Nelly amongst the Flowers, Otto Dix; 1924

I WAS recently talking to a woman in her thirties. Bright, talented, pretty and friendly, she has a beautiful, three-year-old son — a little boy with an angelic glow that attracts everyone in the room. She has a husband who makes a good living and adores her. Her successful career she has interrupted but she could resume it at any time.

I asked her if she was hoping to have more children. She said without hesitation that no, she was not. She was done and would be returning to full-time employment this fall. She would have no more children. She had never been enthusiastic about becoming a mother, she said, and only had one child reluctantly. (You would never know this by her affectionate behavior toward her son.) Even when she was a girl, she said, she knew she wasn’t cut out for motherhood. It wasn’t for her.

Now for a college-miseducated woman who lives in a big city today to say she is not cut out for motherhood — that’s almost like a person raised in a tribe in the Amazon rainforest saying he was never cut out to be a software engineer. I was not surprised at her statement.

“You know, you don’t have to like motherhood in order to be a mother,”  I said. “You can even be a good mother and not like it. It’s a job.”

She was taken aback. “Oh, I never heard that before,” she said.

No other form of daily work is burdened with such unrealistic expectations and exalted assumptions as the work of motherhood, which is so sentimentalized in our feminist culture. The woman who does not enjoy the company of young children or finds the home lonely and unstructured compared to the workplace may be left thinking she is not meant to be a mother.

No one expects a soldier to enjoy battle. No one expects a plumber to enjoy welding pipes in cramped spaces. No one expects a doctor to enjoy prying into noses and — other anatomical regions. These are jobs. They need to be done. A plumber can do pretty well and dislike many of his tasks. I personally couldn’t care less whether he likes it all, just as long as he shows up. Motherhood is a job. It needs to be done. Yes, it is very important and difficult, compared to these other tasks. Yes, an attitude of cheerfulness is especially important for children, but still motherhood is a set of duties and tasks. And cheerfulness can be imitated and acquired even in unpleasant circumstances. It’s interesting how doctors, plumbers and soldiers are never encouraged by the culture at large to think of themselves as unsuited for their work. Oh, but mothers are.

Women’s liberation was not liberating. It placed such a high value on personal fulfillment. It turned the home into a prison with the idea that it should be satisfying on a daily basis. The truth of duties as opposed to happiness — that’s liberation. Let God decide who is, and who is not, meant to be a mother. Our lives should be a continual yes. Let Him do the unpleasant work of saying no.

I noticed one other thing about this lovely woman.

She doted far too much on her son.

She seemed to believe that a mother must respond to her child’s every little dissatisfaction and sit down and play with her young child for long periods of time. No wonder she found the job difficult! Is any adult cut out for this? You see this everywhere today. Parents are even afraid of their own children. The influence of modern psychology, and the fact that many people are alienated from the different ways of children when they become parents later in life, has made it so that many believe that the slightest mishap, the slightest inability to affirm the entire existence of their little one, and a child could be messed up for life. That’s what people actually believe. Many also confuse child-rearing with professional tasks, and think intense focus is good when a diffuse, detached energy is better. The more a mother thinks that her child’s ego must be constantly affirmed and that she must intensely manage, the less likely she will remain for the long haul at home.

Of course, attending to a child’s every desire is a sure way to mess him up. And an even surer way to mess things up is to fail to bring the next generation fully into existence.

Outrageously violating one of the conventions of our time, which says that family life is all about preferences and it’s none of your darn business what someone else does (as opposed to career, in which case advice is totally acceptable), I came right out and told this woman, out of deepest concern for her welfare, “You will regret this decision someday.” How sad that the world around her wasn’t giving her this vital message.

It takes a village to raise a mother.

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