Peaches Geldof threw herself into an ideal of motherhood. Did she set the bar too high?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/motherhood-peaches-geldof-paula-yates

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I don't know what Peaches Geldof died of. Nobody does. Yes, we now know that an overdose of heroin is likely to have been the thing that stilled her body and her mind for ever. No doubt there are some who feel self-righteous enough to make harsh judgments about that. But no amount of speculation can ever untangle the complex web of psychological and neurological factors that conspired to make this woman's life so short.

In a post-Freudian culture, it's easy to understand that the loss of the mother-of-two's own mother, Paula Yates, must have played a large part. The premature loss of a parent is hard for any child to bear. The manner of that loss is important, too, addictive illness having a genetic dimension. It's possible that postnatal depression may also have been a lurking factor.

Yet it's hard to resist the notion that Peaches might have been, in a number of respects, the victim of her own romantic idealism as well. She wanted so much, for example, to be a perfect, exemplary mother, and had recently been signed up as a columnist for Mother and Baby magazine. She spoke of her children having made her feel "complete". Such impossibly exacting ambition may have placed a great deal of strain on her.

It was attractive, in a reactionary sort of way, the idea that a troubled, drug-using young socialite had been transformed by motherhood into an archetype of domestic contentment. But it was never realistic. Motherhood tends to be over-idealised. Its power to give meaning and purpose to unsettled lives is not a myth. But it is greatly exaggerated. Many mothers gave a hearty "hear, hear" when Lily Allen declared parenthood could be "boring". But boredom is the least of it.

It's rare for people to be advised that it's psychologically healthy to invest their entire sense of themselves in the performance of a single role. But that's what the ideal mother is expected to do. What's more, she's expected to understand exactly when to stop doing it as well. A mother who encourages her children to be too dependent? Well, she's a different kind of nightmare altogether. As for the idea that love is all children need, it's nonsense. Love is one very important item on a long list of very important items. The most important item of all is to remember not to fall for the cult of motherhood. Rule number one: it's not about you. It's about them. And, just as one is advised, on a plane, to put one's own oxygen mask on first, you have to care first for yourself in order to be able to care for your child.

But Peaches fell hard for the cult of motherhood – understandably enough, given her own history. She went the whole hog, advocating "attachment parenting", attending a local attachment parenting group and finding that she was admired for doing so. This particular motherhood cult emphasises the importance of maternal bonding so comprehensively that you could be forgiven for thinking that your child's future has been destroyed because you had drifted off into a 10-minute daydream during which the needs of your baby were not fully occupying the front, middle and back of your mind. It's a model almost guaranteed to promote maternal guilt in all but the most psychologically robust of care-givers.

With hindsight, one can see that by setting the bar so high, and so publicly – with her Twitter and Instagram feeds full of updates on the progress of her babies – Peaches may have built a trap for herself. Occasional inability to cope with the exacting parenting role she had chosen and had lauded would have been understandable – few mothers are unfamiliar with it. But in someone who had identified themselves so strongly as a devoted mother, it might have been hard to admit. Any feelings about her role as a mother that were not ideal would have been unwelcome, must have felt like a dark secret – a vulnerability or failure that she couldn't share. Unfortunately, living the life that she'd lived until motherhood, Peaches would have had a dark-secret network of heroin users and suppliers to turn to, heroin use being a dark secret itself; a dark secret that helps to keep other dark secrets at bay. These are the people on whom the police investigation will be focused.

Logic rarely rules the human psyche. Logically, Peaches was in a heartbreakingly excellent position to know a couple of useful things. Logic would have told Peaches that mothers don't have to be perfect to be precious. Logic would have told her that using heroin was a fantastically risky thing for a mother to do, because it could be fatal. But the thing about logic is that it's a great deal more easy to reject than it ought to be.

It's clear, nevertheless, that this young mother had been thinking about her own mother in those last hours, when she took heroin while looking after her 11-month-old baby. On the evening of the day her death was discovered, the Metro published a front page that featured a photograph of Peaches as a child, with Yates. It had been the last photograph she published on her Twitter feed. The headline, grotesquely sentimental, read: "Together again." It's revolting, I think, shackling two horrible, avoidable deaths together as some kind of spiritual reunion, as if individual human misery is a gothic romance in which the ugliest of endings can be spun as uplifting or poetic.

Yet I'm pretty sure that it was highly significant, the photograph being tweeted at that time. Having fallen back into drug use herself, while loving her sons no less fiercely, Peaches must have understood, perhaps for the first time, that her mother had loved her no less for doing the same. It's so much more easy to understand and forgive the mistakes of others when they are mistakes we have made ourselves. There's an awful, negative idealism in those sorts of thoughts as well. Many a struggling young mother turns to her own mother for help when things get rough. Maybe, in its crass, tabloid way, that front page was right. Maybe taking heroin made Peaches feel close to her mother, and loved by her, in the absence of a physical presence. Heroin use is hard to escape from, once embarked on. If it also made you feel connected to your dead mother at a vulnerable time, the temptation would be very complex and very great.

People talk about the Geldof family in terms of their being dogged by tragedy. But, in a way, they are dogged by idealism, too. Bob Geldof, of course, is one of the great idealists of his time: a man who didn't just dream that he could help to feed the world, but has never stopped trying to achieve it. Yates's idealism may have been smaller, more personal. But it was romantic idealism, surely, that led her to believe that following her heart could not possibly leave a messy trail of hurt and destruction in its wake. These are ardent people, passionate people. That's attractive, if unpredictable.

Peaches poured all that ardency and passion into being a mother. That's understandable. It's easy to believe that becoming a mother is like entering an enchanted kingdom full of healing and love. When members of the public declared their sorrow at Peaches' death, others suggested that this sorrow was fake and sentimental, another public display of emotional incontinence. Maybe. But who could fail to feel sadness for a girl who tried so hard to defeat her demons, and failed so terminally? So much was beyond her control. But it was plucky to have thrown herself at life so hard. It would have been good if she'd made it.