Recently I read this wonderful blog post (which is quite old, pre-pandemic) on the lack of villages in modern motherhood and I deeply felt every word of it.
While it’s tempting to blame individuals in my life who haven’t shown up for me in motherhood when I needed them, it’s not the fault of any one or two people. It’s cultural attitudes towards kids, parenting, and motherhood on the whole.
It starts when we’re young.
For me, it started when I learned basic sex ed and hit puberty, aged 11. Getting pregnant as a teenager was basically my worst fear (although there was 0 chance of it given that I didn’t even talk to boys, lol) and I had SO many nightmares about pregnancy.
The shame, the feeling of betrayal by your body’s fertility, the idea of childbirth (horrifying, right?), the perspective on children as burdens that prevent you from living “your best life.” Our youth culture is saturated in fear surrounding all things motherhood and children. This could be an entire blog post on its own, but not today.
Which then progresses into attitudes of early 20-somethings, at least those who share my cultural background. Which is mostly: why the heck would I choose to get pregnant at 23, when I’d just married, gotten a nonprofit job and we finally had the financial abilities to “live our best lives” (travel and be spontaneous)? Honestly I think–and know–many people thought it was an accident. Rest assured, I know how pregnancy happens 😛
And then the general postmodern attitude that if you choose to become a mother, you earned it. Whatever crap comes your way, it was your choice, so you just have to deal and no one should even want to help you. I mean, we could say the same of college… graduate school… any stressful job. Those people choose their struggles, too, yet that doesn’t seem to discourage empathy.
And then what our culture says about women once they become mothers–about their value to society, their bodies, their womanliness.
Oh, there are so many layers to this.
And I have held every one of those perspectives myself at various times: the intense fear of pregnancy, the view that young moms were throwing away their lives, the what the heck AM I doing?! when I got pregnant, the fear that I had lost my youth postpartum. That’s why I bring them up, because they have coexisted (and still coexist to an extent) alongside my ever-developing positive views on children and motherhood.
And then there’s capitalism and the holding up of the nuclear family as a “traditional value” (it ain’t) and more women in the workforce and low-to-no parental leave and so many logistic factors that influence our family planning and views of children along with these cultural attitudes. They feed into one another; the entire system is built in direct opposition to traditional views on parenting, children, and mothers.
There’s a fairly famous book in the fertility world called “It Starts With the Egg,” about optimizing egg quality to maximize chances of a healthy pregnancy. There should be a corresponding book for new moms called “It Starts with the Pad” about how woman have been conditioned from a young age to fear their fertility and childbearing abilities, and to shy away from indulging their maternal instincts.
And while this doesn’t excuse people for not showing up for their pregnant or new mom (or heck, new dad) friends when they need it–it does beg forgiveness. Because you know what? I was also guilty of it before I had kids.
When I gained younger family members as a teenager, I had no desire to hold those babies, learn how to support postpartum women who were new moms, or see them as just having undergone this incredible transformation. I was simply uncomfortable with everything surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. I was not empathetic. We need to teach girls (and women) to care for each other throughout all of life’s stages, to look forward to preparing for and moving through those stages themselves, and to be the village to each other.
It starts when we’re young… and it needs to change.