You are not the Better Mother. So fake it.
Sometimes, particularly in a public parenting setting, I will play the Better Mother. This is the mother who stands attentively outside a music audition, serenely listening to the notes emanating from within. She realizes the parent next to her said “Haydn,” not “Biden.”
When her child emerges, the Better Mother isn’t sprawled on the floor playing Spelling Bee, but instead greets him with encouraging commentary on the second movement. Also, she has brought a snack.
The Better Mother succeeds
The Better Mother understands the lacrosse match (game?), cheering at appropriate moments in ways that hearten rather than humiliate. She knows the coach and chats amiably with team parents about various maneuverings on the field, nimbly expanding the conversation to school committees and afterevents. She did not bring a book.
The Better Mother ensures that her kids have dress shoes that aren’t two sizes too small. She bakes. She reads official emails from school and camp from beginning to end. She knows which teachers your kids are supposed to get and whom to email if they aren’t gotten. She always brings a water bottle.
She is not the mother who didn’t know there was a school concert and has to sneak in as the lights go down. She knows which side of the field her child is playing on and possibly which position. She never texts at a stoplight with her child in the car.
She is empathic but not overbearing, affectionate but not treacly, wise but not smug, concerned but not anxious. She is the mother who knows danger but never checks in on a child for the wrong reason.
The Better Mother is, by definition, a better mother than I am. She can be a total stranger spotted at the museum or a familiar face at a birthday party. Either way, she is a natural star in the play for which you haven’t quite memorized your lines.
Most mothers — and fathers — probably have a personal vision of their own competition, depending on one’s skill set or lack thereof. For me, it depends on the context, my mood, the child in question and the spectrum of parental figures in the vicinity, even sometimes on which TV show I last watched or what book I’m reading.
Playing the part
For a period, I decided that a better mother than I was MaryKay Wilmers, a former editor of The London Review of Books. I’ve never met her, but read about her in “Love, Nina,” a memoir by Nina Stibbe, who served as a nanny to Wilmers’ two precocious sons.
Wilmers surrounded her children with clever British eminences such as playwright and novelist Alan Bennett and biographer Claire Tomalin, as well as American critic John Lahr. Raised among brilliance, her boys became sharp wits themselves, biting and slightly wicked in their humor.
As I didn’t have any storied literary figures lighting up my dinner table, I simply let loose all my own most caustic comments, the kinds of uncharitable thoughts you usually reserve for like-minded adults. Alas, without elegant British companions, I was merely encouraging a rude sarcasm.
My error was highlighted in the presence of another Better Mother, my friend Robin, whose children looked strangers in the eye upon meeting, shook hands firmly and managed civilized niceties.
No one is suggesting you have to be the Better Mother — merely that you can play her in public at your discretion. When you’re surrounded by a bunch of slacker parents or all-out bad moms or you’ve had a busy week and need an extra boost, you can simply slip on the role, ideally in public, for a Sunday afternoon. Yes, I am saying you can fake it.
Mother’s Day brings forth the Better Mothers in droves, when they accept all due adulation.
On such occasions, regardless of what kind of mother you are in reality, you can damn well play the part.
The real judges
And who’s going to be the wiser? The ones we think of as Better Mothers could be big fakers themselves, women who shove unevenly microwaved Trader Joe’s items before their kids for dinner and call it a night.
They could be the ones who post about their teenagers on TikTok or slap their toddlers in Target when an iPhone camera isn’t in the vicinity.
Or they could just be like most parents, occasionally too tired to read aloud, not hugely interested in seventh-grade algebra or simply not in the mood to play.
It is possible the Better Mothers are no better than the rest of us. Only our children know the truth.