Motherhood and Its Challenges

The word mother means a female parent who brings up a child, takes care of her and loves absolutely by putting the needs of her children over her own. A mother takes the whole duty of parenting with both her words and her actions. Being a mother can be extremely fulfilling but it has got its fair share of challenges; it has got far-fetched highs and the demanding feeling of affection and protectiveness that comes with it has to be well balanced. The most magnificent and satisfying of times of motherhood is just the quality time you spend with your kids and just simply watch them grow and be happy.

A mother usually offers a warm, selfless and an understanding environment and to most mothers, the particular moments spent with their children are not comparable to any other moment. Explicitly, the period of being a mother is the most thrilling moment that life can present to a woman. Motherhood involves being a capable wife and mother, to be an affectionate and a kind friend to all members of the family and above all, to keep the house operational.

All these, mothers are expected to do in a single stride and still remain the most self-controlled member of the family because more often than not, mothers should build great friendships with their children and husbands. The unconditional love that mothers offer should carry with it self-responsiveness, beauty that comes from inside and refinement coupled with high aptitude. All these images are not very easy to keep up with but all the same, the society expects mothers to achieve all these. Against this background therefore, it is no little truth to emphasize that motherhood is generally a big challenge.

(Rosenberg, D. 64-66). Body: Measuring your achievements as a mother is not an easy concept; the challenges present themselves each single day and the solution is just in having the right attitude and striving to solve a predicament by finding fresh ideas in making things smooth sailing. The positive aspect is achieved by understanding the reason you became a mother in the first place and realizing that it is still in existence; this is important because with time, mothers realize that the challenges do not go, they only change forms.

The hitch is that by viewing things from this angle, most mothers identify their shortfalls and deal with them while providing the proof that the challenge is adequately dealt with, this can be well achieved by having a feedback mechanism. The rationale behind this strategy is straight forward: since things that can not be quantified tend to be given less consideration, the gist is to focus more interest and time on the quantitative aspects because they can be planned, registered and evaluated, this therefore enables one to easily come up with solutions (DiQuinzio.

P. 32-34). In comparison, juggling motherhood with employment or business can be trickier than managing motherhood as a full time mother. To every mother, the family is the most important thing and is so fulfilling to give attention to, on the other extreme, ones personal accomplishments are equally important and should therefore not be sacrificed at the expense of the quality of the family unit. This makes the whole issue very difficult contrary to what the society has always believed that multitasking is manageable to mothers.

According to Elraviv Yung, a social scientist at the Beijing school of law, “the potentials of women have not gotten the appreciation they deserve, women add a lot of value to the society and the very fact that they can juggle up their roles as both entrepreneurs and mothers should be a great motivation to the society” Elraviv 56. The best strategy for this group of women would still be to come up with a workable formula on time management and do a feedback mechanism after a certain specified duration.

This is mostly by dividing your time in such a way as to have time both for the family and work and to ensure no time is spent on the extreme. The feedback plan helps mothers to asses their achievements in the timelines and correcting any deviations from plans. Research has revealed that being a mother in the present day has more to face up to and is more difficult than it was twenty to thirty years in the past. Dealing with busy schedules, coping up with pressure in the society and teaching children to acquire acceptable values are just a few out of the scores of concerns that the society presents.

Infact, standards have deteriorated as compared to how they were in the past. Controversially though, the society judges mothers more harshly than fathers and when it comes to instilling values in our children, a lot is expected from mothers than is from fathers (Rosenberg, D. 80-82). The effects of motherhood challenges can be far-fetched: mothers often sacrifice too much to an extent that they end up not having time for their own ambitions. This is very costly than beneficial because in as much as a mother feels that her ideal objective of being a mother are achieved, self fulfillment is overlooked.

Another effect is that motherhood-especially full-time- is so devastating-due to fatigue- that in the long run, it leads to different illnesses that may be chronic. These illnesses may be less affordable to treat and this leads to difficulty in achieving these goals in the first place. Achieving the set goals and assessing the deviations from plans at times may be unrealistic especially considering that time in itself may be limited. It should be understood therefore that motherhood is difficult-but at times fulfilling- and trying to live up to the society’s expectations may at times be unachievable (DiQuinzio.

P. 89-93). Conclusion: Overall, although difficult, is the most important in her life. Motherhood ,as generally expected in the society, is supposed to be characterized by self-denial, fostering and unrelenting, on the other extreme, a mother is more often than not expected to feel on the wrong side of the law if her standards are not as high as is generally acceptable. Motherhood as an occupation is expected to embrace social, physical and emotional sides.

The social characteristic entails the expectations that a mother will put together the family structure and ensure that the family relationships are functionally healthy. Apart from this, the mother has to guard the way the family and the larger society views her achievement, that is to say, are they up to standard? Emotionally, a mother should be there for her family and to ensure her presence is felt: dealing with a child’s achievements and disappointments as well as their feelings and teaching them how to cope with their emotional challenges.

Motherhood also involves meeting the expectations of the larger family in giving them adequate attention and time. Left to one person to deal with single-handedly, striving to achieve these expectations can be overwhelming. Works Cited DiQuinzio. P. The impossibility of motherhood: feminism, individualism, and the problem of mothering. Routledge, 1999. Rosenberg, D. Motherhood without guilt: being the best mother you can be and feeling great about it.

Six Steps to Learning How to Overcome Challenges in Your Life

There are six steps to learning how to overcome challenges in your life. Each of these steps identifying the challenge or problem, defining the challenge or problem, analyzing the cause of the challenge or problem, exploring solutions to the challenge or problem, deciding to solve the challenge or problem, and taking action to overcome the challenge or problem will require your total involvement (Pokras, 1989). While no one is an expert on your particular challenge, there are strategies that can be used as tools to help you overcome these challenges. The first tool involves identifying the challenge.

Successfully overcoming challenges require knowing exactly what the challenge involves. Many times when we first encounter a challenge we feel threatened and react defensively before knowing what we are up against. When we step back from the problem or challenge and take time to examine it we find the problem has other contributing factors that were not clearly in focus in the outset. During this phase take time to collect data about your problem or challenge such as when it began, what were the symptoms that a problem existed, and how long has this been going on (Pokras, 1989).

Upon identifying the factors or underlying causes of the problem you can then move onto step two defining the challenge. In this step it is a good idea to write down the possible causes for the challenge that you are now facing. This will require analyzing the data you have collected, thinking about what this data means, deciding what it is you want and what you do not want, and narrowing down the challenge or problem to single points of causation (Pokras, 1989). Once you have narrowed the scope of the challenge or problem down to a manageable level you are now ready for step three-analyzing the cause of the problem.

Really what takes place in step three is taking the time to analyze actions that were taken that resulted in there being a challenge or problem that you are now facing. This is can be accomplished by doing some type of cause and effect diagram that will give you the ability to visually comprehend what happened. Usually when we can clearly see where we went wrong we have that aha moment. Now that you have identified, defined, and analyzed the challenge or problem, what do you do now?

Here is where the real work begins because many people can tell you what their problem is but they have a hard time doing something to change their situation. Step four requires you to make a decision to do something by exploring possible solutions to the challenge. Niven (2005) suggest developing a strategy or plan that allows you to decide what you need to change to overcome the challenge or the problem. This step is an important step because it takes a desire to succeed to overcome the challenge or problem and no one can instill in you the desire to change.

This desire must come from within but will not happen until you make up in your mind what you want out of life, how you want your life to be, what you need to survive, and what it is you need to change to overcome your challenge or problem. Making the decision that you must change and that you have the power to make that change is difficult but can be the most rewarding thing you can do. In step five you will discover that after the decision is made that you want to change you can now actually decide to solve your problem.

This step will require deciding on your criteria for success, deciding what your goals will be, establishing priorities, defining objectives, and taking responsibility for improving your own life (Cohen, Jacobs, Quintessenza, Chai, and Ungerleider, 2007). The most important tool in this step is writing an action plan including the aforementioned elements along with your vision for your life, your mission in life, and your or strategy for living your life (Niven, 2005). This plan must be written in a manner that allows you to measure your progress toward overcoming your challenge or problem.

Part of your plan, for example, may involve getting a mentor, a person to serve as a role model, or setting up a support system (Cohen et al, 2007) by a certain date to fully implement your plan. Once you have established your plan you are ready to move onto the final step. The last step to overcoming challenges involves taking action . Implementation of your action plan will be the most critical part of you being successful in overcoming your challenge. This will require your total commitment, dedication, involvement and perseverance to achieve success. You ust remember that the best laid plans will not solve your problems if you do not do something to put them into motion, prepare yourself to deal with the unexpected, and be ready to make the little changes necessary to your plan to reach your goals. If you carry out the six steps of identifying the challenge or problem, defining the problem, analyzing the cause of the problem, exploring solutions to the problem, deciding to solve the problem, and taking action to overcome the problem (Pokras, 1989) you will begin to make progress to overcoming your challenges.