A motherhood challenge to prove I’m a 'wonderful mama'? No thanks.

Have you seen the Motherhood Challenge doing the rounds on Facebook?

It involves posting three pictures that make you happy to be a mum and tagging some “wonderful mums” to post their three pictures for their own Motherhood Challenge.

Sweet? Innocuous? Unbearable? Smug? All of the above?

It made UK writer Flick Everett want to punch her computer screen:

“It’s not the casual posting of photos aimed at friends that I mind. It’s the revived fetishisation of motherhood, the idea that it’s a “challenge” that only “mummies” can understand, an exclusive, excluding club of laughing, shiny, breast-feeding super-beings who know exactly how to raise “great kids” and will only invite others of their kind to join the party….

Motherhood shouldn’t be a “challenge” that can be won or lost on the posting of a picture of some kid with banana round his mouth. Yes, it’s just meant to be “a bit of fun”. But in reality, the “motherhood challenge” is simply another way to measure women and find them wanting.”

Is there anything wrong with mums basking in the love they feel for their children or the pride they feel as a mother?

On its own, of course not. But when it’s considered in the context of the deification of motherhood it’s problematic. When it gives mums another frontier to prove their mothering prowess or assess their shortcomings?

When it gently and subliminally reminds women that their role as “mum” is considered above and beyond anything else that they do?

When it reminds women who don’t have children – through circumstance or choice – that they are excluded from this superior world in which women meet their divine duty and produce offspring?

Hardly cause for celebration.

Non-Motherhood Challenge: I nominated myself to post 5 pics that make me happy to be a non-mother. Great memories. pic.twitter.com/hkqvFGjOEt

— Ellie Taylor (@EllieJaneTaylor) February 1, 2016

If you’re unconvinced, consider this. Can you imagine a Fatherhood Challenge doing the rounds on Facebook? Can you imagine the child-rearing men in your life filling their feeds with snaps of their children in a bid to highlight their enjoyment, their fulfilment and their success as fathers?

Can you imagine them asking their mates to join them in the exercise?

I can’t. Not because the fathers I know don’t revel in their roles, love their kids or derive immense satisfaction from the tiny people in their lives, but because fatherhood is an entirely different proposition.

It’s not laden with expectations. It is not construed as a man’s vocation in and of itself. Fatherhood is not definitive: a man’s value is not broadly determined by his approach to parenting.

Fatherhood is a blank canvass that men are free to fill as they wish.

‘Babysit’ their kids once a week? Have two weeks off when a baby arrives, or six months? Do midnight feeds, change nappies, do daycare pick-ups, school drop offs, puree food, take a sick child to the doctor or do none of the above?

Fathers are free to make the role their own, largely, without fear of abject judgment or commentary.

And, this is not a failing on the part of men. It’s an inevitable consequence of the fact that until very recently fathering was – in the main – wholly ‘hands off’.

Fortunately for fathers and children, this is no longer the case. Plenty of dads these days are completely immersed in the familial and domestic realm and wouldn’t have it any other way. For a modern man, the idea of not being present for the birth of his child is completely foreign. As is the idea that he wouldn’t partake in the everyday milieu of caring for kids: feeding them, dressing them, reading them stories, cooking their dinner, taking them to school.

The difference for dads – as far as I can – is they do this without the burden of constantly assessing their failures and foibles as fathers.

For the dads I know going to work isn’t a source of ongoing angst or guilt. It’s just what happens.

Feeding the kids a meal not made from scratch? Unworthy of a second thought.

Feeling impatient and frustrated with the kids? Feeling impatient and frustrated with the kids. Not indelible proof of their parental inadequacy.

A public toddler tantrum in the middle of the supermarket? An annoyance, yes. A sign they are ill-equipped for the task at hand? Hardly.

These are gross generalisations I know, but in many households they ring true.

And they will continue to ring true until we take “motherhood” off its pedestal.

Modern motherhood is something of a double-edged sword for women. Being a parent is an almighty blessing. It is – without any doubt – a privilege beyond privilege to carry, nurture and raise a child. But that privilege has its trappings for roughly half of all parents.

The status and glorification of motherhood can be suffocating.

Ideals pervade the territory and they relate to everything from the manner in which a woman gives birth to the type of lunchbox she packs her child for school to how quickly her body bounces back to how well her child sleeps to whether or not she ignores her phone while her kids play at the park.

And it’s toxic. It feeds and reinforces a world in which mums are constantly reminded their credentials are being assessed.

The truth is in about 99.9 percent of households the mums are doing a stellar job. Is it perfect? Nope. Is it messy? Probably. Is it real life in all of its gritty glory? Absolutely.

The motherhood challenge I’m keen on is the one where we push back on ‘mum as God’ and embrace ‘mum as human doing her best’.

Where we don’t need to share snaps of the kids to prove we are wonderful mums. Where, instead, we recognise in our own HEADS that we’re doing okay.