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Slaves to Love | The Point Magazine
Americans have come to define liberty “negatively, as lack of dependence, the right not to be obligated to others. Independence came to mean immunity from social claims on one’s wealth or time.” If this is how you conceive of liberty—as freedom from obligation—then the transition to parenthood is a dizzying shock. Most Americans are free to choose ... See more
Jennifer Senior • All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
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the cut - june 11 - 2024What If Motherhood Isn’t Transformative at All?
We’re often told that becoming a parent will alter one’s identity. For me, the change never came.
By Anastasia Berg, editor of the Point
Art: March Avery, Evening Reading, 1972/© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of the artist, Private Collection, and BLU
... See moreThe writer Zadie Smith puts it better than I ever could, describing having a child as a “strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight.” Smith, echoing the thoughts of everyone else who has seriously considered these issues, points out the risk of close attachments: “Isn’t it bad enough that the beloved, with whom you have experienced genuine joy,
... See morePaul Bloom • What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness
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Having worked so hard to have children, parents may feel it's only natural to expect happiness from the experience. And they'll find happiness of course, but not necessarily continuously, and not always in the forms they might expect.
Jennifer Senior • All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
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Hrdy brings some common sense to the issue. “We should be asking ourselves how we failed to expect these ambivalent emotions in their every nuance,” she writes.[11] “There are good reasons why infant demands sometimes seem so insatiable, and there are equally good reasons why mothers sometimes find such servitude overwhelming and resist them.”
Lucy Jones • Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood
It is hard a lot of the time and easy a lot of the time. Is this making any sense? It doesn’t make any sense to me either. And that’s the total mind-melting, incomprehensible, frustratingly indescribable, and also wonderful thing about infants. Time with them has no goal and operates in a strange nonlinear fashion, and you are doing so much but not... See more
Rachel Katz • Magic 8 Ball Mind
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what it feels like to care for an infant