to its own suffering further down the road).
A close friend of mine is struggling with several chronic fertility conditions (PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and then some) that cause a whole host of symptoms and pain, and I felt rightfully called-out by the paragraph in Ross's book you cite about the relative ease of rising to an "occasion." I've found it easier to be there for her in moments of specific, acute need, such as the aftermath of a surgery, than to be present for the daily grind of her feeling ill in various ways. And I've noticed that it's easier for me to keep a "vigil," as you described, while she works through her *emotions* about these conditions and what they imply for her hopes about children, etc., than to be there for the embodied aspects of her suffering. I think because those things feel like something I'm actively giving, in a way that brings us closer, whereas things like recognizing that sometimes she'll want to cut an evening short because she's not feeling well, etc., just feel like they pull us apart.
I think it's harder... because it's harder! So I hope you don't feel too guilty about it being hard, the question is what support you can come up with to make support more sustainable.
That's a great way of framing it! Thank you
My alternative to "the worse the better" is the wry words of Flannery O'Connor - "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."
I have always been skeptical of measuring commitment by pain endured. It always seemed to me that it was presented as a trap of martyrdom, and especially for women.
I used to be Roman Catholic, and it seemed to be a particulary Roman Catholic thing, for women in particular to be like Mary, patient in suffering, again, how meritorious a woman are you by how you have suffered.
Nope, I never bought into it and especially since I'm now Protestant.
There is always pain in life, this is a fallen world, but to seek meritocracy by pain endured? Nope.
As for helping those who need constant help because of their situation. Yes, it's boring, but if it's a close relationship, ie., familial, it's just a matter of helping where you can, as you can. Suffering just exists, it's just part of life. You're just doing what has to be done, the support work of caring, because of the mutuality of relationship.
I think there's an important distinction between embracing what good for you there might be in suffering vs. seeking out more suffering than has already come to you/saying that suffering is good.
In Eve Tushnet's new book, Tenderness (https://amzn.to/3kjyNsj) she says there are two truths we can see on the Cross. 1) Our suffering can always unite us more deeply with Christ in his Passion. 2) He endured the Passion to free us from all suffering to be fully united with God in Heaven.
And (1) can be a tremendous comfort, but it shouldn't lead us to forget that we (rightly!) long to be freed from suffering.
Oh my goodness, I very much did measure my capacity to love by the degree of attachment parenting my babies, of whom I had four in four years, including a set of twins. I'm a different parent today, 15 years later. I would be more flexible today with cloth diapering, cosleeping, breastfeeding exclusively despite terrible challenges. Every one of those choices can be part-time, and doing them full-time, with newborn twins and a high-needs two-year-old, does not prove how much a mother loves her children. I spent years desperate for sleep and horribly depressed, in part due to these choices.
I'm still working on "the worse the better." My 17yo daughter is chronically ill, and her experience parallels your descriptions of Ross's in many ways. It's a challenge for me to be present to her day after day, in the knowledge that there are choices she needs to make to heal that she isn't making. I have to remember that I don't know what it's like to go through what she does, and maybe she actually can't make those choices.
Analisa, I'm also a twin mom and I think it really saved me from the meritocracy of, as Leah puts it, "measuring love by pain endured." By nature I am a perfectionist and people pleaser and the realities of life with two babies (my twins were my first children) meant I was practically kicked out of my own head and into the world of, "Is this sustainable? Can I keep doing this, twice over?" It allowed me to discard a lot of parenting advice because it just wasn't physically possible for me! I sometimes joke that God gave me two babies because He knew I couldn't handle one ;-) I am praying for you and your daughter today.
I think the "is it sustainable" question is key. Even with one baby, it was easier for me to make some choices (Is it ok for her to fuss outside the bathroom while I go?) when I think not in terms of "should I wait _right now?_" but "Can I really say this is a sane sacrifice to make _every time?_" If it's ok/necessary for me to do some of the time, it's probably ok to do now.
(My Kantian instincts coming to the fore).
I think your Kantian instincts are useful and valuable here! And they help bring focus to my question which is broad and sometimes hard to apply in specific context. I will give an example; our twins struggled to gain weight and the easiest way to put them to sleep at night (for the first longish shift of 3-4 hours) was to nurse them until they were out. cold. Not dozy, not sleepy, but in deep sleep. Some nights I was tandem nursing for 2+ hours! Meanwhile my husband was washing bottles and dishes and taking care of the dog and filling my water jug and feeding me bites of food over their heads. This sounds hard (and it was!) but there was no not-hard option available to us. In our calculation, it was less hard and more sustainable to have me sit on the couch wrapped in a double nursing pillow and at least rest while they nursed. If we had each had one baby and we had been walking or rocking them to sleep it would have been physically more tiring for both of us AND we would have still had to wash and sterilize all the bottles (their weight gain issues meant we had to supplement with hi-cal formula) and wash the dishes and walk the dog etc., etc., AFTER somehow getting them to sleep! We couldn't do it. Both ways were hard, but one we felt we could sustain until the time came when two hour nursing sessions would no longer be necessary (and that blessed day did come!) and so that's what we did.
For that matter, you could also think about whether it is sustainable for multiple children in the future, although that gets into some complications with the way some children are legitimately higher-needs than others.
Thank you. I have said many times that having twins cured me of perfectionism.
I really like reminding myself that I can make decisions *for the short term* and reconsider them later. I said no to a possible surgery that might help us with our problems with miscarriage, and my doctor would have made the opposite decision herself, I think. But she was supportive of our reasoning, and up to reopen it when we wanted. (We ultimately did it about six months later). But there are some things we've said no to and stuck with a no.
One of the things I have drilled into my children (four teens) is that almost no decision is irreversible. If you really can't decide what to do, just choose something and try it on for a while.
It's a different thing compared to physical, medical, embodied pain-- but I think the everyday routines of housekeeping can be a place where "love performed as suffering" shows up, even for those of us with ultimately good intentions of care for our families. Anyone else ever cleaned up *at* their spouse or children or housemates in the evenings, bubbling silently with resentment at the others' restfulness while commending themselves for being the ONE person committed to a functional, tidy household, and silently awarding themselves the otherwise un-forthcoming praise they're sure they're worth?
I've seen a video making the rounds in which a woman's hand holding a Sharpie draws a short line between "husband feeling tired" and "going to bed", and then a long, jerky, angular, backtracking line that snarls its way through half a dozen chores before the woman goes to bed. A) The joke lands; it's funny cause it's true; but B), it seems like a visual representation of that dark "worse is better" mindset we can get into when the demanding routines of caregiving tempt us to borrow suffering and breed resentment.
(There can be real imbalances around household labor, and I don't mean to ignite the embers of that important conversation; just to describe the relational or psychological "pain" we can gin up for ourselves by tying up the worthiness of our commitment with the routine chores we attend to in service to ourselves and our loved ones.)
Found a link: https://www.facebook.com/NurtureParenting.BabySleep/videos/1503827963335107/
This calls to mind unmedicated childbirth vs. medicated childbirth. After having one c-section with no labor involved, I was "tempted to measure [my] capacity to love or [my] moral worth" by saying that I didn't get to suffer in the way God intended women to suffer to bring children into the world. On the surface, I know why I had the c-section, and I *also* knew that having the surgery brought up many unique opportunities to suffer compared with a typical vaginal birth. Deep down, I felt less worthy than other women in my Bradley method birth class who actually managed to have the unmedicated births for which we prepared. They got to feel the pain of contractions, and I somehow had a baby without feeling a single one.
Fast forward two years, I and also had the opportunity to have a 48-hour long unmedicated VBAC. I felt the raw power of every contraction. Objectively, my second birth was significantly more painful than the first.
It's tempting to say that I can love my second baby more because of how he was born ("the worse the better"). It's tempting to say that I'm a better mother because I suffered for a longer period of time than I did with my first birth.
Perhaps more accurately, my capacity to love has increased slowly over time by being a mother to my first son, not the challenge I undertook to birth my second son. The births were different and each had their challenges, but my capacity to love my family cannot be measured by pain endured.
Oooh, this is a very good example. I once had a woman ask me why I had fought so hard against a C-section for my twin pregnancy and I answered very honestly, "Because I have been told the recovery from a C-section is harder than a vaginal birth." By the look on her face I can tell that was not the answer she expected, though I couldn't tell you what she was expecting! I'm not sure I would say that anymore, but I was definitely not in the "the worse the better" mindset!
Recovery from a c-section is awful! It's definitely not an easy way out (there isn't one for labor).
Crystal, I also did Bradley prep (with a book, not a class), and I found it really helpful, but it definitely implies you can be "good enough" at labor to avoid a c-section. I had *nearly* all of a natural labor before an emergency c-section after 1h15m of pushing. (We had great midwives we trusted to make the call).
We're aiming for a VBAC, and I would expect, if we succeed, for it to be a lot easier than labor + c-section. But either way, I'd be happy for it to be easy! The baby isn't rooting for a hard labor, she just wants to be loved and welcomed when she's born.
And Crystal, if anyone gives you lip about the c-section, I will kick them in the shins.
No one, including the instructor and fellow attendees of the class, has ever given me flack for having a c-section, so I'll have to pass on your kind offer. :)
The mental preparation I did with my doula before my birth was incredibly helpful as well - before the first birth, like Amy, I would have said I wanted a natural birth because I wanted an easier recovery or wanted a smoother start to breastfeeding. Our doula encouraged me to dig deeper than that, and I went into this birth with a different mindset less focused on specific outcomes.
As it turns out, my VBAC recovery was more difficult than my (perhaps unusually easy) c-section recovery, so I'm glad I didn't latch onto that reason too hard.
I had a VBAC after my twin c-section. I agree it would be easier than labor and then c/s. But you are so much better off psychologically by not putting pressure on yourself to have the "perfect" birth by some narrow definition of that word!