My Machiavellian Moment

It was in Southern California, the early years of the twenty-first century, and I was facing an intense moment of crisis. Newly remarried, my husband Eric and I had moved in together with our kids and were trying to blend our family. From the beginning, it was total chaos. Not only had we not set any ground rules for trying to govern our family, we hadn’t even established any ground rules for our marriage.

So, somehow, virtually all of the household chores fell by default to me. This included all the grocery shopping, the cooking and cleaning, the drop-offs and pick-ups from preschool, and all the car-pooling, bathing, bill-paying, laundry, and diaper-changing.

At the same time, I was trying to finish the dissertation I was writing as the final requirement for my Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley, and I had just started a demanding new full-time job writing legal briefs from home. All of which meant that I was trapped (read: imprisoned!) inside for days at a time with my four rambunctious young kids whose constant bickering was driving me nuts.

Oh, did I skip that part? Four children. Under the age of eight.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my kids dearly and would walk to the far ends of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell and back on their behalf. But they also have the uncanny ability to drive me to the brink of insanity.

At six, Teddy, my oldest and most independent if sensitive daughter, would sometimes mimic me by screaming at her siblings when they irritated her with their silly childhood pranks. "Stop following me! Leave me alone! I can’t take it anymore!" she’d howl, as they giggled while trying to cuddle up next to her on the couch.

Complicating matters was the fact that I share custody of Teddy with my ex-husband Paul. He hasn’t remarried and doesn’t have any other kids, which means that he can shower his undivided attention and affection on her in a way that I never can. Plus, whenever she stays with him, his peaceful well-ordered home is her own little kingdom, where she can reign as she sees fit without so much as a hint of internal subversion or opposition. No one sneaks into her room to steal her beloved white furless stuffed kitten (more about that disaster later). No one rifles through her backpack and tears up her carefully completed homework (more on that epic battle later, too).

Which brings me to my then-three-and-a-half-year-old-daughter Katie. Katie has Down syndrome and is happiness personified. But she can also be infuriatingly stubborn and defiant. Some of her defiance was actually quite impressive in terms of originality, concept, execution, and the sheer creative-destructiveness of it. And had she been performing in some sort of early-childhood-drive-your-mommy-totally-insane-competition, I would’ve given her a perfect 10. A virtual gold-medal-winner in insubordination.

Katie is also an accomplished escape artist (more on that little trick later, too). Whenever I took my eyes off her to, say, take a quick two-minute shower or search for my cell phone that she had turned off and surreptitiously hidden under the sofa cushions, she’d spring like a fox into action and find something even more cunning and crafty to do.

Meanwhile, her trusty co-conspirator was her younger brother Trevor, who was firmly entrenched in the midst of his Terrible Twos and had a tendency to throw earth-shattering tantrums whenever our cat Lucky managed to escape from his grasp (or he otherwise didn’t get exactly what he wanted and exactly when he wanted it).

These behaviors weren’t sufficient to trigger a maternal breakdown, but, in the aggregate, they made me resent motherhood and question my fitness as a parent. “I'm a terrible mother," I'd mutter to myself as I changed yet another diaper and dreamed of the day they were all safely away at college. Then I'd feel guilty for wishing their childhood away.

Still, I desperately wanted to mold them into less irritating little creatures whose constant bickering didn't drive me to drink, who didn't suck every ounce of energy out of me with their constant needs, who were more obedient little people who would quickly and predictably submit to my parental commands.

So, like millions of other modern moms, I ignored centuries of wise advice and tried to change them—by yelling, nagging, or ignoring them. This, of course, only made their behavior worse. They'd argue a little louder, slam doors harder, and leave dirty glasses and plates on the table with greater frequency.

One night, after washing the dishes and tucking our kids into bed, I talked to my husband about the mind-numbingly tedious and oppressively isolating tyranny of motherhood. He didn't understand what I was complaining about and said that staying home all day sounded “great” to him.

“Why don’t you take the kids to the park if you’re going stir crazy in the house?” he helpfully suggested one cold rainy evening.

“The park?” I said sharply. “Why don’t YOU take them to the park?”

After a heated exchange, Eric made a hasty retreat to our bedroom and turned on the TV as I stomped off to my office. Too exhausted to work, I sat at my desk and stared at a dusty old shelf of books. It was practically buckling under the weight of dozens and dozens of history and literature and philosophy titles that were piled up high upon one another in no particular order of importance.

“Even my bookshelf’s a mess,” I thought.

And, as I began straightening it, an old copy of The Prince caught my eye. Pulling it from the shelf, I studied its cover – a portrait of Niccolo Machiavelli dressed in his elegant robes of office. His intelligent, determined eyes stared out humbly at me; his thin lips turned up in a slight knowing smile; his stance calm, relaxed, powerful, and confident—everything that I was not at that particular point in my life.

To read more of this excerpt from Machiavelli for Moms click here!