The Crisis of Motherhood No One Wants to Talk About

Is the modern world setting mothers up to fail?

Thanksgiving is next week, and I don’t have plans. When I say that I don’t have plans, I’m not saying that I have yet to buy a turkey and do the holiday shop so that everything will be ready. No. What I mean is that I don’t expect to be cooking for anyone except perhaps my son and myself, and I expect to otherwise spend the holiday on my own.

While I am somewhat looking forward to the solitude, perhaps I’ll spend a little time sitting outside and enjoying the trees, it is a tense standoff between the life I thought I was building, and the reality I currently have. 

I didn’t have four children to expectantly wait for all the free time I’d have once they were grown.

So in recent years, Thanksgiving has been a hard day, and at least for some portion of it I will catch myself missing the dream of a life that won’t ever materialize, a life with an intact family that was built around providing a solid foundation for the next generation. Then there is the added reality that I have yet to find a man to build a new dream with. There will be some sadness and grief.

The lack of a Thanksgiving plan is the result of a handful of factors. There is the divorce of course, something I never wanted, but was absolutely necessary. I also made the sacrifice of having a rooted life, to move all around the country so my ex-partner’s career could grow. The result is that I don’t have long friendships in my current home and I’m trying to build that support network later than most people are looking for new friends.

I probably could talk my way into a visit and travel to a handful of distant old friends and extended family members, but it’s hard to justify travel as a wise expense when I’m still wondering if I’m being foolish to try and launch a writing career rather than accept defeat and apply at Starbucks.

I’m still mulling that one over. I’ve given myself a year to see what I can do making a concerted effort.

In years passed I would have been doing the cooking. As a former pastry chef, I relished spending the day in the kitchen. I made my own cranberry sauce, cooked the turkey (always juicy) and if I was really hitting my marks, I’d prepare a pumpkin praline pie from scratch. Thanksgiving was a time when I felt like my life was coming closest to the dream of simply building a family. Sharing that with visiting relatives, friends, and folks who would otherwise be on their own was fulfilling. That was my version of a good life.

Now that I’m getting used to the new normal, I can’t help but notice how my former dream of being a mother and nurturing presence in my community is not supported by this modern world.

Arguably it was very foolish to sacrifice building a career so I could stay at home and bond with my babies. Had I not been so motivated to maintain breastfeeding and keep them out of daycare, today I’d have the kind of work experience that employers value, and provides proof of my skills and abilities. I would not have felt I needed graduate school to re-establish myself as having economically valuable talents.

I did make my choices and will live out whatever the results of the gambles I’ve made. It’s not my intent to complain.

At the same time, as I listen to influencers grouse and wring their hands about the falling birth rate, as I see others gripe that the majority of kids today are narcissistic and unprepared for adult life, after being raised in daycare by strangers under the micromanagement of over-protective but absent adults (which is not to lay blame–parents have to make agonizing choices–I may have done the same) I can’t help but wonder, what the heck do people expect?

Babies, their needs, and behaviors have been sculpted by millions of years of evolution to require close contact with an attuned adult, ideally their mother, to produce a well-adjusted adult member of the community. If you are going to breastfeed–which is much more than just a food choice, you have to be there almost all of the time. But in today’s world, this is not valued, not even by feminists. It would be easy to go on at length about how modern feminism has characterized motherhood as some kind of biological slavery. 

Childless adults might not know, there are many places where a mother isn’t welcome if she must come with her kids in tow. Among the places I was either not allowed or asked to leave if I had to come with even well-behaved babies and young kids were, shops, hair salons, multiple knitting groups, ice rinks, doctor’s offices, jury duty, and the U.S. Congress.

At one point I tried to go to church. My oldest, who was only 2, was terrified of the nursery. The older adults assured me it would be fine to just walk away and leave him in their care. Instead of blindly buying into their suggestion, I put it to the test and walked out the door but waited hidden off to the side. 

It was only moments before he broke away from the adults and came running out breathlessly sobbing (the ugly cry) after he realized I was gone. It took me some time to calm him down, and he was watchful of my location for a while afterward. 

When I attempted to sit in the sanctuary with him, I was directed to sit in a room that also served as the coat closet where I couldn’t even see or be seen by the congregation, and we wouldn’t be a bother to the other adults.

Let’s not even discuss how everyone, especially the childless, will tell you how you should be parenting, as though they know better than you.

It is true, you can make all the sensible arguments that young children are too disruptive for things like jury duty and the U.S. Congress, but let’s be clear: for a mother to live up to her biological role as fits the needs of the children she has (not some idealized baby), she will be locked out of participating in much of adult life, including speaking for her needs in front of the government.

It is hard not to acknowledge that the biological slavery argument doesn’t carry some weight.

Picking up the pieces of my life after divorce, my mothering experience of little economic value, I’m faced with building a career to support myself and launching children without a professional network or the promise of youth. Looking at my life right now, what woman in her right mind would choose to trust her future to another, even if all the evidence and tradition in the world point to it being better for the baby, and fulfilling?

While this may be an individual problem it is one every woman must face, and is part of the reason so many women are reaching middle age without ever having children.

I know that men run their own risks when they consider bonding themselves to a woman to start a family. They do risk being cuckolded and having their future earnings siphoned off. If their wife can financially leave, a man may find himself cut off from his own children without cause as well.

Viewed competitively our reproductive situation can look a lot more like mutually assured destruction than the joyful continuation of the species.

From where I’m sitting, it is the role of mother, rejected by feminists, feared and revered by men that is the sticking point.

If we are going to take the needs of our babies seriously, and not lie to ourselves that daycare and otherwise farming out the raising of our children is risk-free, sacrifices must be negotiated, made, and followed through on.

That requires humility, cooperation, empathy, compromise, and other elements of adulting that are in short supply in a society where a large contingent are so divorced from reality they can’t even define what a woman is, much less honestly discuss the precarious vulnerability inherent in motherhood.

If we are to adequately address this dilemma, we have to find a way to do the thing that so many, perhaps rightly, fear. Trust.

Housekeeping

It’s finally started to get cold around here, which I like. My dog Poppet has healed from the pitbull attack, but I am having to continue to explore legal avenues to recover some of the cost of her medical care.

She also has a bald spot and a scar on her back. I understand that the scar will never grow fur, but it remains to be seen if the surrounding area, which healed without scarring, will remain hairless. I have learned that some dogs are issued one fur coat, and if it gets significantly damaged or, god help them, shaved, they are stuck with that bad haircut for the rest of their lives.

I am hoping there is some old wives’ tale angle to this information. We also ran into a box turtle on a recent outing. It didn’t have much to say, but Poppet it gave it a sniff.

On the Bookshelf

The New Know-Nothings and Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman, still. Go ahead and laugh and point fingers. I’ll shake my fist and spout something pithy or absurd. I haven’t decided which yet.

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About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.

You can also find my work at Minding the Campus