An Additional Thought on: Talking about Motherhood

In episode 2 of the second season of her podcast Adulting, Oenone speaks to journalist Ellie Flynn about her decision to have a baby a lot earlier than her peers due to a fertility diagnosis in her early twenties.

The conversation, which is both humorous, educational, and enlightening, produces this quote:

“In London and our circles, there is almost a shame element in wanting to be a mum younger…we’ve gone too far the other way, people are thinking ‘god I can't have a baby yet”

And it is something that I have recently been thinking about. With the pressure on breaking trauma cycles, ‘gentle parenting’, the emphasis on ‘doing it right’, not to mention climate anxiety, the increasing cost of living, and increasing questioning surrounding gender roles in parenting, actively wanting to be a parent is sort of going out of vogue. As well as seeming like more a pressure than it used to be, it’s becoming ‘not very feminist of you’.

Women are questioning the patriarchal timeline that dictates their lives, undoing gender assumptions, and unpacking what their desires are vs what is imposed on them by society. The nuclear family is also becoming less of a societal necessity. Growing research around ‘cognitive labour’ and child rearing also is making a lot of women hesitant to become parents due to the copious amounts of pressure put on a mother vs a father. For these reasons, becoming a mother is something that, as Oenone said, in certain circles has begun to almost come with a shame element.

It made me think about my own opinions on motherhood. It doesn’t appeal to me, maybe that is because of my age, the feminist media I consume, or my love for doing things on my terms, but ‘I don't want children’ is something I have noticed myself saying with a hint of pride in my voice. It is a statement that is beginning to be loaded with positive selfishness, self-prioritisation, fun, and feminism. In turn, however, it is making the opposite begin to mean the opposite. Are people beginning to think of wanting to be a mother as succumbing to societal pressures, being naively selfless, and neglecting a career? Almost how we might question people who praise older, more traditional values and role in family or marriage?
I would never look down on someone who wanted children, the same way you would never look down on someone who wanted to be married, but it is undeniably the ultimate, ‘putting myself first’ option, and hats off to people who decide they want to go against the societal grain in any way.

In this growing discourse, whilst we are unpacking what it means to be a woman or a mother, or questioning societal assumptions, we mustn’t forget that a woman can be a mother and all the things that they were before children at the same time, successful in their careers, and sociable. Assuming all mothers are miserable and self-sacrificial feeds harmful stereotypes of motherhood and the idea that women should give themselves up as they become mothers.

Assuming that motherhood is an anti-feminist surrendering of the self is possibly backwards in its sentiment and almost anti-feminist - perpetrating the very idea that it wishes to quash.