Rob Parsons

The Sixty Minute Mother

The Sixty Minute Marriage

www.hodder.co.uk

About the Author

Rob Parsons OBE is the founder and executive chairman of Care for the Family. He has spoken around the world to over a million people on business and family issues and is the author of over twenty books including The Sixty Minute Father, The Heart of Success, The Money Secret and The Wisdom House. He is married to Dianne and they have two children and five grandchildren.

Also by Rob Parsons

Sixty Minute Father

Sixty Minute Grandparent

The Wisdom House

Let Me Tell You A Story

Separate editions first published in Great Britain in 1997 (The Sixty Minute Marriage), 2000 (The Sixty Minute Mother) by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Rob Parsons, 1997, 2000

The right of Rob Parsons to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

eBook ISBN 978 1 473 68251 1

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

THE SIXTY
MINUTE
MOTHER

Rob Parsons

www.hodder.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: A Man on Motherhood

Chapter 2: When a Mother Remembers – Dianne Parsons

Sixty Second Wisdom

Take a Break

Chapter 3: When a Mother Accepts

Sixty Second Wisdom

Take a Break

Chapter 4: When a Mother Is Asked ‘Do You Work?’

Sixty Second Wisdom

Take a Break

Chapter 5: When a Mother Is Alone

Sixty Second Wisdom

Take a Break

Chapter 6: When a Mother Is Sick – Wendy Bray

Chapter 7: When a Mother Feels Guilty

Sixty Second Wisdom

Take a Break

Chapter 8: When a Mother Lets Go

Notes

To Lyndon and Celia Bowring

for the years of wisdom, encouragement and friendship – thank you.

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My mother.

Anne Taylor, Original Poems¹

A mother is neither cocky nor proud because she knows that the school headmaster may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the school gymnasium.

Mary Kay Blakely

Acknowledgments

Wendy Bray and Jill Worth have been with me on this project since the beginning. They have advised me, guided me, helped me gather material from other mothers and written some of the ‘Take a Breaks’. Jill is a single-parent mum of Sophie aged fifteen and Thomas aged eight. Wendy is married to Richard and has two children, Lois aged thirteen and Benjamin aged ten. As I write, she is in the middle of intensive chemotherapy and shares something of her story in the chapter, ‘When a Mother Is Sick’. My wife Dianne has lived this book with me since she started to open our home to women, most of them mothers, over ten years ago. I would not have attempted this book without the ongoing counsel of these three women.

Sheron Rice, my assistant, has shown commitment to this project and patience beyond the call of duty. That was no surprise to me; Sheron has recently lost her own mother and could not have had a better mother or loved her more. Her contribution to this book was literally a labour of love dedicated on behalf of her and her sister Joy to the memory of their mum.

Thank you also to Lisa Curtis, Tom Beardshaw, Celia Bowring, Lyndon Bowring, Caroline Adams, Kate Hancock, Gill Williams and Steve Williams. Jonathan Booth has played his normal role of sergeant-major and therapist.

Judith Longman, Charles Nettleton and the team at Hodder & Stoughton have been brilliant as ever – supportive, encouraging and patient!

And, above all, gratitude to the mothers who contributed. To protect privacy I’ve sometimes changed your names, but not your stories.

Chapter 1

A Man on Motherhood

Shortly after I wrote The Sixty Minute Father two things began to happen. First, mothers began to write to me saying how much they enjoyed it and that really it was a book for them as well. Second, all the research we were able to do showed us it was mothers who were mainly buying it and leaving it around for the men in their lives to read!

Over the past twenty years over five hundred thousand people have attended the family seminars at which I speak. The vast proportion of these are mothers. In the intervals and coffee breaks it is invariably mothers who wait to speak with me; this is true whether we are in Paris, Moscow, Vancouver or Manchester. Every year tens of thousands of people contact us in relation to our work with families; the majority of them are mothers. Much of our work has been with lone parents – for the past five years we have organised holidays specifically for lone parents and their families – and again most are mothers.

I have listened to mums who feel they have blown it irretrievably; to ‘stay-at-home’ mums who wonder whether people think they have taken a soft option; and to ‘working mums’ who are struggling with a demanding toddler and an even more demanding boss – both of them have learnt how to stamp their feet when they don’t get what they want. I have listened to mums who think they are the only ones whose baby won’t sleep at night, and to mothers of teenagers who feel they are the only parents in the world whose child sits next to them for the whole school journey without saying a word.

I completely understand that even all this experience doesn’t get me near being qualified to write on motherhood, but I do feel I have been in a very privileged position. Thousands of mothers have written to me, often spoken with me, and told me of lessons they have learnt. Many have said, ‘I wish someone had told me about some of this when my kids were small, but I learnt it the hard way.’ In The Sixty Minute Mother I wanted to pass on some of what those mums have told me – lessons in the art of motherhood.

Every so often, you’ll see a ‘Take a Break’. This is a chance to put the coffee on and just relax as all kinds of mums share what they have learnt over the years and, just as important, how they feel. And then, once in a while there is a ‘Sixty Second Wisdom’ page from mothers who have seen it all, done it all.

Almost every mother I have ever met acknowledges motherhood as a joyful, painful, exciting, mind-numbing business, and above all, as a long-haul affair. No matter how old our children are it seems the task of parenthood never ends. Fifteen years ago a mother who was ninety-five years old came into my office. She said to me, ‘I can rest in peace now, my boy.’ I said, ‘Oh, why is that?’ She replied, ‘Because I’ve just managed to get my youngest son into an old people’s home.’ It turned out that he was seventy-two and a bit shaky. But she was in full control of all her faculties and having got him started in school, university and marriage, was now tying up the last few ends – as a mother.

‘Sometimes I don’t like my kids!’

Sometime over the next few days, go to your child’s bedroom and take the dog-eared copy of ‘Children’s Best-Loved Stories’ off the bookshelf. Now turn to ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, put the coffee on and read. When you get to the part where the small boy yells ‘The King is naked!’, imbibe the honesty, let it seep into your very soul, set your coffee down and run into the streets yelling, ‘Being a mother is hard!’ ‘Sometimes I don’t like my kids!’ ‘Sometimes I wish I hadn’t had my kids.’ And as you shout, turn around, for you will see behind you thousands of mothers joining in the procession and all of them with a look of utter joy on their faces, not for the fact that they have found solutions, but for the sheer wonder that at long last the truth is out.

It was Bill Cosby who said, ‘I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time. Since then, however, I’ve had some doubts, primarily about my intelligence.’

I often meet mothers who feel that way. They are, simply, discouraged. And they are tired: tired of worrying, tired of getting the blame for all the ills in their kids’ lives – from verrucas to failed examinations – and tired of feeling guilty. Occasionally a mum will confide the heart-rending realisation that she wishes she had never had children to begin with. She carries this thought like a scar for it is mingled with unbelievable love for her child.

One mother put it like this:

My life took on the feeling of a monotonous routine, made even more difficult with the baby’s bouts of colic. They seemed to occur every night between eleven and three in the morning. One long night as I paced the floor trying to calm my screaming baby, uncontrollable tears started to flow down my face. I was slowly hit with the realisation that the fun and games were ended and we weren’t playing house any more. The reality hit me with a stunning blow.

It can be so very hard coming to terms with all of this. Society keeps telling us that parenthood is the ultimate privilege, but why then do parents often feel what appears to be sheer misery? The answer is not that we are failures, simply that we are feeling the effect of complete responsibility for the life of another person, over whom we have no final control, and who seems only intermittently either to want our involvement or be in the least grateful for it.

I have several hopes for this book. I want us to laugh together and I want all kinds of mothers to yell out, ‘Thank goodness this is not just me.’ I want single-parent mums to feel encouraged and not marginalised. I want mums who feel failures to be inspired not to give up. And, above all, I want mothers to feel honoured and respected. It was Gerald Ford, previous president of the USA, who said, ‘You can hold high office, but when your time is over the world will forget you.’ That is not true of motherhood – your kids will remember you for ever.

I have spoken with thousands of mothers but I have only had the opportunity to observe two at close quarters …

The first is now ninety years old. My abiding memory is of her clearing tables in the restaurant of a large store, so she could get enough money together by Christmas to buy me the chemistry set that sat proudly on the shelf in the toy department. She had no formal education to speak of, but she possessed a wisdom that seemed at times almost from another world. If she had any fault it was probably that she loved her children too much – to the exclusion of all else. I have always feared the day she would die, but, in truth, I have got used to losing my mother. About three years ago her mind began to become very confused. I went to visit one day and she said, ‘How are you, son?’ ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘not bad – I’m a bit worried about the kids.’ I waited for her normal wisdom, but instead she looked up and said, ‘I’m having my hair done today.’ And suddenly she was gone – oh, still present, but lost to me. I have grieved for her over three years. She is a wonderful mother.

The second, of course, is my wife Dianne. We have been married for almost thirty years. She is an unusual mother; she had to be. Dianne has not only cared for our children, Katie and Lloyd, but for Ron who is four years older than us. He spent most of his young life in the care of the local authority and we knew him when we were in our teens. He was pretty well homeless when he knocked on our door one night near Christmas. Dianne asked him to stay the night with us. That was thirty-five/over thirty years ago and he has never left. He has been with us longer than the kids. She jokes that she practised on Ron and it gave her a head start. Dianne is one of the most honest people I know, and I thought a wonderful way to start our time together would be to ask an honest mother to share some memories …