Society/Motherhood Contradictions

“Perhaps the least visible but most pervasive job is that of household manager. “That one is constant,” Smock says. “It’s the person who remembers everything: that Joey needs to have a dentist appointment, what foods each child likes, that a babysitter needs to be hired for the weekend. If a mother is handing her husband a grocery list, he is given... See more

The truth is that motherhood is as beautiful as it looks on the congratulations cards, but it can also be a mess. It’s important to be honest about this. No real change is possible until working mothers stop trying to be all things to all people—perfect at work, perfect as partners, and perfect as mothers, with each role kept entirely separate.

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I’m not a celebrity, I’m a worker. I’ve always worked. I was working before people read anything about me, and the day they stopped reading about me, I was doing even more work. And the idea that if you’re a mother, you’re not doing anything—it’s the hardest job there is, being a mother or father requires great sacrifice, discipline, selflessness,... See more

“Researchers from the UK’s Mindlab International measured subconscious brain activity in sleeping men and women and found that while a baby’s crying was the number one nighttime sound most likely to wake up a woman, it didn’t even figure into the male top ten—lagging behind car alarms. And strong wind.”

— How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids by... See more

But the issue of children and who looks after them has become, in my view, profoundly political, and so it would be a contradiction to write a book about motherhood without explaining to some degree how I found the time to write it. For the first six months of Albertine’s life I looked after her at home while my partner continued to work. This

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Research shows that any woman leaving the workforce for any period of time after having children will substantially impact her future earning potential beyond any money they could save on childcare in the short term. Leaving the workforce permanently (or never entering it in the first place) renders her completely financially dependent on her... See more

“Darby Saxbe, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, explains to me that couples often fall into a pattern of demand and retreat—most often, the woman demands and the man retreats. This dynamic has arisen, she says, because men have less to gain by changing their behavior, while women are more likely to want to alter the... See more