Motherhood

But strictly speaking, ambivalent is precisely the word two years in, because my feelings on the experience of motherhood do not add up to a tidy conclusion in the positive or the negative, but in a miles-long bracket that includes every possible feeling.

Year Two was emotionally on par with running back and forth between a hot tub and an ice bath,... See more

I used to watch as she read Ms. magazine, sitting upright, at the dining room table. She came of age during second-wave feminism, when women kind of had a choice and kind of didn’t. This made my mom’s ambivalence about motherhood starker and more insistent: It’s within the realm of possibility that my mom’s life could have gone a different, more... See more

"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

Parenthood likewise forces an encounter with the illogic of the market: good fortune means getting to pay someone less than you make to do a job that’s harder and probably more important than your own.