A Facile Examination of Motherhood

I feel called out and it hurts my feelings.

This morning, it was my husband’s turn to wake up with the kids. We have a strictly equal division of labor in all tasks except for the ones he’s better at doing (ie cooking, yard work, anything that involves pipes, light switches, ladders, fruit preservation and canning, the cutting of small children’s hair, etc). In those cases, he does approximately 100% of the work and I chip in when I can/feel like it and expect gratitude for putting myself outside my comfort zone. ANYWAY. I was lying in bed, luxuriating in the sounds of my children whining and the knowledge that someone else had to deal with them, when I realized the only thing that could possibly make the moment better was my phone. Luckily, I already had it in my hand, because some mornings my phone gets to my hand so fast I wonder if I ever put it down the night before. Aimlessly, I virtually wandered as those precious and rare moments of solitude slipped away, until I found myself reading a piece on Vox (curious mind) by Rachel M. Cohen called “Why Millennials Are Dreading Becoming Mothers”. Naturally, I assumed I didn’t need to read it because I already know why: it (often, nay, mostly?) sucks. But I do crave emotional validation like a child craves eating the food on your plate when they have the exact same thing on theirs, so I dove in anyway.

Me while my children scream at their father.

To my surprise, the Vox piece was not about the lack of a social safety net, or the inevitable hardship created by prioritizing the individual over the collective (see: all Americans) when we know it takes a village, or how the transmission of women’s rights seems to have been kicked into reverse by one particular political party. Instead, Cohen outlines how these days, a culture flooded with miserable maternal voices, from Tik Tok to popular television and film to the Old Gray Lady herself (who as far as I know is untethered by parental responsibility so wtf does she know?), is scaring millennial women away from having kids. She also pointed out, “such portrayals, often written by and about well-off, straight white women, are now…. commonplace.” THAT hurt my feelings.

The reason it hurts my feelings should be obvious: I AM IMPLICATED! I am a well-off, straight white woman who often hates on (aspects of) motherhood! Is it because I’m a privileged white woman that I think I have so much to complain about? Am I so unaccustomed to hardship and discomfort that the first time I encounter it I feel the need to launch an awareness campaign? Yes, mama’s got a lot of resources! So why is mama still crying BOO HOO my kids are hard WAA WAA I’ve lost my looks GAGA GOOGOO mommy needs mommy’s mommy!!? And then, according not to what Cohen wrote exactly, but to what I projected onto this article, not only is my Truth™ stupid, it’s commonplace. Other privileged white women have already sounded off! Message received! Now shut up and let’s hear about another white guy’s hero’s journey!

But what is more patently “privileged white lady” than ignoring the systemic wrongs being called out and immediately making this about myself? I’ll tell you what, speaking on behalf of other people whose stories I know nothing about! Which is just what I’ll do as I posit that it’s not because of but in spite of being a privileged white woman that I still find mothering so gd hard. I think no matter how many different voices we amplify (which we should do obvs!), women will still say that being a mother is hard and scary and boring and most of all, relentless. That truth is reinforced by the very premise of the Vox piece, which presumes that it is a mother’s responsibility to make younger women want to have children! Bitch I gotta take care of my kids! I don’t got time for you!

Now I don’t mean to come down so hard on Rachel M. Cohen, because her piece really is thoughtful. What she wants is a fuller picture of motherhood, instead of just the bad stuff. I guess I thought the good stuff kinda went without saying, or rather, everyone has already been saying it ad nauseam since the beginning of time. Kids are beautiful to look at and sweet to cuddle and free labor for your farm and they say the darndest things! Talk about a commonplace narrative. The truth is, for as full as we make it, I don’t think any story can prepare you for what motherhood is going to be like. It’s like trying to explain to someone who’s only ever been on land what it feels like to swim. I think the value of pulling back the curtain on the challenges of motherhood isn’t to help make up the mind of an ambivalent woman considering kids, but to comfort the woman who’s already had them. To assure her that when she’s scared and miserable, she’s not alone.

There was another moment in Rachel M. Cohen that slapped me right in the sleepy face. She writes,

“When I started asking women about their experiences as mothers, I was startled by the number who sheepishly admitted, and only after being pressed, that they had pretty equitable arrangements with their partners, and even loved being moms, but were unlikely to say any of that publicly.”

At first I thought, no fucking way. I’m not saying she was lying (although maybe????) but it shocked me that any woman would claim to be self-conscious about enjoying motherhood when that’s how we’re supposed to feel. Then I remembered that Inside Amy Schumer sketch about women literally self-immolating to avoid accepting compliments. We want to impress, we try to impress, but when someone tells us we do, we instinctively disavow any praise so that it doesn’t seem like we take pleasure in being impressive. Could it be that we really don’t feel entitled to enjoy anything? Not even the stuff we’re conditioned to believe we should enjoy? How can us girls not publicly have fun when when that’s all we just wanna do??! I tried to conjure what I enjoy about being a mother, and immediately bristled at writing it down. No one cares! No one comes here for that! Is joking about the pitfalls of motherhood just another way of obscuring female pleasure? Is it too self-indulgent to admit that I’m proud my body (which I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to hate, and usually do!) did a kind of magical thing?

I guess at the end of the day I’m only really writing this for myself, so here goes: I think being a mother has made me a more mature, independent, and compassionate person. It has made me more patient. When my older son was an infant, I’d fervently google every problem that arose looking for a solution. For every weird poop, or bad nap, or fussy afternoon, I encountered the same answer: it’s probably totally fine but there’s a small chance your kid is dying. It has been my (albeit short) maternal experience that no one can give you the answers you are looking for, because there aren’t any answers. Or there isn’t any one answer. You just have to figure out by trial and error what works for your kid. So don’t waste your money on bullshit sleep training courses! Or do. Maybe it’s worth it to give you a sense of control, however false, in a chaotic world. Being a mother has also given me a greater sense of perspective. The truth is that most likely, when a problem does arise, there’s really nothing you can do about it except wait for it to go away. And it usually does in a week or so. That week will feel like nineteen years, but technically, it’s only seven days! 168 hours! 10080 minutes! And so forth! Being a mother has also…. given me something to talk about with other parents? Does that count? Cuz unfortunately all us boring ass parents want to talk about is our kids! Exhibit A: this week’s newsletter!

Now that I’ve lost every childless reader, I can share this. The other day, I attended my first kids holiday concert as a parent. Good lord are those adorable. There was something about seeing all these beautiful kids together, singing about love and kindness and world peace like they were no-brainers that reminded me how everyone begins. Everyone starts out innocent (unless you believe in Christianity, but that’s on the way out, right?!!). Everyone starts out trusting. Everyone starts out crazy and wild and weird because they don’t know there’s a way you’re supposed to be. When I see all that through my kid’s eyes, I wonder, maybe there’s not?? There is so much beauty in the beginning of a life, it’s like a gd trash bag blowing in the wind. Sure, a lot of parenting can make a person unhappy, but as my husband reminded me the other day, who said the point to life was being happy?