Overconsumption in Motherhood

Overconsumption in motherhood has been on my mind lots recently.

Motherhood asks us to strip everything back to the barest of ways. In birth. In our routines, lives and luxuries in early postpartum - we all are reminded that our babies need us, closeness and we need support. Life truly goes back to the basics.

However, it's one of the most profitable times for consumerism. We're told that we need a million different items to keep our children safe, make sure they're entertained at all times of the day, systems to organise our homes and lives so we can do more - the list goes on and we all know the list.

It isn't just physical over- consumerism it's emotional and educational too. There's a million and one parenting courses, parenting experts, social media platforms for parenting; mum groups, mum apps, Facebook groups - you can go on your phone and suddenly you have 2 things you're not doing enough with your child, a step-by-step instruction of how to handle your toddlers emotions, a perfectly eaten toddler meal and so forth. We aren't meant to be taking in the amount of information we do. We are meant to first go within and reflect slowly on what is happening in our motherhood journey, reach out to trusted sources and make decisions from there.

No wonder parents are tired. Sleep deprivation and not having a single space to move to that is slow, peaceful and not full of information is exhausting.

I hope this serves as a reminder that the world in which we are living in makes parenting overwhelming at times, takes away the importance of raising our children in different and varying ways that are supportive of them and makes us feel like we're already lacking something. I'll finish with a quote from Michele Benton.

"Consumerism impacts the good life. It raises the level of saturation...part of the saturation came from me turning to society to study up on what I needed to do to be a good Mom...which in turn, created lists of things 'to buy' with new, additional research needed to ensure I chose the best brand or features..."

The most powerful gift we can 'buy' ourselves in motherhood is to live within the lives we already have instead of trying to improve them. Motherhood is messy and the magic is the mess.