What does a happily childfree woman have to say about motherhood? First let me say that I’m honestly not against motherhood. I’ve met women who are good mothers, and I would love to see more good mothers like them. My goal in creating The American Spinster has always been to encourage a critical examination of our cultural norms, and to encourage women to take the occupation of “mother” very seriously.
If you’ve read anything else on this site, you’ll know I think something is deeply wrong with our present society in that we make motherhood the default state of being for an adult woman. But this isn’t because I think parenting is inferior work. As I’ve said before, parenting is a vocation. Only those who are truly called it the work of raising children should become parents.
The devaluing of motherhood and does a disservice to mothers, women, and our society.
How do we devalue motherhood in a pro-birth society?
Seeing the following commercial is what spurred me to write this blog.
The reactions to the revelation that this god-awful job was motherhood honestly appalled me. Whereas I initially thought, “Oh wow, what a deep commentary on how horribly mothers are treated,” the interviewees responded with, “Awwww! Wow, so true. Moms are the best! My mom’s awesome!”
What? You just spent the last two minutes explaining how horrible this was and showing us that no self-respecting human would ever agree to degrade themselves like this with absolutely no monetary compensation. Now you want me to push all of that aside and say, “Yeah, moms are great.”
I understand that point of the commercial was simply to illustrate how much work moms do, and that—since they’re not being paid—they do it out of love. It’s a nice little Mother’s Day note acknowledging that moms work hard.
“Hey moms, we wanted to put together a little something to show how much we all love you. Happy Mother’s Day.”
But, that’s it. The commercial didn’t treat the revelation as if it were exposing a problem. It essentially said it was… sweet to see how moms are so easily compared to exploited laborers. The problem is, I don’t think this commercial is inaccurate. I think they hit the nail on the head when it comes to the way we think about motherhood. And it’s absolutely awful.
Why do we glorify the difficulties of modern motherhood?
In venerating the unpleasant, under-appreciated, exhausting, and often thankless work of motherhood, we enshrine the image of the suffering woman as… a truly happy woman. Seriously. This is what we do. We say that the image of an exhausted, over-worked woman nigh overwhelmed by the noise of her brood is what happiness looks like.
Being a mother may be happiness for some women. Being a caretaker may be happiness for some women. But being overworked and taken for granted is not happiness. In any other situation, we would call it abuse.
In the instance of the commercial, we would quite literally call that slavery. And by covering it with the cheesecloth of sainthood, we absolutely diminish the suffering of women. And that nonsense has got to stop.
But isn’t motherhood an inherently difficult job?
Don’t misunderstand me. To live is to suffer… to some extent. Every job, no matter how much of a passion or vocation it is, is going to test you. Life will challenge you, and that’s not a bad thing. But there is a difference between growing as a human to feel the immense, unconditional, enduring, selfless love that a mother can learn to feel for her child and simply being mistreated and devalued by society.
Will the work of motherhood require some sleepless nights, premature aging, and higher stress levels? Sure. But no mother needs to be chronically sleep-deprived, beaten down, discouraged, over-stressed, or depressed. That level of mistreatment is not required of the Good Mother. And we can’t sweep this injustice under the rug by sanctifying abuse as a sign of devotion.
But doesn’t it devalue mothers to say their suffering is unnecessary?
An insidious manifestation of the way we glorify the over-worked mother is seen in the way mothers often wear the stained t-shirt and unkempt hair as a badge of honor. The signs of exhaustion and stress have become a sign of their hard work and superiority. We tell moms that their suffering just shows how good they are, and that a mother who isn’t suffering must not be doing her job.
We have told mothers that this is the price of having children. And that if they don’t like it, complain too much, or try to find a way out of it then they’re lazy, unfit, and bad mothers. By extension, if a mother doesn’t complain too much and trudges onward without any significant help, then that woman is the one who’s really happy.
Listen. A woman can be happy being a mother and caring for her child. But do you genuinely believe that she couldn’t be just as happy being a mother and caring for her child in a healthier way? Don’t buy into the fiction that this is what motherhood is for humans. Human moms are not octopus mothers that starve themselves to death while caring for their eggs.
So if this isn’t the natural order of things, what is? Stay tuned until next week, when I’ll post Part II.
All images in this post are provided by Kaboompics
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What a fantastic post! The following quote hits the nail on the head:
“In venerating the unpleasant, under-appreciated, exhausting, and often thankless work of motherhood, we enshrine the image of the suffering woman as… a truly happy woman. Seriously. This is what we do. We say that the image of an exhausted, over-worked woman nigh overwhelmed by the noise of her brood is what happiness looks like.”
Thank you for your blog!
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts!