A review of responses to my essay
discussing the discussion (long-ish post)
Twelve days ago I published my essay on motherhood dread at Vox and in that time there’s been a lot of really generative, interesting responses. There have also been some pieces not directly responding to it but that I think relate well to the broader conversation. I’ve been reading and listening and thought I’d share some of those reactions, as well as some of the other books I’ve learned that are coming down the pipe on some of these topics. Of course no need to read this at all, but I thought it would be good for me to try to get it down, and might be of interest to some of you.
One fascinating thing for me is how this conversation has overlapped with a separate debate that’s been happening online over the last few months regarding whether the economy is actually in bad shape, or whether people feel bad about the economy because of negative news reporting + doomsday social media + how we’re socialized to talk about it. This debate over the “vibescession” in the economy has some obvious parallels I think to the conversation about motherhood in America — where there’s kernels of truth in the arguments everyone is making.
It also has parallels to this emerging discussion over whether teen mental health has worsened because of how we’ve culturally embraced talking about anxiety and mental illness. There was a New York Times op-ed on this last month, and Derek Thompson wrote an astute piece recently at The Atlantic. The overlaps with my motherhood dread essay felt pretty clear reading through his piece.
De-stigmatizing mental health issues is important and overdue. Talking more openly about the challenges of pregnancy and parenthood is important and overdue. But there’s also a point, for both, and for arguably many other issues, when that can go too far, or have costs that outweigh the potential benefits. As Thompson writes:
The way we talk about the world shapes our experience of the world. In 2022, the researchers Lucy Foulkes and Jack L. Andrews coined the term prevalence inflation to describe the way that some people, especially young people, consume so much information about anxiety disorders that they begin to process normal problems of living as signs of a decline in mental health. “If people are repeatedly told that mental health problems are common and that they might experience them … they might start to interpret any negative thoughts and feelings through this lens,” Foulkes and Andrews write. This can trigger a self-fulfilling spiral: Some individuals who become hyperaware of the prevalence of anxiety disorders may start to process low levels of anxiety as signs of their own disorder, which leads them to recoil from social activities and practice other forms of behavioral avoidance, which exacerbates their anxiety.
Reading his piece made me think about journalist Rachel Aviv’s tremendous book Strangers to Ourselves, which I think of often. Her book centers heavily on how our identities, emotions and even physical symptoms can be shaped by the labels and vocabularies we use. Her book was on my mind when I wrote my essay, especially in sections around rejecting certain expectations and attempting to reclaim our agency.
To quote myself (sorry):
Ann Burnett, a professor at North Dakota State University, has spent her career studying communication, and particularly how women talk about time. Studying what families highlight in their annual holiday cards, Burnett noticed how conveying how busy one’s life was had become something of a badge of honor.
Rejecting this frenetic competition could come with social consequences, Burnett said. “I think if you hear a mom who says, ‘Well, I’m not stressed and life is good,’ that in general people say ‘Oh, my god, what is the matter with her?’” she told me. “You kind of have to march to your own drum and not be attentive to that.”
It’s not always possible to change how we act, but it’s worth trying to do, to remember we still have agency in this world. In The Feminine Mistake, Bennetts asks a fellow journalist, Anna Quindlen, how she handles the guilt of managing her career with raising three children; Quindlen responds that she “doesn’t do guilt.” Bennetts’s reaction has stuck deeply with me since. “It didn’t occur to me back then,” she wrote, “that the refusal to feel guilt was a trait that could be cultivated, like patience or good manners or kindness.”
So yeah, I think the questions I’m trying to explore in my essay are bumping up and colliding with other debates and questions people are having right now. Biased here, but I’d say it’s a good, multifaceted conversation to have.
First I’ll talk about some of the (public) responses to my essay I heard from people who are already moms.
1. Today, Explained podcast: Why Millennials Dread Motherhood - a really great episode published yesterday featuring author of Momfluenced,
, and me.Highlight from Sara, who had her first child in 2012:
I can’t fathom what it must be like to be considering motherhood in 2023. Because I became a mother when there was so much less widespread motherhood content available. I mean I could have done some digging and found some mommy bloggers talking about postpartum depression, and the gritty sides of motherhood, but it wasn’t everywhere, the way it is now. On the flip side, I was shocked by how difficult motherhood was, experienced postpartum depression and felt really isolated in that experience. So yeah, I feel for people considering motherhood now, feeling anxious and bogged down by the onslaught of information, but I also don’t think it was great ten years ago when we knew so much less.
One point Sara and others have made is just how different the experience of motherhood will be refracted back through social media vs. talking to moms. Which, yes, sounds obvious when you say it like that! But I think it’s really good to reiterate and for people considering motherhood to hear, especially since some social media forums, especially TikTok, present as revealing the real unvarnished truth of the world. Unfortunately it can be a little disorienting and easy to forget that it’s not.
Sara says:
If we are determining how motherhood might be for us only through social media and motherhood media, we will have sort of a lopsided view. I really feel like if you talk to any person who is currently a parent, it’s really easy to hold both truths at once. Talk to any parent you know and they have a whole thread where they are interchangeably bitching about toddler tantrums and also boring their friends with cute things their kids said that day.
I also really want to make a plug for this piece I read in The Cut that complements this all really well. It came out a few days before my essay though I only saw it the week after. It’s called: TikTok’s Version of Parenting Is a Nightmare Fantasy by Amil Niazi. I mention it on the Today, Explained episode and this paragraph from it really resonated:
What I find so insidious about this new version of online mom life is how it pretends to be the opposite — a raw, real look at the state of motherhood — yet ultimately pushes the same narrative that parenthood is unattainably hard but that if you buy the right product or follow the right influencer, you might just be able to push through. Yeah, it’s hard, but we’re making it far, far harder on ourselves — and if I thought that the TikTok or Instagram version of motherhood on display now was accurate, I’m not sure I’d brave one kid, let alone three. What I worry about is that people on the fence about kids think this is how it is, with few alternatives that show the balance of love, laughter, stress, and work that goes into raising children.
It was a really balanced, thoughtful piece and refreshing to read.
2. All Joy and a Lot of Fun, by
I really loved reading this response from Elizabeth. She pushes back on the idea that parenting is only good from a high-altitude life-as-purposeful POV, emphasizing the day-to-day delight she experiences, and how she’s also been able to maintain her professional and social life and other interests. If more stories like this existed that just revealed more alternative experiences, I do think that would go a long way to alleviating a lot of the intense dread I talk about in my piece. An excerpt:
..their message echoes one I heard from many folks online when I announced my first pregnancy in 2021: It will be really tough, you’ll have to give up a lot, and say goodbye to having fun—but you’ll be filled with a nifty sense of purpose.
This is a terrible message to give prospective parents. And while I suppose it has been some people’s experience of parenting, it has not been mine. Yes, parenthood does usher in all those high-level emotions people rave about. But parenting is also a lot of fun.
….For too long, negative or mixed messages about motherhood were shunned. So I’m glad conflicted feelings about raising kids—not to mention issues surrounding women’s postpartum bodies and brains and boobs—are no longer swept under the rug. And the fact that folks can now speak openly about things they couldn’t for a long time surely helps explain why messages of struggle dominate motherhood narratives today.
…..But I think young(ish) people today also need to hear that motherhood isn’t always a struggle. And I think they need to hear this sometimes from weirdos and nerds and people of all political persuasions—not just trad wives and social conservatives, people who describes themselves as crunchy, or people for whom being a mom is part of their lifestyle brand.
… People who are good and devoted parents but also passionate about their careers. People who love parenting but will never do a popsicle stick craft or dress their kids in brown linen prairie dresses. Moms who still find time to care about politics, art, fashion, hiking, coding, writing, or whatever it is that makes them happy aside from their kids. Moms who don’t feel like motherhood has rendered them invisible or unrecognizable. Moms who don’t fall into some trad-Mom or earth mother stereotype but are still loving parenthood.
3. A Facile Examination of Motherhood, by
^ This was a funny, thoughtful and somewhat critical response I recommend reading in full. I wanted to highlight a few excerpts though.
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 appreciated the piece and its wrestling. I also found parts shared a bit of DNA with other feedback I’ve heard from some mothers including Peterson on her Substack and Lyz Lenz on hers, where they have asked questions like, well isn’t mom dread sort of appropriate? Merited? (Lenz, a bit uncharitably I think, argues I’m more concerned with the “marketing” of motherhood, than structural issues. She also puts that word in quotes, strongly suggesting to her readers that I used that term in my piece, though I didn’t.)
I think readers familiar with my work know I am very interested in the structural issues of parenting, and closely cover attacks on abortion rights. Early plug actually for a story I have coming out on Monday on child care. But I do want to respond a bit to this general critique and question, because my position is not really about “PR” for motherhood, than it is about trying to help people get a better, more accurate picture, so they can make the right decisions for themselves. And, hopefully, feel a little better about whatever those decisions are. I care about giving reproductive justice real teeth.
Something I wanted to share in response to Hallie Haglund’s piece is that I definitely hear her that moms talking about motherhood need not prioritize the feelings of prospective parents weighing their decisions. Indeed a big part of why I wrote the essay is because that is already the case, but I know that women are struggling to figure out just how exactly to absorb the information they’re hearing (and will continue to hear) in a way that doesn’t leave them feeling so paralyzed and shitty.
Now, I can hear a response in my head that goes something like this: Well who cares? What’s so wrong with these women feeling dread? Nothing we’re saying is a lie, even if you find it ‘difficult.’ And if you become a mom and it turns out to be less bad than you thought, then what’s the problem? And if it is as bad as we say, then you should thank us for having warned you!
I’ve played versions of this conversation in my head many times over the last year, and there are some kernels of truth in there. But..I ultimately think we can get to a world that’s better and more compassionate than that. And I don’t think this is just about “sharing the good stuff.” To me it’s more about trying to help women feel more confident and capable to do whatever it is they want to do, even if yes we live in a world that’s working against that in many ways. I don’t want to live in a world where we send the message that only rich people should have children. Do you? I also don’t think it’s good to have women feeling so incredibly anxious and disempowered ahead of a huge life-altering experience like this, and I hope/believe we can figure out how to thread that needle better, and talk about things in a more constructive way. Build each other up. Maybe that’s naive, but I’m not convinced it is, even if I don’t have all the answers on precisely how to get there. Reading some of the essays this week, though, I think actually does a lot of that work, and that’s been great.
Some other responses:
Was neat to see the essay was recommended and drove conversation within the community from
. Would love to hear more publicly from men on this.A writer and “elder millennial” mom named Raena Boston wrote a thoughtful empathetic response exploring how we can practically move toward a more joyous culture.
This on Twitter from an extremely sharp writer who has her own newsletter on family life for The Cut
In terms of non-parents, I would say I received a lot more private notes than public ones, which really is not surprising that we’d see more mothers willing/inclined to talk publicly about this than people who, like me, have kind of been quietly wrestling with these things — not even really talking to each other about it. I believe that can change, but I do want to convey I heard from a lot of women weighing motherhood, and that has been extremely meaningful. Thank you.
Here are a few though that were public:
I also want to give a shoutout to an essay
wrote in May, that she surely has no idea influenced me while working on this project. On her Substack, in a sharp essay called Pushing is Not Punishing, she wrote about what she saw as an overcorrection to the worst of fitness and diet culture, where any exercise that was deemed hard or punishing was also then considered bad, negative, or antithetical to self-care. I found a lot of what she observed in the realm of physical fitness applied quite well to other pursuits that can challenge us, like parenting. Hard ≠ bad. Uncomplicated ≠ good.Lastly, since publication I’ve learned about several interesting-sounding books that are coming out over the next 2 years that overlap with some of the above ideas. I have not read them but wanted to share:
- is publishing: When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others in April
Ruby Russell is publishing Doing it All: The Social Power of Single Motherhood in May
- is publishing Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be in March
- is publishing Inconceivable: Reproduction in an Age of Uncertainty in early 2025, based on this essay.
Ruthie Ackerman is publishing Mother Code in 2025, based on this essay.
Anyway I think I need to end this here for now, coming up on Substack’s word limit for the first time. I’m very heartened and a bit overwhelmed by this conversation, and grateful to be part of it!
Thank you so very much Rachel. I admire the hell out of you.
I have greatly enjoyed this follow up. This is a good style of doing follow-up essays.