Reclaiming Maternal Dread

Thoughts on the "grim motherhood genre"

Did any of you read this piece about the “grim motherhood genre?” In it, Rachel M. Cohen takes stock of the last decade or so of motherhood media (books, articles, studies, movies), and reflects on how it has impacted her own ambivalence about motherhood.

For at least the last decade, women my age have absorbed cultural messaging that motherhood is thankless and depleting, straining careers, health, and friendships, and destroying sex lives. Today, it’s genuinely difficult to find mainstream portrayals of moms who are not stressed to the brink, depressed, isolated, or increasingly resentful.

Cohen talks to several mothers who feel as though they can’t express their maternal joy for fear of being labeled holier-than-though, braggy, or even an aspiring trad wife. She also addresses the onslaught of information impacting her ideas about motherhood, noting that women like her are “so informed, frankly, that we find ourselves feeling less like empowered adults than like grimacing fortune-tellers peering into a crystal ball.”

It’s a thoroughly researched, thoughtful piece, and I found myself feeling unexpectedly challenged by it.

While motherhood media critical of systems and ideologies making life hard for mothers certainly existed when I was on the verge of parenthood in 2011, the general landscape was drastically different than it is today. I approached motherhood fully convinced it would make all my [gendered!!!!!] dreams come true, and the lack of widespread cultural conversations about the difficulties of parenting was a net negative for my sense of self AND my experience of early motherhood. While I can only imagine how daunting it is to approach motherhood today in 2023 (see: Momfluenced!), I can’t believe that too much information is better than too little (nor do I believe Cohen is arguing that).

It’s not great that people feel dread at the idea of parenthood, but as I read Cohen’s essay, I kept defensively wanting to say, “But maybe a little dread isn’t that bad?”