#64: on the choice to become parents
a constellation of readings on regret, ambivalence, transformation and potential
Good morning,
This month’s constellation is a continuation of the year’s theme on the tensions between paid and unpaid work, but this one is specifically on the unpaid labor of reproduction and caring for children.
For a few years now, I’ve been exploring two questions: 1) how people make the decision to become parents and 2) how one can prepare for parenthood to make it feel less overwhelming if they do choose it. I’m at an age where it feels like as many peers are choosing not to have children as are having children. For many friends who have chosen against parenthood, it’s been because they felt they didn’t have the financial resources or time resources to support a child and be able to continue their careers at the same pace.
Even for those who have chosen to have kids, the trade-off between time and money is a very real one—in many American cities, childcare is so expensive that one partner inevitably sends their entire income to it, or takes some sort of pause in their career in order to care for kids while they are young. Those who don’t have to compromise between work and care often have the luxury of nearby family who are in a position to help almost full-time, or the financial resources to pay exorbitant prices for full-time childcare.
But having a child isn’t just about resource planning. It’s also a wildly transformative experience, one that irrevocably changes your sense of self, and provides access to an experience of life (and a form of work) that can’t be quantified. For the second question—preparation, advice I’ve gotten seems to map to age.
Elders would tell me not to overthink it and explain how they had no access to the research and information we have today and just made it work. But frankly, the vast majority of them (particularly mothers) either had substantial help from family, didn’t work outside the home, or both. I don’t know that they always understood what it feels like to be a highly independent young adult in the world today.
Peers who already had children would share a mixed bag of feels—how joyful it was to see these tiny beings grow up and love them so much, and how hard it was at the same time for all the same reasons of finances, time and work-life balance.
Peers who hadn’t yet had children often felt in the same boat as me—either traipsing toward parenthood with a lot of questions, or wondering about avoiding it altogether.
Alongside these conversations I turned to research, and let me tell you, the amount of books, podcasts and articles out there about parenthood have skyrocketed in the last 5 years. So I figured I would gather and share a few as this month’s constellation.
While it’s impossible to cover all of resources I encountered along the way in one newsletter, today’s constellation includes what I found to be the most interesting and nuanced perspectives along my exploration. They are all by and for mothers, but I think relevant to all parents.
I was most interested in the perspectives that are often the hardest to talk about when thinking about parenthood. The ones we don’t have the language for, or perhaps are afraid to put into words, but once we hear someone else’s, we feel seen.
They are organized here by the emotion or experience they cover: Regret, Dread, Ambivalence, Frustration, Transformation and Potential.
✨ Regret
Video: Why some mothers choose not to live with their kids (Topic)
This short documentary from 2019 has stayed with me for years, as it was the first exposure I had to the idea that some women are truly not fulfilled by parenthood and despite the stigma of leaving your family, chose to do so, even while loving their children.
Regretting Motherhood: A Study (Book)
The first book I ever read on the subject, along with some friends, was Orna Donath’s 2015 book based on interviews with anonymous Israeli women, age 26-73 who regretted having children. The cultural context here was a bit too specific to fully relate to, but the honesty of their emotional experiences was very eye-opening. Donath’s approach is also interesting in that she clearly differentiates between “regret” and “ambivalence,” which we’ll read about later:
Regret is socially used to ensure that women will give birth to children by threatening them with future regret if they do not. Simultaneously, society promises that mothers will not look back but only forward; women are given a progressive image of a female figure that is unavoidably adapted for motherhood, as if it is only a matter of time. However, as we shall see, mothers do look back.
Related Article: ‘I regret having children’ (Maclean’s)
✨ Dread
Article: How millennials learned to dread motherhood (Vox)
A great overview of the narrative shift millennials have been exposed to over the last several years that contributes to anxiety about pursuing parenthood. This one is absolutely worth a read because it challenges that narrative while still addressing the structural issues faced by American parents and also reviews most of the books and resources published in the last decade about parenting. Cohen’s take:
We should have the courage to reject the all-encompassing crisis frame — which frankly isn’t working, anyway. We can’t expect to fully eliminate dread or even regret over having children. Rather, this is a gentle reminder that people can thrive doing the hard stuff, and we can build each other up without fear that we’ll sabotage prospects for bolder change. That’s a world that brings me hope. That’s a world I don’t dread.
Related Podcast: Why millennials dread motherhood (Today Explained)
✨ Ambivalence
For those who fall more into the ambivalent category, not quite dreadful, but also unsure how to make a decision, there are a plethora of articles and podcasts that have come out recently. I didn’t read extensively about this personally but here are a few places to start.
Article: What if you just don’t know if you want kids? (The Cut)
Note: This was written by Ann Friedman in 2014, who did indeed end up recently having a baby. Alongside it she is publishing a 10-week series about that journey. Here’s the first essay.
Article: The uncertain loneliness of ambivalence on motherhood (Slate)
Article: Children upend our friendships. Do they have to? (Jill Filipovic)
Note: A reaction to the feature from NY Mag “Adorable Little Detonators”
✨ Frustration
Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood (Book)
A blend of frustrating personal experience and thorough research by NYT parenting writer Jessica Grose on the history of unrealistic parenting expectations in the United States. I found it to be a helpful book in understanding the history and the structural gaps that make parenting so hard in the U.S., but also how much we’ve internalized about what parenthood is supposed to look like. A helpful primer for anyone whose fear of parenthood comes from unrealistic standards, and encouragement to parent according to your own values.
Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture (Book)
Grose covers this as well, but Sara Petersen’s book is a really thorough reality check about the impact of social media on our interpretations of motherhood, particularly from “momfluencers” who are the modern-day incarnation of the very same narratives about idealized mothers, wives and heteronormative nuclear families that were peddled by glossy magazines in the last few decades.
✨ Transformation
Interview: The process of becoming a mother has a name: Matrescence (NPR)
What I found most personally helpful on my own journey was learning what to expect, not in terms of pregnancy and newborn care and how to take care of children, but how I would change. Discovering the work of reproductive psychologist Aurelie Athan, who is known for reviving the term “matrescence” to describe a mother’s development (akin to adolescence for kids) was an incredible turning point for me because it provided so much nuance to what I knew and had observed to be a deeply personal shift. Above is an interview with her that provides a good overview.
Related Article: What happens to a woman’s brain when she becomes a mother (The Atlantic)
Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control (Book)
This was a unique and refreshing take on the more complex feelings that women would have to navigate in early motherhood, told through Montei’s experience. Something almost no one talks about is what your body experiences as a caregiver to young children, through birth and breastfeeding but also through being a 24/7 physical comfort provider while still maintaining your autonomy. The book is a beautifully written analysis of this, how it connects to consent at large, and what cultural norms are embedded in touch. A taste:
As my children have returned to school and daycare in the wake of the pandemic, I have glimpsed, thanks to my network of care, what I longed for in lockdown: space to think, to write, to breathe, to sit in my body without interruption. Space to feel the way I never quite felt as a girl—like my body is my own.
To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and The Modern Dilemma (Book)
In a different space we occupy—our marital relationships—we also experience tremendous change through the transition to parenthood. Here, psychologist Molly Millwood explores not only how women navigate the transformations of motherhood, but how it impacts their partnerships.
✨ Potential
Maternal Optimism: Forging Positive Paths Through Work and Motherhood (Book)
Of everything I read, this book stayed with me the most because it provided language for the challenges of work-life balance that didn’t feel emotionally loaded and therefore a bit easier for me to digest. Filled with stories and research that explain how different women navigate work and family transitions in their own ways (with an eye for cultural differences as well), its focus is how to develop resiliency, from the perspective of researchers on organizational behavior.
Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change (Book)
And finally, the most moving read of all was Angela Garbes’ account of being a caregiver during the pandemic and reframing motherhood as a form of collective labor. It shifted parenthood from the realm of the personal to the realm of the communal for me, and while she also addresses the many limitations in our current culture of parenting, she challenges us to think about how to look at the work of caring for children as something of utmost importance, be it for our own children or others’. I’ll leave you below with her words.
During the pandemic, I witnessed all my wild, racing thoughts and frustrations about the state of caregiving in America showing up in newspapers, on television, and in Zoom conversations. As I saw how many other people were talking about this issue, I felt a need for us to take advantage of this moment, to blow the conversation open, invite in new perspectives, and imagine new possibilities. Doing this requires knowledge of the history of mothering and care work—how they came to be seen as naturally female, which is to say invisible and undervalued. When we understand the origins of this predicament, we can not only reject it, but offer better, more equitable solutions in its place. We can finally, properly acknowledge the role of care in our society and honor its place in all of our lives. It is time to double down on the radical power of mothering.
—Angela Garbes in Essential Labor
Happy Tuesday!
Jihii
This is wonderful J!