I have a lot to say on this but I'll try to be succinct. And I also want to say that I think we need to be clear that this is a conversation about white motherhood in particular.
I grew up in the US south (and still live here) and was raised an evangelical Christian. Motherhood was, of course, the ultimate goal for any woman in my context. Yes, we were told it was fulfilling and the best thing we'd ever do, but I also heard from literally every corner of my community that it was hard. We were taught (just like everything else), it was sacrificial, brutal, you would lose yourself, etc., but THAT -- the sacrificial, die-to-yourself aspect -- was part of what was seen as beautiful and good. And to me, THIS was the dominant narrative -- that motherhood was the ultimate good AND it was terrible. This came across in sermons, in so so so many books, christian movies, the little bible studies we all attended, and if you watch any popular tiktok pastor now, you'll hear this too. This was the narrative I heard everywhere. Now, I want to caveat that I am talking about parenting, not about child birth or immediate postpartum. We didn't learn about that -- and yes that is a huge piece of this that I am so glad is being more openly talked about online.
But I think what frustrates me from what I hear from people who were raised and live in liberal spaces, is that I think it's sometimes a luxury to not have to think critically about motherhood before having children, because it wasn't sold to you as your ultimate identity, which (surprise!) will actually lead to a lot of questions. And it often sounds to me (as someone in her early-thirties who has started having children), that I'm being warned again and again by liberal feminists about how hard being a parent is. But from the context and perspective of someone who, like millions of other women, grew up in a Christian suburban context, the piece that I feel so strongly we are missing is not that parenthood is hard. It's that 1) you have a choice at all, and 2) you don't have to give up who you are. "Dying to self" is not a requirement. And actually, it's not simply that motherhood is fulfilling, it's that you can bring your whole self to it. Not only is becoming a parent a choice, but what that looks like for you involves a lot of intentional choice as well and that is empowering.
I appreciate every story I read and hear about women and parents who choose this phase of life. But I never heard from anyone, until writers like Haley, and I'll add Laura Marling to this too, that motherhood did not have to suck. And that has also been my experience, in spite of everything I believed going into it (and weekly sessions with my therapist throughout my pregnancy about how scared I was of losing myself in motherhood). Motherhood, for me, has made me feel like a fuller version of who I am. And I wish that I had been told that was possible.
Because I still live in a place where the culture is dominated by evangelical Christianity, it has actually been extremely radical to show myself as I am now: feminist, atheist, leftist, etc; and also, fulfilled mother. The right will tell you those things cannot coexist. You cannot love your children if you do not love Jesus (this is like a direct quote from a megachurch pastor). And yet here I am, loving my child and loving myself with no god to speak of.
I'll end by saying I think I feel sensitive about the portrayal of motherhood by the left not because I'm concerned about whether or not other liberal women will have children. But because I know so many women, many of them already mothers, who are still in the church and who are looking for alternative narratives -- they are looking for reasons to leave fundamentalism behind. And the story we tell about motherhood matters to them. They deserve to hear that you can leave the church, leave god, leave behind everything you were taught, and you can still be a good mother. And, just as important, you can be happy too.
(I just want to note that my perspective also comes from being a former doula and reproductive health advocate. I know firsthand how messy this all is, and I appreciate the conversation!!)
Wow there's so much here that resonates Elizabeth - thank you. THIS I found myself nodding hard at - "It's that 1) you have a choice at all, and 2) you don't have to give up who you are." And you're absolutely right that so many narratives of motherhood privilege a white perspective. Thank you for this reminder!
I’m 42, I have five children and never had a thoughtful conversation with myself about whether or not to have kids. It was my religious culture and the expectation, but I did genuinely want it. (As genuine as a desire can be when it’s grown inside such intense cultural pressure.)
But the point I want to make is that I think it matters WHERE the “depictions of motherhood as rich and fulfilling” are coming from. Which might contribute to some of the angst feminist/leftist mothers feel.
It’s one thing to hear the conservative right or trad wives singing the praise of motherhood. But if that’s a population I very much do not want to align myself with, it could have the opposite effect. “I don’t want to do anything *THEY* are telling me to do.”
So even if the positive aspects of motherhood are the dominant narrative, it’s not resonating with people/women who want to hear it from a group they trust. There might be a subset of undecided potential mothers who are specifically looking to the Haley Nahman’s and other leftist/feminists to hear it.
Oct 25·edited Oct 25Liked by Sara Petersen, Amanda Montei
OMG I was so thrilled to see this from two of my favorite writers on here. I am (also) a big fan of Haley and love her writing. Interestingly I have found myself unable to relate to her writing on motherhood currently. But I can also remember trying to convey that I really did like being a mom in those early stages, even though I was absolutely not ok. I do wonder if this is generational, I am almost 40 and had my first (and only) child at 36. I was the (almost) first of my friend group to have a kid, and this was a month before Covid, so instead of performing motherhood in front of my friends, it ended up being in front of an Instagram audience. And even though I had always been transparent about my ambivalence towards becoming a mother and how much I despised pregnancy and struggled postpartum, I still felt this urge to present myself as a mother as being "ok" when I very much was not. I say all of this to say, in the early stage of motherhood (where Haley is now) I thought much differently about myself as a mother vs the me now (with an almost 5 year old).
Now, I feel it is my duty as a mother to tell everyone and anyone who will listen just how fraught and life altering it is, assuming they already know that it can be great and rewarding, but also, it is incredibly f*cked up, especially in the current system in which we operate. And when I look around and watch young girls being forced to give birth to babies, and see how the government is actively trying to control what women do with their bodies I feel an ever greater sense of urgency to be transparent about the brutal realities of motherhood. Even living in a state (Vermont) that (mostly) protects women, where we have protected reproductive rights, where we have more support and better access to childcare, I see where it all slips through the cracks, and the fundamental failures that our society drops in mother's laps and expects us to pick up the pieces.
I can't possibly imagine how my writing or personal narrative of motherhood could truly impact how someone made that choice for themselves, no matter how raw, unrelenting and brutally honest it is. And the truth is, even though I went into motherhood with fairly low expectations, all the hellish things people told me and I read about could never have prepared me for just how savagely hard it has been at times. And on the flip side, no amount of glowing praise for motherhood could have prepared me for the heart aching, soul shattering love I have for my daughter.
I am so grateful for all the raw, messy, complicated writing I find about motherhood because each piece chips away at the little voice in my head that questions my worthiness as a mother. I'm so glad to be one, but I also don't feel any obligation to make it seem great, because it can be, but it can also not. Who am I to try to convince anyone of that?
one hundred percent THIS: "Now, I feel it is my duty as a mother to tell everyone and anyone who will listen just how fraught and life altering it is, assuming they already know that it can be great and rewarding, but also, it is incredibly f*cked up, especially in the current system in which we operate." I was def the friend who gently suggested various friends call their doctors to ask about Zoloft or whatever - the friend who came over and held babies while the moms cried. And said like YES THIS IS NORMAL IT IS SO HARD. I'm also the friend that gifts postpartum doula gift certificates for shower gifts lol.
I really appreciate this interview, specifically for this point:
"We get stuck in this false binary, too, where we look at this incredibly diverse cultural conversation happening around care and motherhood and boil it all down to, well, is motherhood dread or is it joy? Is it good or bad? Go or no go?"
I didn't read a single thing about motherhood before I got pregnant in 2021, I didn't know it was a genre that was growing and grappling with the ever present cultural binary nor that it was fighting a growing pro-natalist force in political writing. All I knew was that my cohort, 30-somethings in a centrist, middle-American, non-elite community, considered children to be a personal failure. Whenever it was discussed, it was brought up with examples of people who hated their kids, people who suffered depression for years, women who gave up their jobs and their lives, divorce, chronic illness, etc. I personally knew someone who died due to PPD, it was horrific. I knew I wanted kids but it felt like I was signing up for the worst experience one could ask for. The most common response upon telling the news was "Are you ready? The first few years are horrible but it does get a little better later."
Imagine my surprise when I found out that yes, it was hard, really hard, but it was also transformative, beautiful, gentle, and most of all, fun! A cousin whispered to me when she visited with her 2 year old "Isn't it wonderful?" and I almost started crying, "Yes!" I whispered back, "It's incredible!". My husband and I made a conscious effort to share the hard and the good with our friends, in response we got comments that we were the only people who actually seemed to be having a good time and enjoying parenting. When I started to read more about parenting and motherhood in particular, I was shocked by all the narratives of "No one prepared me for how hard this was going to be." I often feel that I live in a parallel universe to the rest of the States - I *know* the dominant narrative is one of unrestrained pro-motherhood but I really, truly, scout's honor, didn't see that until I went looking for it.
What does this say about siloed information streams and cultural narratives writ-large? How is it possible that my community of ordinary people, engineers, manufacturers, school teachers, nurses, social workers, was so sure that children were horrible when not 10 miles from us, there is another cohort hearing that children are the only noble path forward for men and women? More than anything, the disconnect from my experience and someone like Sara Petersen's reinforces my belief that the root cause of many socio-cultural dialogs is a belief in the binary - that one's own experience is the right way (or wrong way) and the only valid narrative is one that reinforces that vision. I appreciate this conversation for allowing space for that grey area and acknowledging that the positives and negatives are exacerbated by only allowing one viewpoint to preserve.
In the end, it was a piece by Amil Niazi in The Cut that seemed to speak to my experience. That The Hard Parts can be easier to talk about and bond over, everyone loves a good horror story, but The Good Parts aren't really a story - they are mispronounced words, inside jokes, a look, an unexpected smile. This leaves the story of parenting lost in translation - When you only talk about the Good Parts, it feel unsubstantiated and magical, flirting with the divine feminine and an emotional anti-intellectualism. When you only talk about the Hard Parts, it becomes an easily understandable horror story filled with poop, sleepless nights, and simmering resentment. But real parenting happens in the middle and that is why it is so hard to write about or event explain. https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/the-good-parts-of-parenting.html
Thank you for sharing this! You're really reinforcing for me just how much our immediate social contexts can differ! I've truly never been part of a social group that viewed have children as a failure so can't fathom how destabilizing that must've been. And I think you're absolutely right that difficulty is typically easy to narrativize than joy or contentment or delight.
"What does this say about siloed information streams and cultural narratives writ-large? How is it possible that my community of ordinary people, engineers, manufacturers, school teachers, nurses, social workers, was so sure that children were horrible when not 10 miles from us, there is another cohort hearing that children are the only noble path forward for men and women?" These are such important questions.
It is really hard to write about the pleasures of parenting— especially in a way that does not reproduce old sentimental and oppressive narratives AND that isn't trivialized as not worthy of literary or intellectual merit. But it is possible, and it's happening, even in the books (like Nightbitch for example) that tend to be thought of as books about the horror of motherhood. There is tons of delight and sensuality and desire and ecstasy in recent writing on motherhood— but, not so much of this online.
oh man THIS - I mean, I think of Angela Garbes' Essential Labor AND Like a Mother, both of which neatly outlined how power systems make mothers' and caregivers' lives more difficult while also truly glorying in the corporeal beauty of motherhood, and expansive nature of caregiving.
Yes! Both really also parse the difference between our desire to make care and motherhood valuable and visible— and the fact that they are not currently seen this way in society, and therefore the experience of parenting is rarely simply "positive."
Loved this conversation, and agree with so much of what you are saying, while also understanding the impulse of some liberal writers who are mothers to want to talk about the positive parts of mothering. I have definitely experienced how media and cultural bubbles can shape our experience vastly. [I was raised in the South by conservative parents and now live in the Bay Area and identify as progressive.] I see that as a big factor here, as other commenters have pointed out.
Narratives around motherhood have opened up and changed so much in the past five-ish years. There’s so much more honesty, anger, ambivalence and criticism of failing systems and it’s so important. And, it’s an interesting and difficult time to become a new parent, which Haley has done. I see my postpartum and mother-of-a-baby self in her awareness of the gaze of others on her mothering. My kid is three and a half now but I still remember and carry that time with me.
I think a generous reading of these types of essays from liberal mothers is that they want people considering becoming mothers to have a nuanced and honest picture of how it can be. Reading a full spectrum of experiences from people we can trust (not tradwives) is valuable.
I want more conversations that honor the deep value of care work and also grapple with the reality that our society profoundly does not value it. And that we need to fight so hard to change that.
YES for sure! I hadn't fully thought about this point before - how the majority of "motherhood is the best" message ARE coming from conservative sources. I can definitely see how hearing from progressives would help balance one's perspective.
“First, I think there is still plenty of sentimentalization of motherhood and the family and children. We need not worry that there is enough of that, truly. There is also plenty of political rhetoric discouraging women from remaining single and encouraging them to have children. See for instance: Project 2025, the entire Republican platform, and most popular representations of family life.”
This is what I find *most* frustrating about this piece you’ve produced. You say you didn’t even think about the fact the most positive depictions of motherhood come from the tradwife world - and yet, you hold that up in the piece as a reason why women on the left need not spill any further ink.
Oct 25·edited Oct 25Liked by Sara Petersen, Amanda Montei
I wrote a whole comment. It was so smart. I had a point! I wrote it twice! And then my phone died before I posted it! But the most important part was: I loved this conversation between you and Amanda, Sara. Great, great, rich, thoughtful, big-minded, curious conversation. I loved it.
I have never considered whether I was making other people not want to have kids- certainly when my sister was struggling with infertility and I was having a hard time as a new mom, we had conversations about if she wanted to give up her freedom and she always said she was over being able to watch all the tv snd spend her free time how she wanted. I felt very isolated with my oldest, he was a tiny baby born in January 2017. Now the kid is 99th percentile in height and weight but as a newborn baby he was 3rd percentile and I was panicking about that failure to thrive possibility. I didn’t want to go out and expose him to anything, I remember hearing about a mom class at the hospital and thinking how hard it sounded to go out at a specific time. As the weather warmed up my depression lifted some and I eventually started to spend more time with family but I don’t recall taking him on an outing other than the neighborhood park or Dr until he was at least 4 months old. My parents came to visit every couple weeks and would stay with us and my sister came to hang out too but I didn’t have any mom friends outside of family until he started childcare at 19 months old. We went to little gym but I never moved past acquaintances with any of those parents.
With my second kid, he was born in summer 2019, and I vowed I would put myself out there more to be less isolated. I joined the mom groups, I joined fit4mom and did stroller classes and made some friends. For 6 months everything was going great and lockdown shut down all the community I had created and I could immediately see how the nuclear family was failing me. My sister Laura already discussed the timeline, my in-laws were in our initial bubble but it was 2 months before we saw anyone else at all. The first time we saw a lot of family was when we decided we could go to the beach for Memorial Day with my husbands brothers when everyone had been in their house alone for weeks. My husband’s grandad had been deteriorating from stomach cancer and died a couple days after we got home from that trip at age 92 and I still hate we didn’t see him in the last 2 months of his life except in passing.
every motherhood story speaks to me but I mostly read the feminist writing now, and not so much of the early baby/toddler discourse. Even though I came in at the tail end of mom blogging I read alpha mom website a lot and Amalah blog was my favorite even though her kids are now significantly older than mine. As the ND mom of ND kids, many of her stories resonated for me and I read their transition from 1 to 2 kids probably 20 times when I had a 2.5 yo and newborn. Also read her a lot to find out about seeking therapy services. I really think mothers telling their stories is the only way to make us feel seen and there doesn’t need to be PR for the good parts, they will speak for themselves.
To be honest, I related more to Hayley’s essay than probably anything I’ve ever read about being a new mom. I don’t have time to fully dig into it right now, but I think a few things are missing here: one, as has been mentioned, is that it doesn’t matter much to me whether conservatives are exalting motherhood when I don’t align with them and am not in community with them. I want the incredibly hard work and sacrifice I’m making as a mother to be valued and supported by MY community. The other is that while it is indisputably positive overall for parenthood to be a choice, and an informed choice, it can contribute to a judgmental and closed-off attitude toward people who do choose parenthood, and struggle with it. On a personal level, it is painful and alienating to be treated as dumb or deserving of endless drudgery because you made the suboptimal choice of having kids. On a policy level, the left is obviously the only end of the spectrum offering real solutions for parents, but I do think enthusiasm for this among the coalition is undermined by people thinking that parents are stupid for opting in to that responsibility and brought their problems on themselves. I don’t really think about it in terms of convincing people to HAVE KIDS… I just want to convince them that there is value in children and parenting, that we should be supported and valued parts of the community and the political coalition.
Thank you for articulating this Claire! I think one piece I'm truly just beginning to understand is that in certain circles, people seem to feel comfortable publicly denigrating the choice to have children as, like, a choice that will doom you to drudgery, uninteresting opinions, and generally an undesirable lifestyle? Is that right? Because wow that would SUCK (or, as you more eloquently say, "painful and alienating"). I've just never really experienced that (personally IRL)! Nor have I had much interaction with people who think parents are "stupid" for having kids. So your comment really highlighted how HUGE our personal experiences are - in terms of shaping our perspective on the false motherhood binary. I have an acquaintance that once said like, "well that was your choice" when I expressed exhaustion or something related to motherhood, but this acquaintance is also kind of an asshole so it was easy to brush off lol.
To be fair, I do think that the general discourse (online, think pieces, etc) very much shapes this. I had a newborn who couldn’t be in daycare because of Covid when I ended my maternity leave. It was the hardest time in my life, and even though I supported any and all lockdown measures to keep teachers and kids safe, I still felt abandoned, burnt out, and overwhelmed, and we barely saw anyone in person so I spent a lot of lonely time on social media or reading articles. I have encountered so much contempt directed at parents who “hate their kids” and “want other people to raise them” because they struggled with school and childcare closures. From self-described leftists! I do think the pandemic created exacerbated a rift between parents, especially moms, who were absorbing a lot of additional childcare work while trying to stay gainfully employed (and often simply getting pushed out of the workforce), and some non-parents who saw this as a lot of complaining from privileged whiners who had these kids as status symbols or hobbies but expect others to do the work. Basically I think that the moment I became a parent was very different in terms of the cultural discourse around parenting than maybe five or ten years before. And my friends don’t suck, so they would never say these things to me, but sometimes I do wonder if they’re judging me deep down because I see people I don’t know expressing that judgment in such an unfettered way in public forums.
I had my first kid at 25 in 2005. Social media wasn’t really much of a thing — MySpace was still the only mainstream one, and that was very different than social media is now. I remember when my sister in law told me I needed to get on this thing called Facebook and I made a profile to mollify her but then didn’t really open it again for several years. I was the first person I knew to have kids, and my husband was (and still is) in the military. We had friends, but then they would move, or we would. When my first was born we lived several states from any family and when he was three months all of our friends moved away. All of them.
I wanted people to like my kid because I wanted them to like ME. I NEEDED friends and I assumed that meant they had to like my kid (and later kids). That was why I cared about how they behaved around other people.
By the time mom blogs and then momfluencers were a thing my kids were getting older and I’d formed many of my own opinions about being a mom individually, so most of my reading interest was and is about the larger social factors in family and motherhood. That’s not to say I wasn’t influenced as a new mom, that I didn’t have plenty of guilt and pressure based on expectations, they just weren’t presented in the same way they are now. Like my kids toddler years and early school years I was worried about doing things right, but more of that was based on people I directly knew, not “influencers”
That’s all to say that I NEVER thought about my kids as ambassadors to others of the wonderfulness of motherhood. That author says she doesn’t want to influence people, but the entire article is about wanting to convince people, through her kid, how great parenting is. That’s just weird to me. Our whole society is structured around how women should have kids and how great that is. No one needs more of that. As stated in another comment: they need to know they have the CHOICE.
That was kind of rambling, but I find it so interesting that two of my kids are still technically kids, and yet parenting and raising kids seems so different than it did when I had mine.
I see an online influencer mindset running through these essays, I think. When your very life is performed online to compel ppl to action—clicking or buying or believing—then of course every part of your private life feels like an essential opportunity to influence *something.* Or be influenced! It’s a self-importance and a self-consciousness at the same time. And boy, does it feel suffocating!! I don’t think influencer culture created this dynamic, but it does seem to tighten the screws…
I was a new mother almost 5 years ago in 2019 and the first few months went as expected with a lot of anxiety and also a need to ask for a lot of help from family and friends because we were struggling with sleep. I thought we were doing okay and then the world shut down in March of 2020 and my daughter was still able to come to my work with me and be in her daycare setting, but we were cut off from the family help, and my doomscrolling phase commenced for a couple months. We slowly started seeing my sister/her kids and my parents again in outdoor settings in May/June, but because my husband never stopped working as a police officer and because I never stopped working as a preschool teacher, many people did not want to see us at all and thought it would be safer to avoid in person contact at all. We saw very little friends that whole year and mostly only saw my side of the family. We finally went out on a limb and planned a beach trip in October 2020 with my sister, parents, her 2 boys, her husband, the 3 of us, and my maternal grandparents. It went well and after that I think everyone was less terrified of having a gathering as long as everyone was cautious beforehand.
Becoming a mother is stressful regardless, but becoming a mother and then having to deal with being cut off from people was rough!
I have seen some handwringing about falling birth rates in various countries, especially in South Korea. Some economists are concerned about this because what’s going to happen to the Ponzi scheme of social security if the population declines? This concern always strikes me as racist, because to me it seems like the solution is immigration—but we can’t have that, can we? It always boils down to the Great Replacement and a certain type of woman not having enough children.
Relatedly, why is declining birth rate blamed on women? If mother’s complaints about their partner’s weaponized incompetence are to be believed, women might have more children if their partner helped out (there was a study done in Spain where some men were forced to take mandatory paternity leave—this caused the fathers to want fewer children in the future and for the mothers to want more children in the future). One theory as to why South Korean women won’t have babies is sexism. Single women in China would literally rather have children through IVF than find a man with which to raise a child. However, to a certain extent it is true that once women gain rights and education, birth rate falls and no amount of bribing parents into having children through government support and maternity and paternity leave or even outright money can get those educated women to have more children. This could be due to increased age or prioritization of things besides children or the way that parenthood is now so much more work compared to before (concerted cultivation), but it seems to be a consistent correlation. So of course reproductive control has to be taken away from women (and one researcher at a Catholic university whose book was recently profiled in The New Yorker says the solution is to decrease government regulation of religion, since religion seems to be the only factor that can convince highly educated women to have multiple children).
THIS is particularly fascinating to me! -- (there was a study done in Spain where some men were forced to take mandatory paternity leave—this caused the fathers to want fewer children in the future and for the mothers to want more children in the future).
I have a lot to say on this but I'll try to be succinct. And I also want to say that I think we need to be clear that this is a conversation about white motherhood in particular.
I grew up in the US south (and still live here) and was raised an evangelical Christian. Motherhood was, of course, the ultimate goal for any woman in my context. Yes, we were told it was fulfilling and the best thing we'd ever do, but I also heard from literally every corner of my community that it was hard. We were taught (just like everything else), it was sacrificial, brutal, you would lose yourself, etc., but THAT -- the sacrificial, die-to-yourself aspect -- was part of what was seen as beautiful and good. And to me, THIS was the dominant narrative -- that motherhood was the ultimate good AND it was terrible. This came across in sermons, in so so so many books, christian movies, the little bible studies we all attended, and if you watch any popular tiktok pastor now, you'll hear this too. This was the narrative I heard everywhere. Now, I want to caveat that I am talking about parenting, not about child birth or immediate postpartum. We didn't learn about that -- and yes that is a huge piece of this that I am so glad is being more openly talked about online.
But I think what frustrates me from what I hear from people who were raised and live in liberal spaces, is that I think it's sometimes a luxury to not have to think critically about motherhood before having children, because it wasn't sold to you as your ultimate identity, which (surprise!) will actually lead to a lot of questions. And it often sounds to me (as someone in her early-thirties who has started having children), that I'm being warned again and again by liberal feminists about how hard being a parent is. But from the context and perspective of someone who, like millions of other women, grew up in a Christian suburban context, the piece that I feel so strongly we are missing is not that parenthood is hard. It's that 1) you have a choice at all, and 2) you don't have to give up who you are. "Dying to self" is not a requirement. And actually, it's not simply that motherhood is fulfilling, it's that you can bring your whole self to it. Not only is becoming a parent a choice, but what that looks like for you involves a lot of intentional choice as well and that is empowering.
I appreciate every story I read and hear about women and parents who choose this phase of life. But I never heard from anyone, until writers like Haley, and I'll add Laura Marling to this too, that motherhood did not have to suck. And that has also been my experience, in spite of everything I believed going into it (and weekly sessions with my therapist throughout my pregnancy about how scared I was of losing myself in motherhood). Motherhood, for me, has made me feel like a fuller version of who I am. And I wish that I had been told that was possible.
Because I still live in a place where the culture is dominated by evangelical Christianity, it has actually been extremely radical to show myself as I am now: feminist, atheist, leftist, etc; and also, fulfilled mother. The right will tell you those things cannot coexist. You cannot love your children if you do not love Jesus (this is like a direct quote from a megachurch pastor). And yet here I am, loving my child and loving myself with no god to speak of.
I'll end by saying I think I feel sensitive about the portrayal of motherhood by the left not because I'm concerned about whether or not other liberal women will have children. But because I know so many women, many of them already mothers, who are still in the church and who are looking for alternative narratives -- they are looking for reasons to leave fundamentalism behind. And the story we tell about motherhood matters to them. They deserve to hear that you can leave the church, leave god, leave behind everything you were taught, and you can still be a good mother. And, just as important, you can be happy too.
(I just want to note that my perspective also comes from being a former doula and reproductive health advocate. I know firsthand how messy this all is, and I appreciate the conversation!!)
Wow there's so much here that resonates Elizabeth - thank you. THIS I found myself nodding hard at - "It's that 1) you have a choice at all, and 2) you don't have to give up who you are." And you're absolutely right that so many narratives of motherhood privilege a white perspective. Thank you for this reminder!
“loving my child and loving myself with no god to speak of” - beautiful
I’m 42, I have five children and never had a thoughtful conversation with myself about whether or not to have kids. It was my religious culture and the expectation, but I did genuinely want it. (As genuine as a desire can be when it’s grown inside such intense cultural pressure.)
But the point I want to make is that I think it matters WHERE the “depictions of motherhood as rich and fulfilling” are coming from. Which might contribute to some of the angst feminist/leftist mothers feel.
It’s one thing to hear the conservative right or trad wives singing the praise of motherhood. But if that’s a population I very much do not want to align myself with, it could have the opposite effect. “I don’t want to do anything *THEY* are telling me to do.”
So even if the positive aspects of motherhood are the dominant narrative, it’s not resonating with people/women who want to hear it from a group they trust. There might be a subset of undecided potential mothers who are specifically looking to the Haley Nahman’s and other leftist/feminists to hear it.
Oh that's a GREAT point Jo!
OMG I was so thrilled to see this from two of my favorite writers on here. I am (also) a big fan of Haley and love her writing. Interestingly I have found myself unable to relate to her writing on motherhood currently. But I can also remember trying to convey that I really did like being a mom in those early stages, even though I was absolutely not ok. I do wonder if this is generational, I am almost 40 and had my first (and only) child at 36. I was the (almost) first of my friend group to have a kid, and this was a month before Covid, so instead of performing motherhood in front of my friends, it ended up being in front of an Instagram audience. And even though I had always been transparent about my ambivalence towards becoming a mother and how much I despised pregnancy and struggled postpartum, I still felt this urge to present myself as a mother as being "ok" when I very much was not. I say all of this to say, in the early stage of motherhood (where Haley is now) I thought much differently about myself as a mother vs the me now (with an almost 5 year old).
Now, I feel it is my duty as a mother to tell everyone and anyone who will listen just how fraught and life altering it is, assuming they already know that it can be great and rewarding, but also, it is incredibly f*cked up, especially in the current system in which we operate. And when I look around and watch young girls being forced to give birth to babies, and see how the government is actively trying to control what women do with their bodies I feel an ever greater sense of urgency to be transparent about the brutal realities of motherhood. Even living in a state (Vermont) that (mostly) protects women, where we have protected reproductive rights, where we have more support and better access to childcare, I see where it all slips through the cracks, and the fundamental failures that our society drops in mother's laps and expects us to pick up the pieces.
I can't possibly imagine how my writing or personal narrative of motherhood could truly impact how someone made that choice for themselves, no matter how raw, unrelenting and brutally honest it is. And the truth is, even though I went into motherhood with fairly low expectations, all the hellish things people told me and I read about could never have prepared me for just how savagely hard it has been at times. And on the flip side, no amount of glowing praise for motherhood could have prepared me for the heart aching, soul shattering love I have for my daughter.
I am so grateful for all the raw, messy, complicated writing I find about motherhood because each piece chips away at the little voice in my head that questions my worthiness as a mother. I'm so glad to be one, but I also don't feel any obligation to make it seem great, because it can be, but it can also not. Who am I to try to convince anyone of that?
one hundred percent THIS: "Now, I feel it is my duty as a mother to tell everyone and anyone who will listen just how fraught and life altering it is, assuming they already know that it can be great and rewarding, but also, it is incredibly f*cked up, especially in the current system in which we operate." I was def the friend who gently suggested various friends call their doctors to ask about Zoloft or whatever - the friend who came over and held babies while the moms cried. And said like YES THIS IS NORMAL IT IS SO HARD. I'm also the friend that gifts postpartum doula gift certificates for shower gifts lol.
I am 100% the friend who's like whatever isn't working for you, DO NOT FUCKING DO IT. Get the epidural, stop the breastfeeding, take the meds.
YESSSSSS
I really appreciate this interview, specifically for this point:
"We get stuck in this false binary, too, where we look at this incredibly diverse cultural conversation happening around care and motherhood and boil it all down to, well, is motherhood dread or is it joy? Is it good or bad? Go or no go?"
I didn't read a single thing about motherhood before I got pregnant in 2021, I didn't know it was a genre that was growing and grappling with the ever present cultural binary nor that it was fighting a growing pro-natalist force in political writing. All I knew was that my cohort, 30-somethings in a centrist, middle-American, non-elite community, considered children to be a personal failure. Whenever it was discussed, it was brought up with examples of people who hated their kids, people who suffered depression for years, women who gave up their jobs and their lives, divorce, chronic illness, etc. I personally knew someone who died due to PPD, it was horrific. I knew I wanted kids but it felt like I was signing up for the worst experience one could ask for. The most common response upon telling the news was "Are you ready? The first few years are horrible but it does get a little better later."
Imagine my surprise when I found out that yes, it was hard, really hard, but it was also transformative, beautiful, gentle, and most of all, fun! A cousin whispered to me when she visited with her 2 year old "Isn't it wonderful?" and I almost started crying, "Yes!" I whispered back, "It's incredible!". My husband and I made a conscious effort to share the hard and the good with our friends, in response we got comments that we were the only people who actually seemed to be having a good time and enjoying parenting. When I started to read more about parenting and motherhood in particular, I was shocked by all the narratives of "No one prepared me for how hard this was going to be." I often feel that I live in a parallel universe to the rest of the States - I *know* the dominant narrative is one of unrestrained pro-motherhood but I really, truly, scout's honor, didn't see that until I went looking for it.
What does this say about siloed information streams and cultural narratives writ-large? How is it possible that my community of ordinary people, engineers, manufacturers, school teachers, nurses, social workers, was so sure that children were horrible when not 10 miles from us, there is another cohort hearing that children are the only noble path forward for men and women? More than anything, the disconnect from my experience and someone like Sara Petersen's reinforces my belief that the root cause of many socio-cultural dialogs is a belief in the binary - that one's own experience is the right way (or wrong way) and the only valid narrative is one that reinforces that vision. I appreciate this conversation for allowing space for that grey area and acknowledging that the positives and negatives are exacerbated by only allowing one viewpoint to preserve.
In the end, it was a piece by Amil Niazi in The Cut that seemed to speak to my experience. That The Hard Parts can be easier to talk about and bond over, everyone loves a good horror story, but The Good Parts aren't really a story - they are mispronounced words, inside jokes, a look, an unexpected smile. This leaves the story of parenting lost in translation - When you only talk about the Good Parts, it feel unsubstantiated and magical, flirting with the divine feminine and an emotional anti-intellectualism. When you only talk about the Hard Parts, it becomes an easily understandable horror story filled with poop, sleepless nights, and simmering resentment. But real parenting happens in the middle and that is why it is so hard to write about or event explain. https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/the-good-parts-of-parenting.html
Thank you for sharing this! You're really reinforcing for me just how much our immediate social contexts can differ! I've truly never been part of a social group that viewed have children as a failure so can't fathom how destabilizing that must've been. And I think you're absolutely right that difficulty is typically easy to narrativize than joy or contentment or delight.
"What does this say about siloed information streams and cultural narratives writ-large? How is it possible that my community of ordinary people, engineers, manufacturers, school teachers, nurses, social workers, was so sure that children were horrible when not 10 miles from us, there is another cohort hearing that children are the only noble path forward for men and women?" These are such important questions.
It is really hard to write about the pleasures of parenting— especially in a way that does not reproduce old sentimental and oppressive narratives AND that isn't trivialized as not worthy of literary or intellectual merit. But it is possible, and it's happening, even in the books (like Nightbitch for example) that tend to be thought of as books about the horror of motherhood. There is tons of delight and sensuality and desire and ecstasy in recent writing on motherhood— but, not so much of this online.
oh man THIS - I mean, I think of Angela Garbes' Essential Labor AND Like a Mother, both of which neatly outlined how power systems make mothers' and caregivers' lives more difficult while also truly glorying in the corporeal beauty of motherhood, and expansive nature of caregiving.
Yes! Both really also parse the difference between our desire to make care and motherhood valuable and visible— and the fact that they are not currently seen this way in society, and therefore the experience of parenting is rarely simply "positive."
Loved this conversation, and agree with so much of what you are saying, while also understanding the impulse of some liberal writers who are mothers to want to talk about the positive parts of mothering. I have definitely experienced how media and cultural bubbles can shape our experience vastly. [I was raised in the South by conservative parents and now live in the Bay Area and identify as progressive.] I see that as a big factor here, as other commenters have pointed out.
Narratives around motherhood have opened up and changed so much in the past five-ish years. There’s so much more honesty, anger, ambivalence and criticism of failing systems and it’s so important. And, it’s an interesting and difficult time to become a new parent, which Haley has done. I see my postpartum and mother-of-a-baby self in her awareness of the gaze of others on her mothering. My kid is three and a half now but I still remember and carry that time with me.
I think a generous reading of these types of essays from liberal mothers is that they want people considering becoming mothers to have a nuanced and honest picture of how it can be. Reading a full spectrum of experiences from people we can trust (not tradwives) is valuable.
I want more conversations that honor the deep value of care work and also grapple with the reality that our society profoundly does not value it. And that we need to fight so hard to change that.
YES for sure! I hadn't fully thought about this point before - how the majority of "motherhood is the best" message ARE coming from conservative sources. I can definitely see how hearing from progressives would help balance one's perspective.
“First, I think there is still plenty of sentimentalization of motherhood and the family and children. We need not worry that there is enough of that, truly. There is also plenty of political rhetoric discouraging women from remaining single and encouraging them to have children. See for instance: Project 2025, the entire Republican platform, and most popular representations of family life.”
This is what I find *most* frustrating about this piece you’ve produced. You say you didn’t even think about the fact the most positive depictions of motherhood come from the tradwife world - and yet, you hold that up in the piece as a reason why women on the left need not spill any further ink.
I wrote a whole comment. It was so smart. I had a point! I wrote it twice! And then my phone died before I posted it! But the most important part was: I loved this conversation between you and Amanda, Sara. Great, great, rich, thoughtful, big-minded, curious conversation. I loved it.
thank you becky!!
I have never considered whether I was making other people not want to have kids- certainly when my sister was struggling with infertility and I was having a hard time as a new mom, we had conversations about if she wanted to give up her freedom and she always said she was over being able to watch all the tv snd spend her free time how she wanted. I felt very isolated with my oldest, he was a tiny baby born in January 2017. Now the kid is 99th percentile in height and weight but as a newborn baby he was 3rd percentile and I was panicking about that failure to thrive possibility. I didn’t want to go out and expose him to anything, I remember hearing about a mom class at the hospital and thinking how hard it sounded to go out at a specific time. As the weather warmed up my depression lifted some and I eventually started to spend more time with family but I don’t recall taking him on an outing other than the neighborhood park or Dr until he was at least 4 months old. My parents came to visit every couple weeks and would stay with us and my sister came to hang out too but I didn’t have any mom friends outside of family until he started childcare at 19 months old. We went to little gym but I never moved past acquaintances with any of those parents.
With my second kid, he was born in summer 2019, and I vowed I would put myself out there more to be less isolated. I joined the mom groups, I joined fit4mom and did stroller classes and made some friends. For 6 months everything was going great and lockdown shut down all the community I had created and I could immediately see how the nuclear family was failing me. My sister Laura already discussed the timeline, my in-laws were in our initial bubble but it was 2 months before we saw anyone else at all. The first time we saw a lot of family was when we decided we could go to the beach for Memorial Day with my husbands brothers when everyone had been in their house alone for weeks. My husband’s grandad had been deteriorating from stomach cancer and died a couple days after we got home from that trip at age 92 and I still hate we didn’t see him in the last 2 months of his life except in passing.
every motherhood story speaks to me but I mostly read the feminist writing now, and not so much of the early baby/toddler discourse. Even though I came in at the tail end of mom blogging I read alpha mom website a lot and Amalah blog was my favorite even though her kids are now significantly older than mine. As the ND mom of ND kids, many of her stories resonated for me and I read their transition from 1 to 2 kids probably 20 times when I had a 2.5 yo and newborn. Also read her a lot to find out about seeking therapy services. I really think mothers telling their stories is the only way to make us feel seen and there doesn’t need to be PR for the good parts, they will speak for themselves.
To be honest, I related more to Hayley’s essay than probably anything I’ve ever read about being a new mom. I don’t have time to fully dig into it right now, but I think a few things are missing here: one, as has been mentioned, is that it doesn’t matter much to me whether conservatives are exalting motherhood when I don’t align with them and am not in community with them. I want the incredibly hard work and sacrifice I’m making as a mother to be valued and supported by MY community. The other is that while it is indisputably positive overall for parenthood to be a choice, and an informed choice, it can contribute to a judgmental and closed-off attitude toward people who do choose parenthood, and struggle with it. On a personal level, it is painful and alienating to be treated as dumb or deserving of endless drudgery because you made the suboptimal choice of having kids. On a policy level, the left is obviously the only end of the spectrum offering real solutions for parents, but I do think enthusiasm for this among the coalition is undermined by people thinking that parents are stupid for opting in to that responsibility and brought their problems on themselves. I don’t really think about it in terms of convincing people to HAVE KIDS… I just want to convince them that there is value in children and parenting, that we should be supported and valued parts of the community and the political coalition.
Thank you for articulating this Claire! I think one piece I'm truly just beginning to understand is that in certain circles, people seem to feel comfortable publicly denigrating the choice to have children as, like, a choice that will doom you to drudgery, uninteresting opinions, and generally an undesirable lifestyle? Is that right? Because wow that would SUCK (or, as you more eloquently say, "painful and alienating"). I've just never really experienced that (personally IRL)! Nor have I had much interaction with people who think parents are "stupid" for having kids. So your comment really highlighted how HUGE our personal experiences are - in terms of shaping our perspective on the false motherhood binary. I have an acquaintance that once said like, "well that was your choice" when I expressed exhaustion or something related to motherhood, but this acquaintance is also kind of an asshole so it was easy to brush off lol.
To be fair, I do think that the general discourse (online, think pieces, etc) very much shapes this. I had a newborn who couldn’t be in daycare because of Covid when I ended my maternity leave. It was the hardest time in my life, and even though I supported any and all lockdown measures to keep teachers and kids safe, I still felt abandoned, burnt out, and overwhelmed, and we barely saw anyone in person so I spent a lot of lonely time on social media or reading articles. I have encountered so much contempt directed at parents who “hate their kids” and “want other people to raise them” because they struggled with school and childcare closures. From self-described leftists! I do think the pandemic created exacerbated a rift between parents, especially moms, who were absorbing a lot of additional childcare work while trying to stay gainfully employed (and often simply getting pushed out of the workforce), and some non-parents who saw this as a lot of complaining from privileged whiners who had these kids as status symbols or hobbies but expect others to do the work. Basically I think that the moment I became a parent was very different in terms of the cultural discourse around parenting than maybe five or ten years before. And my friends don’t suck, so they would never say these things to me, but sometimes I do wonder if they’re judging me deep down because I see people I don’t know expressing that judgment in such an unfettered way in public forums.
I had my first kid at 25 in 2005. Social media wasn’t really much of a thing — MySpace was still the only mainstream one, and that was very different than social media is now. I remember when my sister in law told me I needed to get on this thing called Facebook and I made a profile to mollify her but then didn’t really open it again for several years. I was the first person I knew to have kids, and my husband was (and still is) in the military. We had friends, but then they would move, or we would. When my first was born we lived several states from any family and when he was three months all of our friends moved away. All of them.
I wanted people to like my kid because I wanted them to like ME. I NEEDED friends and I assumed that meant they had to like my kid (and later kids). That was why I cared about how they behaved around other people.
By the time mom blogs and then momfluencers were a thing my kids were getting older and I’d formed many of my own opinions about being a mom individually, so most of my reading interest was and is about the larger social factors in family and motherhood. That’s not to say I wasn’t influenced as a new mom, that I didn’t have plenty of guilt and pressure based on expectations, they just weren’t presented in the same way they are now. Like my kids toddler years and early school years I was worried about doing things right, but more of that was based on people I directly knew, not “influencers”
That’s all to say that I NEVER thought about my kids as ambassadors to others of the wonderfulness of motherhood. That author says she doesn’t want to influence people, but the entire article is about wanting to convince people, through her kid, how great parenting is. That’s just weird to me. Our whole society is structured around how women should have kids and how great that is. No one needs more of that. As stated in another comment: they need to know they have the CHOICE.
That was kind of rambling, but I find it so interesting that two of my kids are still technically kids, and yet parenting and raising kids seems so different than it did when I had mine.
I see an online influencer mindset running through these essays, I think. When your very life is performed online to compel ppl to action—clicking or buying or believing—then of course every part of your private life feels like an essential opportunity to influence *something.* Or be influenced! It’s a self-importance and a self-consciousness at the same time. And boy, does it feel suffocating!! I don’t think influencer culture created this dynamic, but it does seem to tighten the screws…
I was a new mother almost 5 years ago in 2019 and the first few months went as expected with a lot of anxiety and also a need to ask for a lot of help from family and friends because we were struggling with sleep. I thought we were doing okay and then the world shut down in March of 2020 and my daughter was still able to come to my work with me and be in her daycare setting, but we were cut off from the family help, and my doomscrolling phase commenced for a couple months. We slowly started seeing my sister/her kids and my parents again in outdoor settings in May/June, but because my husband never stopped working as a police officer and because I never stopped working as a preschool teacher, many people did not want to see us at all and thought it would be safer to avoid in person contact at all. We saw very little friends that whole year and mostly only saw my side of the family. We finally went out on a limb and planned a beach trip in October 2020 with my sister, parents, her 2 boys, her husband, the 3 of us, and my maternal grandparents. It went well and after that I think everyone was less terrified of having a gathering as long as everyone was cautious beforehand.
Becoming a mother is stressful regardless, but becoming a mother and then having to deal with being cut off from people was rough!
I have seen some handwringing about falling birth rates in various countries, especially in South Korea. Some economists are concerned about this because what’s going to happen to the Ponzi scheme of social security if the population declines? This concern always strikes me as racist, because to me it seems like the solution is immigration—but we can’t have that, can we? It always boils down to the Great Replacement and a certain type of woman not having enough children.
Relatedly, why is declining birth rate blamed on women? If mother’s complaints about their partner’s weaponized incompetence are to be believed, women might have more children if their partner helped out (there was a study done in Spain where some men were forced to take mandatory paternity leave—this caused the fathers to want fewer children in the future and for the mothers to want more children in the future). One theory as to why South Korean women won’t have babies is sexism. Single women in China would literally rather have children through IVF than find a man with which to raise a child. However, to a certain extent it is true that once women gain rights and education, birth rate falls and no amount of bribing parents into having children through government support and maternity and paternity leave or even outright money can get those educated women to have more children. This could be due to increased age or prioritization of things besides children or the way that parenthood is now so much more work compared to before (concerted cultivation), but it seems to be a consistent correlation. So of course reproductive control has to be taken away from women (and one researcher at a Catholic university whose book was recently profiled in The New Yorker says the solution is to decrease government regulation of religion, since religion seems to be the only factor that can convince highly educated women to have multiple children).
THIS is particularly fascinating to me! -- (there was a study done in Spain where some men were forced to take mandatory paternity leave—this caused the fathers to want fewer children in the future and for the mothers to want more children in the future).
Here’s the link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity-leave-study-spain-men-fewer-children