ICYMI, some tweets criticizing women who don’t have kids, and calling them lonely and unworthy of love, went viral last week [they’ve since been deleted].
Some assumptions underlying these tweets are:
there is nothing of meaning to do with life once you turn 40 other than raise children
“fun” and sex evaporate when you turn 40, but are presumably still available if you marry and have children (implicit here is some ageist, sexist stuff about women after 40 no longer being sexually appealing)
“natural connections” LITERALLY (?!) emerge from marriage and fertility— in other words from the nuclear hetero family— and from no other communal or interpersonal relationships
“friendsgivings” are silly and “lonely” and get stale fast!
Annoyed, I spent way too much time spiraling in the feed of the guy who posted these tweets, where I stumbled on some very revealing beliefs that form the foundation of the philosophy he’s pushing: lines like “too much choice makes us unhappy,” transphobic posts, and a brief, convoluted critique of this brilliant excerpt from Chelsea Conaboy’s equally brilliant book Mother Brain, which I’ve been reading, and which you can and should preorder now.
This guy takes issue with Conaboy’s NYT essay on maternal instinct because, he claims, the essay has “scorn for Eve and the Virgin Mary.” In fact, Conaboy writes lucidly about how the concept of “maternal instinct” has been controlled and narrated by men throughout history. “The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch,” Conaboy writes, “is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one.”
Conaboy does trouble the story of motherhood by exploring Christian archetypes like the Virgin, who Conaboy calls “the most virtue-laden symbol of motherhood there is, her identity entirely eclipsed by the glory of her maternal love.” But it’s wildly frustrating that such a critique is still considered radical.
In an essay on the Virgin, French feminist Julia Kristeva wrote—in 1977—that the Virgin’s story has often been the only discourse on motherhood available. And maternity, in turn, has often been the only discourse on femininity available. As Kristeva wrote, “we live in a civilization in which the consecrated (religious or secular) representation of femininity is subsumed under maternity.”
Appeals to logic and history, analysis of religious and cultural iconography, much less gender, and even pleas for common decency and sense are likely to be wasted on misogynistic thinking like the kind contained in the post with which I began this essay. The idea that life is boring and unfulfilling for women unless they become mothers and wives is widespread, clearly, in post-Roe America, where motherhood is now compulsory and forced.
In a piece about the subversive joy of being alone, Lyz Lenz writes about how her critiques of marriage have sometimes been interpreted by readers as displays of hostility toward marriage, rather than articulations of how marriage, as an institution, remains hostile to so many women. “I think it’s important to note that even if the system works for you,” Lenz writes, “that doesn’t mean it’s a good system.
Women who critique motherhood as an institution— that is, as a system of beliefs about how women (and other parents) should arrange themselves emotionally, psychologically, physically, politically, and socially— also arouse a lot of defensive fear and anger.
Katie Gutierrez posted recently about an email she received in response to her essay for TIME on how she lost herself in pandemic motherhood. Gutierrez captures with precision in her essay the way the self recedes, both slowly and all at once, after entering the institution of motherhood— composed not only of the work of caring for children but also many expectations about how women will conduct themselves now that they are “Mothers” (rather than, say, people).
Abuse like the kind Gutierrez describes is a form of gaslighting, something women are familiar with. Mothers are forced into impossible conditions in the home and public life and then we are expected to handle it all with a smile and complete selflessness, like Woolf’s “Angel in the House,” who always happily sits in the worst chair— the one by the drafty window.
This kind of online abuse also stems from the expectation that women must constantly perform emotional labor, spreading joy wherever they go. “Give me a smile sweetie” becomes “Smile mom, this is the best job on the planet!”
I’ve become accustomed to this kind of abuse because I also publish writing online that critiques the institution of motherhood. On the advice of a friend, I have stopped reading public comments on my work when I publish in larger media outlets. It’s freeing. But I still, on occasion, get curious.
In response to my recent essay for Slate on how American mothers got so touched out, one poster wrote a short diatribe about how millennial women are spoiled and narcissistic and feel shocked by the demands of motherhood because they’re so entitled and can’t deal with putting other people before themselves.
In that essay, I write about how, despite my efforts to put all my needs aside and turn my body completely over to my children, “I spiraled into cycles of regret, confusion, and shame, knowing how American culture side-eyes any negative emotions felt by mothers, especially when those emotions lead to rejections of closeness or tenderness.”
But that poster was not interested in exploring the complex emotional landscape of parenthood, nor were they interested in thoughtfully considering how growing up in a patriarchal culture that denies women a sense of ownership over their bodies, from girlhood through adulthood, might make that landscape even tougher to navigate.
Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich’s well-known book, breaks down the difference between motherhood as a lived and felt experience, and motherhood as a white, Western, patriarchal institution. Rich writes that when women ask questions that patriarchal thinking has declared nonquestions, men bristle and then kick into discipline mode. One of the primary tactics for policing women’s feelings today is to characterize the writer, or the content of their work, as “negative.”
Toxic positivity aside, what’s happening here is that women are being characterized as emotionally unstable and untrustworthy. “Any deviance from a quality valued by that culture can be dismissed as negative, where ‘rationality’ is posited as sanity, legitimate method, ‘real thinking,’” Rich writes. In such a culture, “any alternative […] knowledge is labeled ‘irrational.’”
Rich links this to the history of hysteria and madness. But women’s voices remain constantly silenced today in big and small ways. And as Gutierrez told me, online abuse often comes from women as well. The terrain of women’s internalized hatred of other women who step out of circumscribed gender roles is complex, but fear and discomfort surrounding mothers’ expressions of discontent are inseparable from the idea that women should be fulfilled by kids and by men.
Increasingly, however, women want more, as this recent report on “The Rise of Lonely, Single Men” shows. (Some alternative headlines for that report could have been: “Women No Longer Willing to Tolerate Emotionally Unavailable, Needy, Immature Dudes,” “Men Finally Feeling Effects of Patriarchy on Romantic Lives,” or “Women Take Control of the Economy of Sex.”)
Something similar is happening to the institution of motherhood: Many people are no longer willing to uncritically accept the system of parenthood they have inherited, one that was designed by patriarchal thinking. This is very upsetting to those cis straight men who feel their power threatened.
This is just one reason why appeals to logic— of the “If this were happening to men” variety—are often wasted energy. Logic doesn’t work when people are defensively posturing, desperately clinging to power that comes from fundamentally unequal and exploitative institutions.
“Since politically and socially men do wield immense power over women,” Rich wrote, “it is unnerving to realize that your mate or employer may also fear you.” But the fact is that we do still live in a cultural landscape in which women are feared not just for having ambition, but for having any feelings at all—especially when those feelings make men uncomfortable.
But affect and emotion are the front lines. When it comes to motherhood, the struggle against the institution often begins in our psyche and our bodies. “The worker can go unionize, go out on strike” when they are dissatisfied with institutions that exploit them, Rich writes, but “mothers are divided from each other in our homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.”
All the more important for us to document these breakdowns, to show how our personal lives remain embroiled in public, political battles. To show how we have lost ourselves, how we have had to rediscover our identities, our bodies, our sexualities, our bonds. To refuse to stay quiet, to stay obedient, to smile and nod, feign happiness, be good, be positive.
And the thing is: Documenting our lived experience doesn’t have to be a threat to men or anyone, even if it is, by nature, a threat to male power, essentialism, and the institutions created in their image.
Women rising up to articulate their lives, their bodies, and their feelings does not have to be something we fear. That, too, is a lie we have been told.
“The language of patriarchal power insists on a dichotomy: for one person to have power, others— or another—must be powerless,” Rich wrote. It doesn’t have to be this way.
OMG this was so good that I signed up for the paid subscription mid-read!
I lean pessimistic aka negative about most things so I'm kind of used to people trying to talk me into being more positive and I'm used to being careful about complaining because I can see people's view of me change right before my eyes if I'm not careful. It f*cking sucks and is so exhausting.
I am a newish mom to a 2 year old and I'm in my 40s and I'm fairly well read on feminist genre related to being a woman /mother. My friends would identify as liberal progressive feminist. And I can be utterly shocked and bewildered that if I make a very basic complaint about motherhood (tired, overwhelmed, losing my patience, etc) that my well meaning friends will low key tell me not to be negative by saying "enjoy them when they're little, watch out it gets worse, I've never felt that way). It's like an insidious response to negativity is to say the opposite. (I am guilty of this too I've found to my horror.) I see it on mothers message boards - responses of" hmm I've never felt that way" to "sounds like ppd you should go to therapy." It is SO HARD to find safe places to complain
And then writers like you receive threats and cruel accusations. This allergic reaction to talking about hard things is all along the spectrum from what I've seen. Reading about it always makes me want to do something but I'm just not sure what.
Anyway, this piece was amazing. I'm sorry you can't read the public comments anymore because there are probably some gems in there. I'm a professor and sometimes we have a colleague /friend read the comments and only share the good ones if we are interested in the feedback.
Again, amazing job here. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
So many great points here! Thanks and for linking to Conaboy's whose work I'm unfamiliar with. I read the NYT pieces and some of the comments (good grief), really got me thinking. All of this alongside reading Angele Garbere's Essential Labor, and wrapping up a postpartum doula training, which has me watching a traditional Mexican postpartum closing of the bones ceremony that made me weep in loss and jealousy. It seems our culture at large has forgotten what a high standard of care for mothers/birthers/caregivers and children can look like, still looks like in some cultures. Like why have we settled for such a low standard? It's mind boggling to me. Then, heaven forbid, we speak up, and we are chastised for it. I remember complaining about how tired I was postpartum with baby 2 last summer to my mom on the phone, and she just said, "well what did you expect?" why couldn't she have just said, "oh yes, the sleep deprivation of raising children is really tough."
Then that banned Frida ad Conaboy links too? WOW! What a great example of how we silence the truth of our body's and how birthing a human utterly wrecks us.
or in that Alice Notley poem you had us read last year in which she says of pregnancy and birth , "I obliterate myself again"
that word obliterate says it all, and affirms Conoboy's research on how our brains are changed