Motherhood

"Parent or childfree" used to be my framework for understanding a dividing difference of adult life. But aging and, yes, friendship, have taught me that there are so many experiences that binary doesn't capture: To want kids but not be able to have them, for physical or financial or logistical reasons. To not want kids but accidentally get pregnant... See more

I’ve spent the last three years pregnant, breastfeeding, or trying to conceive. I want more children, and I want close age gaps, and I want to write a book, and go to more parties, and keep publishing this newsletter. I still feel creative impulses, but they don’t always translate neatly to tangible output anymore. In fact, I would say they rarely... See more

People shying away from having babies because they heard that it’s so hard are making one of those category errors that are inescapable in this rotten decade in this awful century: they think that hard is the opposite of good.

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist... What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible... See more

The most important rewards of being a parent come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child’s moment-by-moment joy in being with you.