American Mom, Swiss Mom

This post pointed me to this article about "Alpha Moms", which gave me the same feeling I got when this book and all the press surrounding it came out. Namely, that sometimes I'm really glad I'm raising Small Boy in Switzerland. I know there are plenty of parents out there who are just doing their thing, raising their kids, trusting their instincts and on balance having a good time with their kids (see, for example, Julie, who linked to and mocked the article before I did), but they don't get any of the press, of course, because they're - we're - boring. No, the parents getting the press are taking their kids to sixteen different Mommy and Me classes, flashing those cards, and buying them itty bitty cellos. Or something like that.

Let me say right up front that my sense of the atmosphere in which American parents have to parent - and particularly in which American mothers have to mother - is media-driven. I'm no longer there to experience the Zeitgeist myself, and I was never a parent in the States. In fact, we have yet to take Small Boy back for his first visit. So I pick things up from the media and from the comments my friends inside the computer make, but I'm over here in Switzerland doing my thing and watching the whole parenting in modern America thing from a distance. Maybe the distance distorts. I hope the distance distorts, because I have to tell you, from over here things sometimes look pretty weird back home. I know people who have been told by total strangers that they should be breast-feeding, but when you nurse in public people tell you to put that thing away. (The list of public places I've nursed Small Boy is approaching infinity, but includes the airport, the train station, a bench at the zoo, an outdoor restaurant, my local Starbucks, and the rental car company's parking lot, and I've never gotten a look let alone a comment. And oh lord help the first person to try.) Apparantly we're even supposed to sit in the back seat with the kids so as to be as close as possible to our children. (Okay, I confess, in the first couple of weeks of Small Boy's life I would climb in back with him while R. drove. But I'm over that. Really. Unless he's screaming his head off back there.) It's not good enough to take the kid to the park to dig for worms or feed the ducks, he's got to be in some program.

From my distance, it seems stressful. And from my distance, it seems well set up for people to judge you and your parenting. I have this vague feeling that if R. and I were to wind up back in Large East Coast City where we met (which we almost did this year, and still might in the not-too-distant future) I would be dismissed by the working outside the home mothers as not interesting enough and disparaged by the stay at home ones as not good enough. Because believe me, when Small Boy is old enough to dig for worms, I plan on doing a lot of digging. And I plan on splashing in a lot of puddles. It's like Calvin said, "If your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life." In fact, if Small Boy turns out like Calvin I will 1) okay, tear my hair out on a regular basis but 2) be so thrilled and delighted my head would explode. I mean, if my kid one day makes a transmogrifier out of a moving box or makes snow sculptures like this, well then, my work here is done. But from my distance, it seems like splashing puddles and building transmogrifiers just isn't good enough. And from my distance, it seems like people sure would tell you that. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I hope my distance does distort and these profiles of Alpha Moms are the exception to the rule. I started this post by saying I'm watching from a distance, and my distance gives me a vague sense of things instead of a clear picture. Vague senses don't have to be wrong by definition, but they're more likely to be. I know that much.

It's pretty laid back here. There's a lot of unstructured time (and sometimes the American in me thinks there's a bit too much unstructured time, but that's another story) and unsupervised play. Kids in our village are always running around or riding their bikes, or sledding down the wee hill in the winter. Depending on their age they might be supervised by the sledding, but often they're just out there running around. Don't get me wrong, there are play groups and music programs, and for older kids there are sports programs, and you can find baby massage and baby yoga classes here, too, if you're looking for them, but that typical American competativeness is missing. The idea that if you just have the right toys, take your child to the right class, do the right program you can build a better baby is absent. It takes a lot of the pressure off.

Let me be very clear. I'm not saying Small Boy will "turn out" any better because we're raising him here. I'm not saying Swiss kids in general turn out better than American kids in general or that Swiss parents are doing a better job. All I'm saying is that it seems much more laid back here, and that makes my life as a stay at home mother easier. (Now in all all fairness I should add this caveat: it's certainly not all wine and roses over here, and I should expand on that some other time. But in a nutshell, child care spots are so hard to come by and the school opening hours are so insane that it's a rare Swiss woman who can even figure out how to work outside the home once she has children. And did I mention the Swiss approved a whole 12-week maternity leave only last year? So over here we have our own problems. They're just a whole different set of problems.)

I'm not an Alpha Mom, and never will be. Small Boy probably won't be the next go-getter. He'll be the one with the green knees and the moving box. And we're okay with that.