Motherhood

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. 

Being told to "enjoy every minute," while undertaking such psychologically and physically demanding work, is a peculiar type of societal gaslighting.

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

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.

From Sheila Heti, Motherhood:

“Only in the pursuit of failure can a person really be free”

“I don’t know why I don’t do the obvious thing — instead of fantasising about other lives, why not try to imagine what it’s like to be me, and live the life I’m living now”

“Happily we run away from even the brightest and best things in our lives, because we are

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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