Debra Nash
E 375L
P2B
Motherhood:
Leadership
in a land of “shoes- and ships- and sealing wax- of cabbages- and kings”[1]
Unlike
the standard domestic Victorian woman, today’s woman often leads two lives: one
of the career professional and one of the homemaker. In ten years, I intend to be her. My stretch goal is to establish a medical
profession and a family by the time I am thirty-five years old. My particular passion for people triggered my
career interest. However, my desire to
get married and have children comes from the primal familial instincts that are
almost universal to women. As doctors
must exhibit leadership towards their support staff and their patients, a
mother must exhibit leadership in raising her children. Too often, people have taken for granted the
leadership roles of mothers when they assume that what comes naturally comes
easily. After reading about the misuse
of power of Lewis Carroll’s authority figures in
My life’s action plan combines motherhood and my career in terms of “self awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management… a crucial set of skills for resonant leadership.”[2] I must be self-aware of my personal leadership style regarding children and career management in order to have a consistent set of rules and provide a good example. I should efficiently manage my personal life with a planned time schedule in order to have sufficient time to help my future children while pursuing my career. I should be aware of the perspectives of children in general and in order to prevent misunderstandings in communication and calculate their individual personalities into the way I manage them. Only when I meet these first three criteria can I be successful at managing children.
Carroll’s
characters in Wonderland and the Looking Glass demonstrate all the methods that
mothers should avoid when raising their children. For each leadership quality, a character in
the two texts can be found that is severely deficient in that skill. The result is that
Self-awareness, the first part of my action plan, requires that I determine the values, priorities, and strengths and weaknesses of my personality. My English major and my pilgrimage thus far have allowed me to determine my personal values by comparing my actions to those of the characters in literary texts (before I had not been as able to critically analyze my values and express them in an argument.) Prioritizing is necessary for self-management, the second leadership skill. I intend to give my family goals and my career goals equal priority in my life. Based on my personality, my strength as a future mother would be a strong sympathy for children. On the other hand, my aversion to enforcing rules on others is a weakness, since children need to rely on the limits set by their parents before setting their own. For example, I have a cousin who could be a cruel brat when she was little. When she was four years old, she dropped a toy, and a stranger bent down to pick it up. My cousin kicked her in the stomach and thought it was hilarious. I was babysitting her at the time, and I did not know how to discipline her for this awful deed. Reasoning with words did nothing, so all I could do was tell my aunt later so my aunt could punish my cousin.
The King in
Wonderland exemplifies someone unaware of his guidelines and poor at
disciplining others. He decrees that
“all persons more than a mile high [are] to leave the court”[3]
halfway through the trial. Because he so
thoughtlessly flings out rules, the credibility of his rule is questionable (as
Self-awareness
also involves setting a good example. I
must be aware of my actions so that they correspond to the moral guidelines I
set for my kids. The Duchess in Alice and Wonderland demonstrates the
effects of disregarding her own moral platitudes. In her first encounter with
My mother is one of the positive role models in my life. She always says that “Actions speak louder than words,” which involves being self-aware so that your actions are consistent with your principles. For example, she advocates cleanliness, and she sterilizes her house with enough chemicals that doctors could hold open-heart surgery in her kitchen. She practices thriftiness by using minimal makeup and wearing a few items of jewelry that she has kept for many years, and she expects the same from me. I believe and aspire to follow her teachings because my mom follows them herself.
Self-management,
the second criteria in leadership, relates to the control an individual has
over her life. One way to achieve
control is to create an action plan, such as a timeline for how to manage my
passion for medicine around my domestic life.
Starting next year, my career requires four years of medical school then
four years of a residency program. The
time I choose to have children depends on when my career path gives me the
opportunity to do so, in terms of income and time availability. I will start earning a salary after medical
school, but I will not have any time to spend with children until after my
residency, so I should finish this first.
By then, I will be thirty years old, so I have five years of leeway to
have kids. Any later than thirty-five
years old would increase the potential of health complications during
pregnancy, and, furthermore, women physically have less and less energy to
undertake new challenges as time progresses.
Also, in terms of my daily time schedule, I would need to select a
specialty that works regular shifts such as radiology, emergency medicine, or
internal medicine so I can lead a routine family life. I plan to only have one or two children in
order to raise them with the attention and care that they deserve. With my action plan, I will be able to reach
my stretch goal of having a family and being a doctor within fourteen
years. Otherwise, I would be as muddled
as
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where—“
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
“— so long as I get somewhere.”
“Oh, you’re sure to do that if you only walk long enough.” [8]
The social awareness required for
leadership corresponds to my empathy with children. My childlike awareness of the Mystery allows
me to be one of the “best [people] to learn from about happiness and life and
love.”[10] Part of celebrating this Mystery is letting
go of the practical in order to enjoy the “nonsense [that is] conducive to
domestic happiness”[11] and
all happiness in general [double-click on video.][12] 
2Pink hat searches for ammo in marshmallow fight.
While
my nonsense was a marshmallow fight, Lewis Carroll’s was his literature in
poems such as “Jabberwocky.” In addition
to a child’s need for nonsense, parents must be aware of their children’s other
feelings and needs through close listening.
Otherwise, they will misunderstand and lose their temper like the
Caterpillar. He misconstrues
After
developing my self-awareness, self management, and social awareness, I will be
ready to direct all these areas towards relationship management, specifically in
mother-child relations. The purpose of
the mother is to guide her child in the process of growing up, which is symbolized
by
In various ways, the
authority figures in Wonderland and the Looking Glass “order, but do not
guide.”[16] Because of their lack of effective leadership,
they lose their authority over
In
Wonderland, Victorian didactic nursery rhymes become silly parodies, and
characters who enjoy Victorian activities like having tea and playing croquet
behave absurdly. In this way, Carroll
compares the Victorian world to his make believe worlds and indirectly
ridicules and criticizes the Victorian method of parenting. His concern about parents is still valid in today’s
world with events such as the Columbine school shootings. Age does not entitle a person to the
privilege of leadership, nor does surviving puberty entitle a woman to be Queen
of her household [see picture.][18] In order to deserve this privilege, I must “hammer
[my] thoughts into unity”[19] through
the collective cultivation of my leadership qualities.
Word Count: (1912 – 164) = 1748
Words omitted and added to P2A = 353
Link: https://webspace.utexas.edu/dln254/E375L/P2/motherhood.htm?