No, Moms Don’t Have to ‘Stand Still’ for Their Children to Succeed

Our first child is leaving for college at the end of August, which means that we are smack in the middle of a summer of “lasts” and attempts to squeeze in every possible drop of togetherness without all killing each other. It’s a bumpy ride. But we aren’t giving up. Which is why my eldest, her younger sister, and I went to see Barbie together on the afternoon that it came out. 

Even in the midst of the kind of mental and emotional distraction that’s involved in bracing for a major life transition, I loved the movie. I loved how it lived up to all that its marketing promised. I loved Barbie’s shock at encountering the real world. I loved America Ferrara’s monologue.

I love a lot of things about the Barbie Movie

I loved seeing it with my almost-grown-up teenage daughters. I loved adding another common experience to our relationships even as those opportunities are about to become less frequent. But then, almost at the end, there was something I didn’t love.

We mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.

ruth handler (as played by Rhea Perlman) in Barbie

This was the line that Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie played by Rhea Perlman, speaks to Barbie as she grapples with her future. It is the line that has people weeping on TikTok. 

One columnist called it the movie’s “most profound line.” But as I sat in the theater, it took all of my willpower not to groan out loud or embarrass my daughters with a verbal eye roll.

“Are you kidding me?” I was thinking. “After a whole movie about a mother leading the fight to save what is good about Barbie Land, the lesson of the movie is that mothers have to stand still?” 

I am open to the possibility that this line would have hit me differently at a different phase of life. But at this particular moment, when eighteen years of love, sweat, and tears has brought us to the verge of a new phase of family life, all I could think about was how often that very idea—that we are supposed to stand still in order for our children to succeed—shapes mothers’ feelings about sending their children out into the world.

The strange expectation that moms stay stagnant while their kids go off into the world is not reality

They go, we stay. They learn new things, we think about the paths we didn’t pursue. They build their futures, we are what those futures lead away from. Ultimately, they don’t need us anymore, and we are stuck forever in the same place we’ve always been.

No wonder so many parents wander around in this summer-before-college with dazed expressions and teary eyes. But this strange expectation of motherhood does not reflect reality—even when an unnecessarily shmaltzy movie line makes us think it does. 

And it is not a fair burden to place on our daughters as they step out of our homes and into their new college worlds. Their existence has not frozen us in time. And their future success does not depend on us standing still and becoming simply touchstones for them.

What I wanted to scream at the movie screen, in that darkened (but not dark enough to conceal my identity as my daughters’ mother) theater was: NO. I am not standing still. We are not standing still!

Thanks to my daughter I have been doing the opposite of standing still

For my first eighteen years as a mother, I have been in constant motion. I have been learning new things. I have been developing expertise as a parent. I have been changing how I think about the world and moving along new paths. I have been flying by the seat of my pants. I have often been getting by on minimal sleep. But I have not been standing still. And this is thanks to my daughters.

Without them, my husband and I might have built different career paths. We might have ended up moving more often. We certainly would have made different choices about how to spend our money and our time.

But we grew with our daughters in ways that we didn’t even know to expect before we had children. Everything about how I view the world is shaped by raising, living with, and getting to know my daughters.

The ways that I interact with students and colleagues as a college professor have been enriched by what I have learned as a mother. The things that bring me joy have multiplied in unforeseen ways as I’ve raised my children. 

Parenting set me into constant motion, learning and doing all kinds of new things

And my confidence in my own abilities to navigate the challenges of life has grown as well, with every phone call with our pediatrician’s office, piece of friend group drama, or decision to let go just a little bit more in the interest of raising daughters prepared to face life as adults. 

As much as I hated that line, it reminded me—perhaps by accident—that in family life, gratitude is a two-way street. I hope that as my daughter finds her way in her first year of college, she will look around (not back) and appreciate all that we have poured into our parenting efforts.

But I also want her to know how grateful I am for the opportunities that her existence has given me to grow with her. As we move her into her dorm, I want to thank her for all that she has taught me so far. And for all that I know I am going to learn from her journey through college and into full adulthood.

I imagine that plenty of mothers will be sitting in theaters this summer with their recent high school graduates, watching Barbie and holding back tears (or letting them flow).

More Great Reading:

How Barbie Got Me Through Childhood and Motherhood