Minimalism as a way to cope with the overwhelm of parenting
Towards the end of my pregnancy, I became a little obsessed with the concept of Swedish Death Cleaning. If you’re not familiar, Swedish Death Cleaning is decluttering with one major purpose: to organise and pare down your belongings in order to save your loved ones the headache (and heartache) of doing so if you pass away.
I was acutely aware, at that time, that birth would take me to the precipice. My goal was to bring a new life into the world, but in trying to do so, I could die. That was still a thing – women dying in childbirth.
So I started ruminating on the idea of sorting through all my belongings to ensure that they wouldn’t be a burden or an embarrassment to my family if I died.
In contemplating and strategising about this life and household deep-clean, my listening and reading habits began to change. I consumed untold podcasts, books and blogs under the umbrella of ‘minimalism’ – an approach to life, based on the belief that more material possessions do not lead to more happiness, fulfilment or purpose; in fact, they can get in the way of those things.
What started as a way to alleviate (or some might say, sadistically stoke) my anxiety about ‘the worst’ happening during childbirth, transformed into a desire to be more intentional about the way I would approach the rest of my life, including the early days of parenting.
From personal experience, I can testify that pregnancy goes hand-in-hand with a lot of unsolicited advice, including people’s opinions on ‘the best’ products to buy or use.
I was inundated with recommendations during my pregnancy. From family, friends, and coworkers. From midwives, doctors, and total strangers.
As a soon-to-be first-time parent, I was keen to receive the wisdom of others. But, when I noticed that different people were giving contradictory advice, I realised that whether something is perceived to be good or bad, a lifesaver or a hindrance, is a matter of judgement. It is subjective. And well-intentioned recommendations for even the most ‘simple’ products could be bound up in very prescriptive beliefs about the right and wrong way to parent.
Parenting is an overwhelming prospect because it describes a responsibility that will last a lifetime, and have repercussions for children that outlive their parents.
Many baby and parenting products are marketed to us as being able to ease this overwhelm – to save us time, to care for our children more effectively, to raise healthier and more self-sufficient young people. But what if these products are one of the sources of overwhelm, rather than the solutions?
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known as The Minimalists, describe minimalism as 'a lifestyle that helps people question what things add value to their lives'. Accepting that many products are necessary for modern parenting, without questioning whether each adds value to our lives, describes the opposite – a sort of maximalist approach to life, the consequences of which run deeper than the accumulation of ‘stuff’. It could lead to an excess of other people’s opinions in our lives. It could cloud our own judgements and beliefs about what parents we need to be for our children.
Having a baby has the potential to open the door to a lot of clutter – ideological and emotional clutter, as well as physical clutter. In this context, minimalism is akin to closing the door and only opening it to welcome visitors.