Hello friends—and hello December! Woof, that snuck up on me. Coming off a Thanksgiving break I wanted to thank you for bearing with me as I get back into the regular-scheduled routine. Off by a day, but if that ain’t a metaphor for life these days, then maybe I should hire you to be my life coach. And on that note, here’s your rundown:
One thing
Gut Check: Millennial Mom Dread, a syndrome explained
Is it feminism?
In your free time
1 Thing to do today (if nothing else)
Take a nap (or lie down for a bit). It’s a Saturday, be kind to yourself.
Gut Check: Are we living through a “grim motherhood” era?
I loved reading this piece by Rachel Cohen on Vox exploring myths behind motherhood and giving the best anthology I’ve read to-date comparing the factors contributing to the negative and positive reactions to having children in modern America. It’s an honest, good-faith investigative essay written by a millennial woman trying to decide if having children is right for her. She is left-leaning and makes no qualms about that, but I did find it refreshing that her political priors aren’t jammed into the story as a prescription to fix society’s ails, in fact, she is very open about how she realizes better social assistance programs would reduce the strain but never disappear the problems parents face. Because of course, the government can’t fix it. Exactly.
Besides that, her findings match what I know to be true about motherhood through my POV, 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. Doing so could seem insensitive to those whose experiences were not as positive, or those in more frustrating relationships. Some also worried that betraying too much enthusiasm for child-rearing could ossify essentialist tropes or detract from larger feminist goals.
But that conscientiousness — and occasional pessimism — is giving motherhood short shrift. “The pendulum on motherhood swung, and that was a necessary corrective to all these sugar-coated unrealistic fantasies, but we have gone too far,” Leslie Bennetts, a veteran journalist and author of 2007’s The Feminine Mistake, told me. In the book, Bennetts, now 74, observed that the mainstream media had long “harped endlessly on the downside” of juggling motherhood and work and rarely explored the rewards. This remains true 15 years later. “My entire friend group, we all raised great kids, but we’re not writing that because we don’t want to be insufferable,” she told me. “If we say anything about it, people hate you, and I understand that. There are cultural taboos against talking too much about it, and huge penalties for women bragging about anything.”
In other words, if joyful motherhood or equitable parenting is seen as a rare accomplishment these days, then, like many other small and large achievements, women learn to keep it to themselves.
We’ve all got complaints, it’s easy to list them out. It can feel like a badge of honor and a source for bonding with other moms when we share our hardships. Heck, I use this tactic to reassure myself when I feel small compared to other professional women who don’t have kids—to feel validated that I am where I am in my career because I made tradeoffs to raise my children. The comparison game is as old as time and in our culture busyness has its own social currency. I feel bad that my venting can be misconstrued as a warning to others. But like Rachel uncovers in her investigation that’s usually all you hear from moms because it’s frowned upon to say anything overly positive about having kids. No one really wants to hear that because for whatever reason it’s borderline obnoxious.
In the meantime, it’s exhausting trying to prove your value, to list out how you spend your time as a justification for what—where you are in life? When you get a promotion at work you can post about it on Linkedin and people will congratulate you. When you finally get your kid potty trained you don’t dare make a Facebook post about it because you know you’re just inviting criticism. I may have put up with a lot of shit in my career but let me tell you it does not compare in the volumes of shit I’ve had to deal with on the way to potty training just one of my kids. A disappointing reality of under-sharing motherhood moments is the misconception of the “bored mom”—which I think is an oxymoron. Nevertheless, it’s a tightrope walk of what to share and what to keep to yourself.
In the way mothers condition themselves not to brag about their accomplishments in childrearing (in mixed company) we also hide the daily perks of the job: at least once a day I have a crowd of cheering fans yell my name and light up when I walk in a room. I feel like a total rockstar every day whether I’m in a good mood at the time or not, whether I’m dressed up or down—to these kids I’m the best and that makes me feel like the best version of myself.
I think the crux of the disconnect between realities of motherhood as experienced by a majority of moms compared to the vocal think-pieces that dominate the culture comes down to who these articles are written for—clicks, first and foremost, but it is for social clout for the authors. Largely white, highly educated, wealthy women complaining about motherhood to tap into a Feminine Mystic allure of yesteryears. It’s really posh to be a feminist but how many times can we reinvent this genre of disillusioned family life? Yawn, I’m bored of the scaremongering. I came of age on a diet of Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex and the City and was equally scared of commitment to one man and also of dying alone in my apartment found only after being eaten by dogs.
Millennials are allowed to be cautious about making big decisions, especially having lived through a recession at the beginning of their careers, a global pandemic a decade later, and now mass layoffs and high inflation that makes owning a home seem even more impossible than it did in their twenties. But please, I beg you, don’t let these wealthy-connected women scare you about starting a family.
Funny enough the article addresses American polarization surrounding motherhood along political lines:
The positive messages young women hear today about starting families come almost exclusively from the right. Democrats haven’t abandoned pro-family messages wholesale, but the rhetoric they use to muster support for family policies nearly always emphasizes crisis and precarity, not strength, stability, or happiness. “The way to get people to care, to get people to have the most attention, is to frame things as ‘people will die,’ or ‘this is an emergency,’” one progressive lawmaker from Minnesota told me. “You can’t just say it would improve people’s lives.”
Moreover, in response to attacks on abortion rights, most progressive politicians, writers, and activists stress the real risks of pregnancy and the toll of parenting that no one should be forced to experience against their will, rather than any upsides to having children. This makes sense, but the result is that for many, the very act of becoming pregnant sounds harrowing, and giving birth less a choice than a potential punishment.
WE KNOW THE VALUE OF INDEPENDENCE AND ALSO LONG FOR A BIT MORE INTERDEPENDENCE
Cultural conservatives have been banging their own drum, though with a vastly different message: that the sexual revolution was a mistake, that non-religious people aren’t happier in modern society, that women aren’t actually faring better with all this romantic and professional choice.
The time before birth control, before liberalized divorce laws, before women could pursue work outside the home, is not one most women are nostalgic for. But we are trying to figure out the ingredients to a meaningful life. We know the value of independence and also long for a bit more interdependence.
That last sentence hits me square in the heart, because I’ve written about this before, you never get to a point in your career where you feel needed at a core level the way you know you are needed to provide and care for your children—that can give you a clear mission in life. Don’t misunderstand me, having kids won’t “complete you” the same way marrying someone won’t complete you either. But, it does help conceptualize your life and bring into focus what is important. I’ve found that giving and receiving love is the best self-care regime you can ever go on, and I only learned that in the last 5 years.
I’m not going to list out all the grim realities of motherhood, y’all are aware, but I will say that all of the millennial moms that I’m friends with agree that having kids has made us superhumans. And yeah, that does sound a little insufferable, which is why we remain a veiled secret society awaiting new recruits to initiate. You know where to find us.
Rape Denial? Is it Feminism?
Hamas continues to deny the accusations that their men raped and sexually mutilated civilians during the October 7th attack on Israel, despite the preponderance of evidence provided from the videos the Hamas terrorists uploaded to the internet themselves, the first-hand accounts of the survivors, and of the first responders and emergency professionals who treated the patients or tended to the corpses. The silence from the feminist establishment worldwide has been terrifying.
With mounting pressure and the stink of hypocrisy on full display *some* women’s groups have finally broken their silence on the matter, nearly two months later.
On November 30th, America's largest feminist organization, the National Organization for Women, finally put out a statement headline, "NOW condemns the use of rape as a weapon of war." But nowhere in that statement did they mention Hamas or the mass raping of women during the October 7th massacre in Israel.
This was followed by a statement issued on December 1st by UN Women, rightfully condemning Hamas by name for its war crimes against women in Israel, but doing so after saying how they, “deeply regret that military operations have resumed in Gaza.”
I’m sorry but if you have to start your condemnation letter with a “but let’s contextualize this” statement, you’re overthinking it and have a pretty weird constituency.
Finally, I can’t help but wonder where all the Handmaid’s Tale protestors have gone. I haven’t seen news coverage of a single protestor in the wake of the mass rapes of women as an act of subjugation and political violence in Israel. In 1983, Brett Kavanaugh wrote a fart joke about boofing in a yearbook and that was enough to rally the red-caped troops! But now, when terrorists livestream their rapes for all to witness, it’s just very complicated apparently, must stay home and be quiet. What a world!
The feminist movement ate itself in 2023.
In Your Free Time
To Watch: Shetland Season 8 (Britbox/BBC) - A new season just dropped of one of my favorite detective series on TV. This is set on an archipelago in Scotland. It’s a great whodunnit with an amazing character development arch. If you’re new to the series add it to your binge watch list.
To Buy: This $34 back massager will change your life and it ships Prime, so it’s only a few days away from you putting it to good use.
To Make (or just order delivery): I’ve been dreaming about this doup Milkbar’s Pumpkin Pie since I saw this a few weeks ago. Does it look like it takes a thousand hours to make, yes. Am I probably going to splurge on ordering this online, yes. Just wanted to show you that someone added white chocolate ganache and caramel to The Pumpkin Pie™ and I need to taste it.
Thank you as always for your support! I want to hear from you in the comments! See you in two weeks! - Sarah