Mother Or Girlfriend? First Mom, Then Girlfriend

Being a mother is one of the most beautiful things in life. It sounds cliché, but it’s true. The process of creating life and giving birth is more than just biological. Experiencing that feeling of warmth and that protective, loving instinct is something that is hard to avoid.

It’s like going down an unknown road. We know that we will encounter not only beauty, but also uncertainty, huge changes in routine, pressure to make the ‘right’ decisions. And then, depending on when we were born, we can also get conflicting advice.

In our current world, women are overloaded with a mountain of outside opinions about what a mother should be like. Almost every week we come across articles and books about parenting. How strict we should be, whether we should breastfeed or not, whether it is okay to sleep in the same room… And these debates just scratch the surface.

We each only have one mother, but there are many different types

The book Perfectly Imperfect Mothers ( Mamás perfectamente imperfectas ) gives us five types of mothers:

• The Controller: The mother who tries to be the best at everything. She must master all areas: the academic life of her children, the family and their social life. She makes decisions for them and doesn’t understand the concept of privacy.
• The perfectionist: she always thinks about the results. That is, the main thing is that everything is perfect, according to her expectations. She leaves no room for difficulties, fear or doubt.
• The Accomplice: This mother also takes responsibility for her children’s schedules, habits, vocabulary, and even friends.
• The Competitor: She cannot accept that her children are better than her in some aspects of life. She corrects them condescendingly. She does not lead her children and instead competes with them.

• The Toe Owner: This is a mother who emotionally does not differentiate between what happens to her children and what happens to her. Everything affects her.

And these are just a few examples. While we can categorize and label the types of relationships mothers have with their children, the fact is that there are as many mothers as there are women with children. In addition, people are constantly changing. Mothers can go through times of doubt or go from checkers to perfectionists as their children grow up.

Mother or girlfriend? First mother, then girlfriend

So many mothers want to be friends with their daughters. The function of a girlfriend is to listen, entertain, support, be complicit, punish, advise or guide. Admittedly, all this sounds like something a mother would do at first glance.

However, there is a difference. A mother figure should be an example, a role model and a guide. She is the one to whom her children mainly become attached. The relationship between parents and children is born of love, protection and support in the early stages of life – when we are most vulnerable.

Mother or girlfriend? Why your children need a mother in the first place

Normally, mothers develop the urge to be friends with their children when they become teenagers. Adolescence is the period in which children become more independent and start looking for their place in the world.

Fearing to lose control, or to show that they trust their children, many mothers begin to act like friends. It is true, there comes a time when children have to make their own mistakes. We cannot always control them.

Children must have secrets, they must argue, they must hear ‘no’. They should be told what to do and given boundaries. So if we’re wondering if we should be their mom or girlfriend, we have to remember that a girlfriend doesn’t. That’s why we choose our friends and can leave them whenever we want. A crucial part of friendship is uninterested affection.

But a mother does have an interest, a personal, pure interest in instilling values, teaching and guiding her children. At the same time, she must give her children space when they need it. Knowing how to leave the door ajar so they know they can count on you and that you will be there for them if they fail, rather than breaking open the door and questioning them. No one ever said it was easy! Hence the great challenge of raising children.