#MicroblogMondays: "Does motherhood have a PR crisis?" (Seriously??)

Sara Petersen at In Pursuit of Clean Countertops and Amanda Montei at Mad Woman shared an interesting conversation recently (pre-U.S. election) about pronatalism, choosing whether or not to pursue parenthood, and whether the joys of parenthood are being lost in the movement, in recent years, toward sharing the frustrations and "mom rage" more honestly and openly.  

The entire conversation is cross-posted in both of their Substacks, but with different introductions -- Sara's titled "Does Motherhood Have A PR Crisis?" and Amanda's "What is motherhood writing for?"  (Both intros are worth reading -- and I don't think either post is paywalled, at least not right now?).  Both cite and link to other great pieces of writing that informed their own thoughts. 

(One piece not mentioned in the discussion:  the always-great Moira Donegan -- who is referenced, and is childfree by choice -- recently reviewed the book "What Are Children For?:  On Ambivalence and Choice" by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, for Book Forum:  "Baby Talk: On pro-natalism and motherhood after Dobbs.") (I guess I can scratch THAT one off my to-read list...! -- unless to read with a critical eye, as Donegan does here...?) 

The conversation is, as you can imagine, very motherhood-focused (both Amanda & Sara are mothers)  -- but it's an intelligent one, and I found it fascinating. Depending on where you are in your journey, you might find it interesting too. The childfree choice gets some space, but (sadly) nowhere is it mentioned that not all of us choose to be childless, or that we might have a slightly different perspective to offer. 

I appreciated comments like this one, from Sara: 

...from my perspective, the idea that motherhood can be a noble, fulfilling endeavor is the DOMINANT narrative, and has been . . . pretty much forever? I find myself wondering who/what we’re concerned about in this question of good/bad maternal PR.

Amanda agrees: 

Right, exactly. There are plenty of depictions of motherhood as rich and fulfilling—as you have written about at length! We have plenty of “online discourse” that covers that area. Not to mention all of history, in which the sentimentalization of motherhood has been the dominant story we’ve told about women and their presumed biological destiny. 

From MY perspective, as a childless-not-by-choice woman, I agree.  The message that motherhood is "the best thing that ever happened to me" still seems pretty relentless to me, and often only serves to rub salt in our wounds. On the other hand, the acknowledgement that motherhood is damned hard work, and it's not all sunshine and roses, sometimes comes as a bit of a relief to those of us who get to experience neither. 

Sara & Amanda also identify -- correctly, I think -- that the handwringing about motherhood's supposed "PR crisis" and falling birthrates, etc., is part of the concerted push in certain quarters to get women married, pregnant, out of the workforce and subservient to/dependent on men again.  And it's likely this pushback will be amplified, now that pronatalist forces are back in power in Washington (and elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world).

Both women use the term "backlash" several times throughout their conversation (at one point, Amanda speaks of "the backlash to more nuanced— and yes, critical— depictions of motherhood") -- which of course made me think of Susan Faludi and her book "Backlash" (which I read when it first came out in 1991, and would really like to re-read again soon!), about the backlash at the time against the feminist movement and gains of the 1970s and early 80s. 

It's a really rich discussion with lots to chew on! If you read it, I'd love to know what you think. :) 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

"Recipe for a Perfect Wife" by Karma Brown

"Recipe for a Perfect Wife" by Karma Brown (who is Canadian! and like me, lives somewhere near Toronto -- Oakville, I think?) is an upcoming pick for my Clever Name book club, which has been on hiatus since before Christmas. I'm not sure if or when we'll resume our discussions -- but this was a book I'd been eyeing anyway, so I thought I'd pick it up for my next read.  

The story:  Alice Hale has just quit her publishing job to concentrate on writing a novel. (At least, that's the story she tells her husband, Nate...) He thinks it's the perfect time to move out of Manhattan, buy a house and start the family they've been talking about:  Alice can take care of the house and work on her novel while he commutes. Without her job, stuck in a slightly creepy fixer-upper house in the dreaded suburbs, and facing a severe case of writer's block, Alice flounders and feels stifled -- until the day she finds a vintage recipe book with handwritten notes in a box in the musty basement, and starts experimenting with some of the recipes (some of which are reproduced in the book -- chicken a la king, tuna casserole, baked Alaska and more!). 

From her next-door neighbour, a retired doctor named Sally, Alice learns more about the previous owner, a 1950s housewife named Eleanor (Nellie) Murdoch.  The story cuts back & forth between Alice in 2018 and Nellie in 1956. Like Alice, Nellie has secrets she's keeping from her abusive husband, Richard. Each chapter (whether about Alice or Nellie) is prefaced with a piece of advice from various early 20th-century marriage manuals -- some screamingly funny, some eye-rolling, some shudder-inducing.  

I'll be honest -- as I started this book, I wasn't sure what sort of a book this supposed to be or where the story was going. (And even after I finished it, I still wasn't quite sure... although I did guess where one plotline was going almost immediately from a clue provided early on.)  The cover design and back-cover description suggested it might be social satire. There were elements of suspense/thriller/the supernatural. (For example, the house is always chilly -- but the more Alice explores traditional homemaking, the warmer it becomes.). In some ways, I was reminded of "The Stepford Wives." 

It was thought-provoking and unsettling, with an ending that was somewhat ambiguous -- and disturbing.  It left me thinking (and I suspect I'll be thinking about it for quite a while to come) --  about patriarchy and gender roles and women's empowerment -- about how much has changed since 1956 -- and how little.

This was a hard one to rate. The premise was really interesting (and well executed) and the writing was good -- but I closed the book feeling a tad queasy.  3.5 stars. I debated whether that should be rounded up to 4 or down to 3 on Goodreads. I'm making it 3, for now anyway.  I can see this being a great book to discuss in a book club! -- lots of fodder for discussion!   

Content warnings (with some potential spoilers):  pregnancy, childlessness, miscarriages, abortion, maternal ambivalence and domestic violence. 

This was Book #12 read to date in 2022 (and Book #1 finished in March), bringing me to 27% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

"No Happy Endings" by Nora McInerny

After getting my book club obligations out of the way (& -- happily -- they were both good books!), I was glad to get back to "No Happy Endings," the second memoir by Nora McInerny, host of the podcast "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" (which I still haven't listened to... yet!).  It's a sequel/followup to "It's Okay to Laugh," which I read (and loved!) just a few weeks ago & reviewed here.

"It's Okay to Laugh" was about how Nora met & married her husband Aaron and became a mother to their son, Ralph -- then lost her second baby, Aaron and her dad, all within a few weeks' time in 2014, when she was just 31 years old. "No Happy Endings" is about what came next: adjusting to life as a single mom, dating again, meeting and marrying "Sophie's Hot Dad," Matthew, and how they blended their families -- including Nora's subsequent pregnancy after her miscarriage. Those of you who have also experienced subsequent pregnancy will probably relate, a lot, to Nora's feelings of joy, ambivalence, depression and sheer terror, in these chapters. (Chapter 20, "Memorial Day," had me in tears.)(By coincidence, I read it on the American Memorial Day weekend this year.)

I was predisposed to like this book because I enjoyed "It's Okay to Laugh" so much -- and I was not disappointed. It's more of the same mix of humour, hard-earned wisdom and brutal honesty. I adored Chapter 32, "Feminist Agenda." :)  And the final chapter, "Yes, And" reminded me of what Justine Froelker calls

...the complicated grey... the permission to change the but to an and. Giving ourselves permission to feel it all, all at the same time; the anger and acceptance, the  joy and the longing, the fear and the hope. The permission to walk into the muck of the gray between the certainties of life; allowing ourselves to hold both truths, as difficult and uncomfortable as that is, we will awaken to life in color.

Nora embrace of "yes, and" will resonate with all of us who grieve what we've lost, the life we thought we'd have, while simultaneously embracing and celebrating the life we do have now: 

And is where I am now. 

And does not deny the past, or the pain. And makes room for it, in a way that but does not. And allows for the future, too... 

Yes, I have a life I love, and a life I miss.  

Yes, I am filled with happiness and gratitude, and with an eternal ache.  

Yes, Matthew is my husband, and the love of my life. And so is Aaron. 

Five (5) stars on Goodreads.

This was book #16 that I have read in 2019 to date, bringing me to 67% of my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 7 (!!) books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :)  

Odds & ends: About TV, movies, dildocams & graduation

Does anyone else watch "The Big Bang Theory"?  And did you temporarily freeze up last night, when Howard tried -- and initially failed -- to find the baby's heartbeat with the portable Doppler on Bernadette's stomach??  I drew in my breath & moaned aloud, "Oh no!!"  Dh paused too -- and then sharply reminded me, "It's a COMEDY -- nothing's going to happen!" 

And it didn't, of course. 

Bernadette's pregnancy has been the source of some grumbling in the childfree by choice community. There have been several past episodes where Bernadette and Howard expressed differing viewpoints on having children -- with Bernadette -- who isn't exactly the nurturing type -- expressing clear reservations about motherhood. So her surprise pregnancy this season seemed somewhat out of character.  I couldn't help but wonder whether she might be "punished" for her previous ambivalence over pregnancy with a miscarriage.

There are so very few positive childless women role models on television these days -- let alone those who have clearly expressed a childfree by choice point of view. So many of them somehow still wind up with a child.

Not every woman who wants a child winds up with one. Not every woman who says she doesn't want a child eventually changes her mind. It's time that television and movies start to reflect that.

*** *** ***

On a somewhat related note (how childless/infertile/grieving women are portrayed in the media): Gateway Women flagged this article on Facebook today -- & I can't stop thinking about it: The hand that robs the cradle: why does cinema still demonise grieving mothers? 

Any woman who has been infertile or lost a child is familiar with the stereotype of the deranged childless/grieving woman who threatens the happiness of others' families. I don't think I've ever seen an article about it in the media, though -- and certainly not one as thorough and well-analyzed as this one -- particularly the comparison of how bereaved mothers are treated cinematically versus grieving fathers. What a great point;  I hadn't thought about that angle before. I literally had my jaw hanging open & dh may have overheard a "Yes!!" or two as I read excellent points such as these:

• “There is still a romanticised notion of motherhood in our culture,” says Denise Turner, a lecturer in social work at the University of Sussex whose research focuses on bereaved parents. “To be an archetypal ‘mother’ is to be selfless: endlessly loving and without negative emotion. To be a ‘good’ mother is also to nurture your children – certainly not to ‘let’ your child die. There are ever-increasing expectations on mothers to entertain and nurture children, often to impossible standards. Therefore, death is the ultimate failure of motherhood.” [emphasis mine]
• “I think that culturally we need mothers to go mad because it is unthinkable to us that children die – mothers cannot ‘survive’ this event because we can’t survive this event,” says Turner. “It’s also possible that there is a cultural penitence in mothers going mad it’s their punishment for letting the child die.”
• Turner lost her own son, Joe, when he was 19 months old. In the past, she has suggested that mothers may not be broken by the death of a child and that with time, they can find strength. Yet this, she believes, is an “unacceptable thing to say, culturally”.
• Male characters, too, are frequently seen as transformed by grief – many of them spurred by the death of a child down equally bloody paths. But there is a key difference. The reaction of men is generally presented as rational – if over-energetic – driven by an honourable and even aspirational thirst for justice... But when the same thing happens to a woman, her journey is shown as lunacy. Rather than seeking the restoration of some balance, she is an agent of chaos.

There's more. Go and read the whole thing, and tell me what you think.

(For the record, I saw "Halloween" back in the day, and I did not remember the spoiler referred to at the beginning of the article.) 

*** *** ***

For the first time in about 14 years, I had a date with the dildocam yesterday. :p  Long time no see, old frenemy. The technician asked if I'd had a transvaginal ultrasound before;  "OH YES," I was able to advise her wryly.  

At age 55, my cycles have continued chugging along more or less regularly & normally -- until just recently. I had a 19-day cycle last year, which was out of the normal range for me -- and then I kicked off the New Year with my longest cycle ever, starting Jan. 2 -- 63 days, from day one of my period through to the beginning of my next period on March 4th. Aunt Flo usually comes & goes within a week -- but I continued spotting & cramping for a week after that too, winding up with a flourish of the most debilitating cramps I've had in quite a long time. Dh brought me a couple of ibuprofen, and they finally subsided enough for me to drag myself off the couch and call my ob-gyn's office.

Naturally, he was away on vacation. :p  I have an appointment for my regular Pap & checkup scheduled for mid-May, but wondered if that should be moved up.  His assistant advised me to call when he got back, in two weeks. Of course, after that last hurrah of cramping, AF disappeared and I felt fine -- but I called earlier this week, and we decided I should go for a look-see. Based on the results, he may move up my appointment, or I may just go in May as scheduled.

I know that when you get to be 55, strange & unusual things can start happening (if they haven't already) -- and no doubt the stress I've been under lately (selling a house, buying a condo and making moving arrangements) might also have had an impact -- but I prefer to know, for sure and sooner vs later, if it's just wonky (peri)menopausal hormones or something else going on. I am not (overly) worried, but would appreciate any positive vibes, thoughts, prayers, etc.

*** *** ***

My appointment was at an ultrasound clinic in the city, and after I was done, I walked over to the Toronto Eaton Centre to shop (something I won't be able to do as easily or as often after our move), and walked into the Hallmark store. And I almost walked out again when I came face to face with a prominent display of graduation/Class of 2016 items near the front of the store. (I made a fast about-face and walked down a different aisle.)  It's something I know is coming, in the back of my head, and something I've blogged about -- but it was one of those reminders that absolutely smacked me right in the face:  "Oh. Yeah. This should be us and Katie right now." 

It's mid-April -- prom season will be starting soon, and then in June comes graduation. The one saving grace: in a couple of weeks' time, we will be in our new condo, away from here, and won't have to drive by the two local high schools where Katie would have been a student, and the signboards out front with the helpful reminders of events and dates.

"Selfish, shallow and self-absorbed"

I haven't read this just-released book yet, although it's already in my gargantuan to-read pile. But I saw this interview on Jezebel with the editor, Meghan Daum, that I wanted to share.

Like Daum and the writers in this essay collection, the interviewer, Karyn Polewaczyk, is childfree by choice (although many of the essayists admit to some ambivalence on the topic). Maybe that's why she asks some really excellent questions.

Here's a few excerpts from Daum's answers. Does any of this sound familiar??:

• "We live in a culture where busyness is revered and often equated with importance... And, for various reasons, parenting these days has become an exercise in time management and, in some cases, letting people know how incredibly busy and overwhelmed you are... I've noticed that, often, non-parents feel like they have no right to complain about being busy or tired or stressed because, after all, there's this huge thing we're not doing... I went through a phase where I felt like I had to be some kind of extra-achiever—on a professional level, a personal level, a moral level and even a housekeeping level (what a joke) because surely I had all this extra time that my friends with kids didn't have (i.e. I had no right to have a messy house because, hey, I didn't have kids!)" 
• "Frankly, the "why" mandate kind of irks me. I'm not someone who gets off on being coy and confrontational in social settings, so I'm probably not the one who's going to answer the "Why don't you have kids?" question with "Why did you have kids?" But I think that's a fair answer if you're inclined to give it."
• "It was essential to me to make room in the book for ambiguity and ambivalence. Again, one of the problems with this discussion has been the either/or nature of it. If you've chosen not to have kids, you're supposed to champion and celebrate that choice every moment of every day. But life doesn't work that way. Do parents champion and celebrate the choice to have kids every moment of every day? Not any that I know—though, of course there, too, is a stigma about expressing moments of doubt or even regret."  
• "We must get away from the idea that parents and non-parents are adversaries. I think this notion is in many ways a media creation—nothing generates clicks like incendiary articles along the lines of "I didn't know real love until I became a parent"—but unfortunately this kind of logic has seeped into the public consciousness and became part of the conventional wisdom... That message [that childless people are selfish] is so ingrained in the culture that even people who question lots of other things often never think to question it."

I wish Daum had included a few childless/free-not-by-choicers in this collection -- although I appreciate her nod to ambiguity and ambivalence in her comments and in her choice of contributors.  I believe that the line separating those who are childfree by choice from those of us who are childless not by choice (or whatever labels you want to slap on us) is a lot thinner and more flexible than most of us (on either side of the equation) realize. Yes, there are die-hard CBCers who intensely dislike children (and parents), and enjoy hurling around unfortunate terms like "sprogs" and "breeders." But the vast majority of people who are childless/free, for whatever reason, like children and respect the hard job that parents do.

And whether childless/free living was your first choice or not, I think there's a lot we can learn from each other. We may come to this life from very different places, but I think we face a lot of the same issues, questions and pressures. I think the structure of our lives are probably a lot more similar than different;  the differences may be more psychological -- how we view our situation and how we feel about our lives.

As Karen Malone Wright of The Not Mom (a blog for people women without children, by chance or by choice) recently said, "...if we are just one-fifth of American women, surely there is more that unites us than divides us. Personally, it means that although I dreamed of spawning a houseful of little me’s and didn’t, I stick up for the women who never wanted children, too. I never pretend to know exactly how they made the decision to live childfree, but I do know they have the right to make it. I don’t have to be Russian to support Pussy Riot." 

What do you think? What did you think of this interview & the premise of the book?

Shades of fertility grey

I was flipping through this morning's newspapers & organizing the sections in the order I like to read them in (please tell me I'm not the only person who does this??), when a headline on the front page of the Insight section of the Toronto Star caught my eye:  "The hardest border I've ever tried to cross."

As someone who was born on the Canada-U.S. border -- which has become increasingly difficult to cross over the past decade -- border issues have always interested me, so I took a closer look. Imagine my reaction when I saw the subhead:  "A globetrotting correspondent comes to terms with maternal yearnings that may have arrived too late."  (For most of the morning, it was the featured lead story on the Star's website.)

Michelle Shephard is the national security reporter for the Star, a job that has taken her to places like Rwanda & Guantanamo. The woman obviously has guts. And it took guts to write such a personal article and put herself out there under her own byline, to admit her ambivalence about motherhood and yet her disappointment when it became increasingly apparent that motherhood might not be in the cards. She tells her story matter-of-factly but still conveys a good picture of what it's like to go through infertility, the obstacles, he humiliation, the decisions that must be made.

There was so much here I could relate to:

I don’t feel comfortable talking about this. Here’s the problem, though: no one does, and with silence comes shame. 

The struggle women face balancing careers and motherhood is often discussed — which is wonderful. But talking about the struggle to become a mother remains largely taboo. I understand why...  

It’s just difficult to explain why you dread going to a doctor’s appointment Thursday to decide if you’ll spend thousands of dollars and turn your body into a medical experiment just to, quite likely, deal with the disappointment again when the test comes back negative.

And here: 

By 2006, when I was 33, I was thinking about Mogadishu and Peshawar, not babies. People would often say, “Ah, I was selfish at your age too,” which I would reply to with a tight smile, making me more determined not to apply for membership in the parenthood club.

Oh boy, can I relate.

I will admit that I too was ambivalent about having children, to some degree. I have questioned, at times, whether I really did want children, want them badly enough.

And I believe that I did. Children were always part of the plan. But the timing was always a question. Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I struggled, I questioned -- was I truly ready -- financially, mentally -- to handle such an immense responsibility? (I've often said that too many parents leap into parenthood without giving the matter too much thought;  perhaps our problem was that we thought about it too much.)  We had very little money those first few years;  I was just starting a good job after years (and thousands of my parents' dollars) spent at school.  I was far away from my family and knew I wouldn't have a lot of help when the time came to have a baby. I was newly married to a man I had spent three years in a long-distance relationship with;  I wanted to spend some time with him first before sharing our life with a baby.

And perhaps, in the back of my mind, there was doubt. Not that I really wanted children, but that I was up to the task.

And -- getting back to Shephard's words above -- I will admit to having a bit of a stubborn/contrarian streak. I gave a few tight smiles myself after similar comments & nudges from friends & relatives wanting to know if I had any "news."  No frickin' way was I going to run out & get knocked up just because people were bugging me to, expecting me to. It was none of their damned business.

I struggled with the resentment I felt -- that I still feel, when I think about it. Why couldn't they show the same interest or excitement over some other aspect of my life? Why did I get the feeling that their primary interest in me was baby-related?

And so we waited.

Perhaps we waited too long. Perhaps the other issues uncovered during testing & treatment  would have prevented us from having a child anyway. We'll never know.

Shephard's closing paragraphs also resonated with me:

The numbers are cruel but not surprising: You’re 41. You’ve done two IUI’s. IVF with all the drugs will cost about $15,000. There is a three to 10 per cent chance of success.     So the decision is basically can you handle the disappointment when there is a 90 per cent chance the procedure won’t work. More important, can you live without the 10 per cent chance it could...   

Life has taught me there is really no black and white, and I’ve always loved exploring the shades of grey. I can live without the three to 10 per cent gamble. There is relief in moving on.

I've always been a "shades of grey" person too (& I'm not talking E.L. James, lol). And I'm not much of a gambler either, especially with those sorts of odds. We did three IUIs before deciding against IVF.  And yes, there is a certain relief in moving on. Eventually.

Thank you, Michelle Shephard, for telling your story -- because it's a story shared by so many women in their 40s and 50s right now. It is a hard thing to break the silence, especially in such a public way, but you have done it well.  Whether you eventually do adopt (as you hinted in the story) or continue to live without children, I wish you well.

The comments are about what you might expect -- caveat emptor.