Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must

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WHEN I LOOK BACK AND think about my own reaction to impending motherhood, I can’t help but see that my extreme distress was informed by anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to be a mother and be happy at the same time. Though my mother had three children, something about dealing with them consistently had been anathema to her core identity, as if she

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