Companies and employers usually do regular performance evaluations of their employees. These evaluations benefits not only the employers but the employees as well. For most companies, these determine their employees’ performance bonuses and/or salary increases and/or promotions. For the employees, these help them evaluate themselves. They can also rethink whether they would still like to stay with the company or not. This is when they ask themselves if they’re doing a good job.

Parenthood is also a job. Whether you’re a stay-at-home-mom, a working mom, a stay-at-home-dad, a working dad, or a single parent, it IS a job. But without any boss to answer to, do parents need to do regular performance evaluations? How often do they or should they ask themselves if they’re doing a good job?

Now that Mateo just turned one, I found myself evaluating my performance as a mother. I’m not talking about my emotional moods driven by hormones when I would question myself as a mother. I’m talking about objectively, reasonably evaluating how I’ve done on my first year.

Unfortunately, I realized that unlike employee performance evaluations, there’s really no questionnaire nor guideline that I can use. What does being a good mother mean? If it means having all the patience in the world, then considering all the times that I had to tell Ramil to ‘take him, take him’ for fear that I forget myself in the midst of my anger, does that mean that I’m a bad one? Does it mean being protective of your child or is it giving your child freedom to explore? Is it staying home to care for your child or working to be able to give your child a comfortable future? Is it being strict or letting your child do what he wants? I could go on and on and yet there’s just too many ways of being a mother.

I searched the internet for ‘what makes a good mother?’. I came across an article that gives credit to all kinds of mothers.

What makes a good mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time?

Or is it heart?

Is it the ache you feel when you see your child disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time?

The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 a.m., to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby?

The need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a school shooting, a fire, a car accident, a baby dying?

I also found an article from mamazine asking the same thing, who decides what makes a good mother? Even with just a year under my belt, several bumps and bruises on Mateo, Mateo’s early love for chocolate, and other small ‘unmotherly’ stuff, I refuse to call myself a bad mother. He wants me more than anyone else despite times when I would refuse what he wants so I guess that counts a bit. He’s technically the ‘boss’ anyway. He’s a thriving, happy baby so I guess that counts a lot.

So after sitting down and evaluating myself, all I know is I’m a mother and I love my boy to pieces. If that doesn’t make me a good one, I don’t know what would.