Motherhood

A job is predicated on agreement. (“I will take X dollars for Y hours of work, as long as the arrangement works for me.”) But there are all sorts of other labors that are predicated on duty . Duty to help others, duty to be true to ourselves. (“I’m doing this because it is necessary for me to do it, regardless of whether it works for me or not.”)... 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.

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.