Mothering Everyone Else Won't Make Up for the Mother You Didn't Have

A girl whose mother couldn't take care of her starts taking care of other people early. By ten she can make one box of macaroni feed three children, and she can sign her mother's name on a field trip form well enough the school doesn't call the house. The reasons vary from family to family. Her mother was drinking, or serving a four-year sentence while a grandmother kept the children, or died of cancer before the girl turned twelve. Plenty of mothers in this situation were home every night and too depressed to get out of bed, and the work the daughter took on looks about the same in every one of those families.

The result is a daughter who did a mother's work while she was still in elementary school. Saying so doesn't require deciding her mother was a bad person. A woman in active addiction couldn't pack lunches, and neither could a woman in a state prison two hundred miles away. A mother who died at thirty-eight didn't choose to die, and her daughter ended up doing the same work as the others.

Moving out of her mother's house doesn't change the habit, and by thirty the list of people she does it for has gotten longer. She's paying $850 of her boyfriend's share of the rent every month because his hours got cut in February, and it's now October. The lease is in her name, so she tells herself there's no choice. A friend's shift ends at six and daycare closes at five-thirty, so she picks up the friend's two children on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which started as a favor for one week in the spring. Last year she lent her sister $3,000 for a car repair, and she's stopped expecting to get it back.

Most of it comes from a hope she wouldn't admit to if anyone asked, which is that if she takes good enough care of everyone, someone will eventually do the same for her. It's a reasonable thing for a child to believe. If she didn't make dinner, nobody did, and taking care of people was the one reliable way she got praised. The adults who noticed, a grandmother or a teacher, told her she was mature for her age, and at eleven she was doing her mother's job.

She still notices what other people need before they ask, and when a coworker mentions his car is in the shop, she's offered to drive him to work the next morning before he's finished telling her about it. The people she gets close to are mostly people who need a lot from her, since those are the relationships where she knows what to do. At thirty-five she's still being praised for it, by a boyfriend who tells his friends she's the responsible one and a boss who hands her the projects other people didn't finish.

The people she does this for are adults, and an adult who gets looked after this way doesn't start looking after her in return. The boyfriend whose rent she covers doesn't start asking whether she's eaten, he gets used to the rent being paid. When she mentions the $850 in the ninth month, he gets upset with her. The friend plans her own work schedule around Tuesdays and Thursdays and stops looking for another pickup. They're doing what most people do, they take help when it's offered, and the woman giving it ends up angry at people who never agreed to do anything for her.

Her own children are expected to do the same for her as they get older. A daughter who's fourteen gets told she's her mother's best friend and starts hearing about the rent, and she's doing the same job her mother did at ten. No child can make up for what her mother didn't get, and she shouldn't be asked to try.

Nobody can give her a different childhood now, including her mother. A lot of women spend years hoping their mother will get sober or get out of prison and finally be the mother they needed. Some mothers do get sober and start calling every Sunday, and they still weren't there when their daughter was in the fourth grade. She doesn't have to be done being angry about those years before she changes what she does on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Stopping looks like telling your boyfriend in November you're paying your half of the rent from now on and he needs to figure out his, and then you don't pay it on the first when he hasn't. Your friend gets told you can do Tuesdays but can't do Thursdays anymore, and you let her be annoyed with you for a week while she finds someone else. The guilt you feel when you don't cover it is the same feeling you had at ten, when there wasn't enough food in the house and it seemed like your fault. The $850 a month can go into savings or toward the dental work you've put off for two years. You can spend Thursday afternoons sleeping, since nobody else is going to book the dentist appointment or tell you to go to bed, and the people you've been looking after aren't going to start.

The Book

Useful Isn't the Same as Loved

For the Daughter Who Became Everyone's Support and No One's Priority

The book is for women who took care of everyone growing up and are still doing it as adults, and it goes through how the habit started and what it looks like to stop.

Read About the Book