The Hatred of Motherhood
September 30, 2009
Kim, a 23-year-old mother of two children, writes:
Just after I saved your blog to my favorites, I received the meanest letter you could imagine from an old high school friend on Facebook. She is now a kindergarden teacher who plans to be a principal. She is living with her “soul mate” boyfriend and doesn’t plan to marry or have kids until after age 30. I gently questioned her constant “I’m-so-perfectly-happy” posts by asking when she planned to get married.
Her guilty conscience got sick of me quickly! In her reply, she said things like “even a crack addict can pop a baby out” and “my uterus isn’t going anywhere.” She called me ignorant and said that I had just “chosen the lesser path in life.” She thinks I hide behind my kids because I have not had my own successes to be proud of. And she said, “By the way, I love that you are a stay-at-home mom at 23. It’s just the cutest thing.” She was not the least bit lady-like and her writing was poor, even next to mine! And she had all these statistics. It hit me: This is what they teach in college! This is how the world really views me! But I had you to turn to, and it turned my hurt pride into sorrow for the pain she and many other girls are facing.
Laura writes:
There have always been, and always will be, people who despise motherhood. This is not hard to understand if you think about it. No job or profession is as holistic as motherhood. No job calls upon all facets of human nature, utilizing the mind, the heart, the will, the body, as does motherhood. There is no more fulfilling vocation on earth.
So it is understandable that mothers, especially mothers with young children who are utterly dependent and loving, inspire envy. But what Kim is describing is not ordinary. We live in extraordinary times and the hatred of motherhood and domesticity is allowed a rare freedom of expression and given open encouragement.
Many women who devote themselves fully to their families have received either veiled or outright insults. They are often asked what they are doing as if they couldn’t possibly be doing what they appear to be doing. People make pointed and rude financial queries and inquire when, not if, they will be returning to work. A middle class woman is likely to receive much more of this than an affluent one, whose time is so obviously taken up with managing and decorating a large house. These things can drain on a woman, sapping her confidence and frightening her. Perhaps they know something I don’t know, she thinks.
It’s important for women to learn to meet these insults head-on and not simply politely overlook them. A mother may be walking in a store with her two young children in tow when she comes across a friend or acquaintance. The friend will ask, “So what are you doing these days?” In other words, what are you doing other than motherhood? This is the appropriate time for a withering look and a patronizing sneer. The mother should say, “What does it look like I’m doing? I am raising my children and taking care of my husband.”
Relatives may approach a mother with repeated questions about her working future. To which she should sharply reply, “This is none of your business.” A woman who has no children and decides to stay home to care for her husband and her house should make the same retort.
The type of outright and vulgar insults Kim received from her teacher friend calls for an entirely different response. Kim’s friend has her own trials perhaps, but in this case she is clearly an aggressor. A mother has an obligation to defend herself and her vocation, to think of herself as a member of a beleagured tribe in need of an active front-line defense. Kim should tell this woman she wants nothing more to do with her ever and then stick by this promise unless her friend issues copious apologies for her insults.
Don’t waste time with enemies. Walk away. Lose friend after friend if you must, but do not passively accept insults. Girlfriend culture is exalted like never before. The truth is there are many worthwhile things to do with one’s time. There are so many opportunities for a woman at home to make and to create, to learn and to master. There’s always room in your life for those who want to join you in your enthusiasm for these things. There is no room for detractors. Shut them out. Show them the door.
When my children were young, an older woman who had raised her children herself once told me that daycare was every bit as good as a mother taking care of her children herself. I should have said, among other things, How do you know? Instead, I meekly took what was clearly an affront to my judgment and my entire way of life. This passivity on my part was easy in its own way, but it was a betrayal of devoted mothers and wives everywhere.
Notice Kim’s friend refers to full-time motherhood as cute. This is another common way of denigrating it. That’s why I generally don’t use the term “stay-at-home mom.” Just because you spend your days with children doesn’t mean you are a child. Does anyone refer to a “go-to-work dad?”
