Re branding Motherhood

Related to Parenting | Posted on November 10th, 2018

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Four weeks after I gave birth, my debut novel, “The Windfall,” hit shelves in North America. The process of bringing a book into the world felt parallel to childbirth — it was difficult, I had sleepless nights, it was long, but most of all, it was wonderful. Everyone celebrated my novel, and nobody talked to me about the years of difficulty that went in to writing it. No writers emailed me warnings about the future. As I launched my book and held my baby, I was nervous about how I would manage to write my next book. A quiet anger was brewing inside me. I was worried because I had chosen motherhood and everyone was telling me how difficult it was. In the weeks that followed, my friends who were new mothers and I replayed these warnings over coffee and I came home freshly riled. I took solace in the anger because it officially declared me a mother, it allowed me to partake in the general narrative surrounding new motherhood. This was how I was supposed to feel, I had been warned. It peaked on Mother’s Day as I watched friends posting pictures of their mothers (usually ones in which the poster looks best) with the usual expressions of gratitude for their sacrifices, their bravery, their selflessness. Why was motherhood such a sacrifice when I was doing what I wanted? Why was the popular narrative all about the misery Motherhood, parenthood, is a choice — like getting married, writing a book or choosing one city to call home — and like all those choices, it means forgoing other choices. So it’s unclear why this one choice has become synonymous with sacrifice. The role is in need of some serious rebranding; fatherhood rarely receives such sanctimonious sympathy. It’s no wonder that most of my friends have chosen not to have children and women are embracing the term “child-free” as if they are free of an illness. We already don’t get paid maternity leave, and child care and health care are expensive, there’s little state help, and now we’re telling each other that motherhood is pretty awful anyway? It’s hard to describe the joy of motherhood. It isn’t as easily Instagrammable as a life of endless holidays, blue skies, cocktails and local pastries on cobbled streets in faraway lands, so it doesn’t necessarily register in surveys or even in casual conversation. It isn’t a joy that’s as easily shared with the world or on social media. In restaurants when my daughter, in her high chair with her two and a half teeth, scrunches up her face, I look around to see if everyone has noticed and been charmed. Nobody has (expect for the occasional old lady) and I get annoyed, even though I myself constantly ignore all other babies in my vicinity. The joy and fun of motherhood are so deeply personal, so intimate and so selfish, there’s no way to explain it to the world, particularly our current social media heavy world. Jennifer Senior, author of “All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood,” says in an interview that the “feeling when your kid laughs or when your kid says something that’s so totally, like, amazingly weird, or insightful, or sensitive — it’s not the same as like getting a good laugh out of watching a movie or having a really nice time with a friend. It’s just like a different category of experience.” It is a different category — one that can’t compare to your life before you had the child because no point of reference is the same after you’ve had the child. Soon after my daughter was born, we went on holiday to my parents’ home in upstate New York. There, in the hills, surrounded by trees, away from the general banter about motherhood, I discovered that I was enjoying myself. Sure, taking care of a baby even while on vacation was difficult, but it was simply my new normal. Quietly I confessed to myself late one night while listening to the silence outside that I was enjoying this greatly. I would make the deadlines for my next novel, I decided that night. After all, there’s always an excuse to not write, and a new baby was simply one more excuse. If anything, my time is better spent now because it’s easier to wake up and work after a sleepless night with a baby than a sleepless night out partying and drinking, and I certainly no longer have the time or inclination for the latter. Still, when a friend announced her pregnancy, immediately after congratulating her, I reached for one of the warnings I had heard myself. I started to tell her about sleeplessness and the unsexiness of nursing bras but then I stopped myself. “It’s great fun,” I said. “You’re the first person to say that,” she said. Maybe we need to say that to each other a bit more. Maybe more of us would have children if it weren’t seen as such an exercise in sacrifice. If we weren’t told that we were going to lose every bit of the self we had finally grown to love. I want to enjoy this without caveats, without all the talk of selflessness and without seeing this change my identity. I want to be a mother and a writer, and a whole slew of other things, with no thought given to the order of those identities. If anything, so far being a mother feels quite delightfully self-indulgent. I have a daughter in whom I can constantly look for and find little bits of myself or, better yet, improved bits of myself. Recently a construction worker called out to me on the street in Lower Manhattan and I got my angry anti-catcalling face ready to respond but he very respectfully said, “You have a beautiful daughter, ma’am.” My vanity now has two bodies within which to reside — the sacrifice looks more like narcissism from certain angles. So much so that I’m doing it all over again, and this time I plan to enjoy the newborn stage no matter what anyone says — and everyone has a lot to say about having two under 2.

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American Surrogate Mother, Aberdeen, Mississippi, USA

oblechina - Surrogate Mother

Location: USA / Mississippi / Aberdeen | Member since: March 24th, 2014 [EDT]

I would love to give one of the best gifts ever, or blessings there is known to a woman or man. I love being a mom and when you look into your babies eyes it's like they say you fall in love all over ... See Profile

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