How modern motherhood compares to my great-grandmother’s struggles

As the working mother with three small children, I manage to show up at the office each day while also juggling a never-ending to-do list that includes packing lunches, scheduling appointments and ensuring the house stays somewhat clean.

I’m frequently overwhelmed by the comparisons I make between myself and other moms on social media, and feel defeated by my inability to unplug. At times, I can’t help but wonder what raising children in a simpler time would have been like.

In the lead up to Mother’s Day, I spent a quiet evening with my grandma, Darlene Bruneau, reflecting on what life was like for her mom as she raised children years ago.

Elizabeth Beebe, my great-grandmother, first became a mother in 1940.

Her seventh child, a boy named Russell, was born in 1951 with a hole in his heart.

68 years later, my own son Henry was born with an atrioventricular septal defect — three holes in his heart.

Henry was able to have life-saving open-heart surgery when he was six months old, while Russell died in his father’s arms at the same age.

The doctors told Elizabeth there was nothing they could do.

Elizabeth likely would have marveled at what we are able to accomplish with modern medicine, just as I marvel at the sacrifices she made to provide for her family on a small farm in rural Saskatchewan.

While mothers today can easily drop by a store or place an order from the comfort of our own homes to keep our children clothed, Elizabeth relied on her own vast set of skills to ensure her kids had the clothes and blankets they needed.

“She sewed, she quilted, she crocheted … she knit all of our socks and mitts. In the wintertime she’d have those quilting racks set up in the house. You’d have to crawl underneath them to get anywhere,” my grandma laughed.

Elizabeth made the clothes for all of her 12 children completely by hand.

“She didn’t use (a) pattern. She could take a piece of cloth and make anything,” she said.

Along with being a talented homemaker, Elizabeth also handled much of the responsibility that came with operating a farm in the 1950s.

Her husband Frank worked away as a logger, so she ran the farm by herself most of the time.

Along with caring for cows, horses, sheep, and chickens, Elizabeth also tended to an immense garden and preserved as many vegetables as she could to ensure the family would have enough food to last the winter.

Finding fresh cucumbers, strawberries, and other produce that my children enjoy at the grocery store year-round seems like a luxury compared to the stress she faced each fall as she rushed to salvage every last pea pod from the withering vines.

Although preserving the food was hard work, Elizabeth found joy in the task and made it her mission to fill as many jars as she possibly could.

“Dad would always say ‘You kids better pick up your stuff, because if you don’t, Mom is going to can it!” my grandma laughed.

“She canned carrots, beans, cucumbers, corn … Everything she could get her hands on,” she said.

When Elizabeth’s kitchen wasn’t jam-packed with jars for canning, it was full of rising bread dough.

There weren’t bread machines available that time. Even if there were, she didn’t have the electricity needed to run one.

So, she kneaded and shaped each loaf by hand before baking them in her wood-fired oven.

“She made lots of bread at one time; not just one or two loaves, but a table full,” my grandma said, a soft smile on her face as she pictured the table in her childhood home overflowing with fresh baking.

While there are stark differences between my experience of motherhood and what my great-grandmother lived through, I can also see similarities between us.

As busy as Elizabeth was, she always made time for her family.

As the sun set each evening, she would light a kerosene lamp and share stories with her children nestled in around her.

“After all the chores were done for the night, Mom would read to us. We would bring books from the school,” my grandma said. “That’s how we all heard the classics, like ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Tom Sawyer.’”

The nightly ritual with their mom was a great incentive for the kids to hurry to get the dishes done and clean the house before bed.

“The less time it took us to get our chores done, the more Mom would read to us,” she laughed.

As my grandma recounted this story from her childhood, I pictured my own nightly ritual with my children, snuggled up in bed reading my version of the classics, books like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘The Baby-Sitters Club.’

Elizabeth’s daily life as a mother may have looked very different from mine, but we end each day in the exact same way — surrounded by love.

I can only hope one day my own daughter, who is named Elizabeth in memory of a remarkable woman, will sit down with her granddaughter on a quiet evening, share stories about me, and say that I was a good mom too.