I first took issue with something the literary critic Merve Emre said when she wrote an intense and in-depth pan of Minna Dubin’s book, Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood, for The New Yorker
I think this is the best thing you've written on this subject. Wow. I want to sit here with your words and let them seep in and then read again. I feel you so deeply on the subject of wanting to overcorrect in your own mothering and thereby process how you were mothered/parented. I think about this SO MUCH in my own life as well. I'm giving my kids the childhood that my parents did not/could not give me. How will this affect the boys in the longer term? Will I have inoculated them against the sadness that defined my childhood, and to a certain extent, my life? Or will I just have been the mom who was always around and fitfully, futilely attempting to write; will they even realize that my ambitions were swallowed by their needs but also by MY need to be available to them (the kids, not the ambitions)? And then, how will this affect how they parent? Will they then feel freer? Or is the fact that they are boys, and therefore future fathers and not mothers, going to be of more consequence than anything I do in motherhood? So many thoughts. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I hope you write more about this in the future; it's so compelling and you write about it so beautifully, despite your rage/grief/etc. Also, I miss your podcast. xo
Ahh, thank you, Luisa! I love this part: "will they even realize that my ambitions were swallowed by their needs but also by MY need to be available to them..." My answer is: maybe? Ha. It's all so complicated and messy. Best to keep writing to see if you can find any clarity. 😉💗 Thank youuuu for reading!!
Oh my goodness, thank you for articulating something that has felt so hard to spin into sense in my mind. Maybe it can be honoring to write about our kids (or about our motherhood, not ever about the kids really), and either way we have to because it *is* our life too. And the wanting writing about how motherhood is fascinating -- that's it! The inarticulatable feeling I've been circling! Ah, a feast for thought! Thank you!
Thank you for this. I love you. This is the writing and the preoccupations that I crave and am also invested in. I wish the New Yorker would publish your counter response to Emre.
I loved all of this and it speaks to so much of the confusion in navigating motherhood, public life, private life, how we quantify what is meaningful, how it is quantified for us and how we get out of that influence. Also the comparison to abortion debates—where does the mother and child become separate entities, despite a shared experience in the same body (!)—feels spot on. Another example of how a woman is being told she should not get to decide—or share—what happens with her body, her life. By not talking about motherhood and our kids it becomes another form of erasure of a woman’s agency and experience, foregrounding the child. While I’m so glad that people are recognizing this with social media, etc. and avoiding sharing dependent lives without their awareness, it’s sad that it’s because of a sense of backlash and appropriation of identity by a world that would exploit that. And in that sense it silences both experiences of childhood through a parents’ eyes, as well as the joy or experience of childhood in general. So much erasure going on in different ways in order to ‘make things safe.’ So many layers and ways that motherhood and childhood are kept private and thus not having currency in a ‘public’ world. Thanks so much for writing about all of it. 💜
This is such a beautiful, satisfying read. Thank you for exploring the topics of self <—> parenting <—> writing <—> the writing “life.” I love your inclusion of these different writers (fairy tales and The New Yorker) and this synthesis of a many-tentacled beast. Thank you! 💞✨🏆🌱🥕💐
My mom was the only one of her sisters to choose stay-at-home motherhood rather than a career. She taught at our Catholic school before I was born and after my dad died, but the majority of her life was at home (or in the car, getting dad to work and us to three different schools when our ages didn't line up). She prioritized us and has said she always feels a little intimidated by her successful career-having sisters.
I went to college for engineering and got to have the girlboss career, I liked my team, did good work, did the executive masters program, won early career awards, and was given opportunities to speak in front of large and important audiences. And then I had a baby. I cut down to 32 hours and worked until my husband finished grad school (we had one of my best friends nanny for us three days a week, which was amazing, and my mom watched my baby one day a week), and then my husband graduated and I retired after eight years in engineering. My boss was so surprised. I'm at home now with two children and can't imagine anything more important than what I'm doing. I feel freed to focus on more important work. I'm building community (we host an open invite dinner every week, averaging 20 adults and up to 10 kids!) and raising my kids and volunteering in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atrium.
Being a stay-at-home mom has been more humbling and self-revealing than anything I've ever done. Some times I get so angry I scare myself. It keeps me close to Jesus in prayer! Like you said, the more time you spend with anyone the more opportunity you have for rage. And my mom life is a 24/7 thing. My life was much easier in many ways when I was working, even with a child. I had hours of the day where I could focus on one task I chose, no one was touching me or climbing on me, no one was making a mess around me or dropping things in the toilet! I love being home with my kids, but it's a different world than working in an office all day! I love your, "Why should the sacred be unspoken?"
I am so grateful I've finally learned of your Substack. Very grateful for this nuanced analysis and your thoughtfulness. Meanwhile, I'm reading this while my two year old screams, "Who wants hot dogs and lemons?" from her play kitchen and the eight year old is doing handstands in the living room and the five year old has stolen my phone and is playing a math game (that's okay, right? right?). But I kept thinking about one of my favorite books, "Mother is a Verb" (by Sarah Knott), which, to me, allows motherhood to sit in an intellectual and somatic space on the page. It's an attempt I'm trying in my second novel and will surely fail spectacularly, but I'd prefer than than a mild, unimpressive success? In the meantime, f*ck the NYer and I have to go relieve the nanny while the toddler climbs up my arm saying "whoah! whoah!" and I have no idea why this is so fun for her. WRite on.....
This piece covers a fascinating scope of motherhood and all the expectations and criticism a mother faces. I personally have felt a deeper connection to my kids through writing about them, since the process requires contemplation of their emotions and experiences. The only time I have felt ick sharing our lives with others is when posting photos online. The presence of the camera in children’s faces has far more potential to interrupt a sacred moment than a piece of writing that’s removed from the experience.
Thanks for writing this piece, and for the hard work of writing in general. I knew early on I didn’t not want a mother path, and for about 10 years in my thirties I put effort into creating space for parents & kids to participate in community as artists and activists. More than class analysis—which is important to examine, but private child care still leaves kids unconnected to parents—I think it’s important to also notice that the dedication to individual solutions rather than collective ones puts tremendous burden on child bearing people to nurture and manage an entire family’s emotional labor as well as their own creative needs. I don’t know how you all do it, I commend you, I wonder where you get care & attention & I dream a time where children & parents are integrated into communities that create easily accessible & safe frameworks to support the ongoing demands of helping bring the children of earth into adulthood. Keep loving keep fighting. Good luck
Thanks for this, Moe! I kind of get into this struggle in my illustrated memoir project, Resume Gap, which I've shared on here. Here's a link to the first chapter: https://ameliapmorris.substack.com/p/resume-gap (If you're interested, you'll have to go through my back log to find chapter 2, 3, etc!)
This was absolutely gorgeous. I’m a mother/writer (of the same sort) as well and I find myself dreaming of a four-hour coffee date with you to discuss this piece and all the threads it contains. Alas, we probably couldn’t get the childcare😅
Thank you for this. First, I can’t imagine writing for 10hr a day and traveling yet still being preset with my son???? To each their own. I truly wish people would stop critiquing those who aren’t critiquing them. Second, I do hope to be more available to my son as well because my mom raised my brother & I on her own and i felt like as I got older she became less available as she started reclaiming her life when I got to high school. So you’re not alone! Lastly, I do hope my son (he’s 17mo!!) reads my private journals and public essays one day so he knows how hard it is but also how much I love him enough to keep going thru the hard stuff. like I love writing the great stuff too, but how can that be understood without knowing the counter. Anyways thank you, wishing you well!
This was so beautifully written. So much to consider about my own family life, overcompensations, and writing. 💗 and thank you for all the book recommendations as well!
I think this is the best thing you've written on this subject. Wow. I want to sit here with your words and let them seep in and then read again. I feel you so deeply on the subject of wanting to overcorrect in your own mothering and thereby process how you were mothered/parented. I think about this SO MUCH in my own life as well. I'm giving my kids the childhood that my parents did not/could not give me. How will this affect the boys in the longer term? Will I have inoculated them against the sadness that defined my childhood, and to a certain extent, my life? Or will I just have been the mom who was always around and fitfully, futilely attempting to write; will they even realize that my ambitions were swallowed by their needs but also by MY need to be available to them (the kids, not the ambitions)? And then, how will this affect how they parent? Will they then feel freer? Or is the fact that they are boys, and therefore future fathers and not mothers, going to be of more consequence than anything I do in motherhood? So many thoughts. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I hope you write more about this in the future; it's so compelling and you write about it so beautifully, despite your rage/grief/etc. Also, I miss your podcast. xo
Ahh, thank you, Luisa! I love this part: "will they even realize that my ambitions were swallowed by their needs but also by MY need to be available to them..." My answer is: maybe? Ha. It's all so complicated and messy. Best to keep writing to see if you can find any clarity. 😉💗 Thank youuuu for reading!!
Oh my goodness, thank you for articulating something that has felt so hard to spin into sense in my mind. Maybe it can be honoring to write about our kids (or about our motherhood, not ever about the kids really), and either way we have to because it *is* our life too. And the wanting writing about how motherhood is fascinating -- that's it! The inarticulatable feeling I've been circling! Ah, a feast for thought! Thank you!
Thank you, Amy!! So so glad it resonated.
Thank you for this. I love you. This is the writing and the preoccupations that I crave and am also invested in. I wish the New Yorker would publish your counter response to Emre.
I loved all of this and it speaks to so much of the confusion in navigating motherhood, public life, private life, how we quantify what is meaningful, how it is quantified for us and how we get out of that influence. Also the comparison to abortion debates—where does the mother and child become separate entities, despite a shared experience in the same body (!)—feels spot on. Another example of how a woman is being told she should not get to decide—or share—what happens with her body, her life. By not talking about motherhood and our kids it becomes another form of erasure of a woman’s agency and experience, foregrounding the child. While I’m so glad that people are recognizing this with social media, etc. and avoiding sharing dependent lives without their awareness, it’s sad that it’s because of a sense of backlash and appropriation of identity by a world that would exploit that. And in that sense it silences both experiences of childhood through a parents’ eyes, as well as the joy or experience of childhood in general. So much erasure going on in different ways in order to ‘make things safe.’ So many layers and ways that motherhood and childhood are kept private and thus not having currency in a ‘public’ world. Thanks so much for writing about all of it. 💜
Thank you, Freya!! 🙏 Appreciate this.
Me too, Gadia. Me too. 😂 Thank you so much for reading!
I feel every single word of this piece deep into my bones.
Ahh, thank you!
This is such a beautiful, satisfying read. Thank you for exploring the topics of self <—> parenting <—> writing <—> the writing “life.” I love your inclusion of these different writers (fairy tales and The New Yorker) and this synthesis of a many-tentacled beast. Thank you! 💞✨🏆🌱🥕💐
Thank you for reading and always being *here*. I thought of YOUR writing too, while writing this. 🙏🙏
💞💞
New to finding you but this was so interesting!! Thank you!
Same! Love this.
My mom was the only one of her sisters to choose stay-at-home motherhood rather than a career. She taught at our Catholic school before I was born and after my dad died, but the majority of her life was at home (or in the car, getting dad to work and us to three different schools when our ages didn't line up). She prioritized us and has said she always feels a little intimidated by her successful career-having sisters.
I went to college for engineering and got to have the girlboss career, I liked my team, did good work, did the executive masters program, won early career awards, and was given opportunities to speak in front of large and important audiences. And then I had a baby. I cut down to 32 hours and worked until my husband finished grad school (we had one of my best friends nanny for us three days a week, which was amazing, and my mom watched my baby one day a week), and then my husband graduated and I retired after eight years in engineering. My boss was so surprised. I'm at home now with two children and can't imagine anything more important than what I'm doing. I feel freed to focus on more important work. I'm building community (we host an open invite dinner every week, averaging 20 adults and up to 10 kids!) and raising my kids and volunteering in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atrium.
Being a stay-at-home mom has been more humbling and self-revealing than anything I've ever done. Some times I get so angry I scare myself. It keeps me close to Jesus in prayer! Like you said, the more time you spend with anyone the more opportunity you have for rage. And my mom life is a 24/7 thing. My life was much easier in many ways when I was working, even with a child. I had hours of the day where I could focus on one task I chose, no one was touching me or climbing on me, no one was making a mess around me or dropping things in the toilet! I love being home with my kids, but it's a different world than working in an office all day! I love your, "Why should the sacred be unspoken?"
Thanks so much for this, Kate. 🙏 Super interesting.
I am so grateful I've finally learned of your Substack. Very grateful for this nuanced analysis and your thoughtfulness. Meanwhile, I'm reading this while my two year old screams, "Who wants hot dogs and lemons?" from her play kitchen and the eight year old is doing handstands in the living room and the five year old has stolen my phone and is playing a math game (that's okay, right? right?). But I kept thinking about one of my favorite books, "Mother is a Verb" (by Sarah Knott), which, to me, allows motherhood to sit in an intellectual and somatic space on the page. It's an attempt I'm trying in my second novel and will surely fail spectacularly, but I'd prefer than than a mild, unimpressive success? In the meantime, f*ck the NYer and I have to go relieve the nanny while the toddler climbs up my arm saying "whoah! whoah!" and I have no idea why this is so fun for her. WRite on.....
Thank you for this, Kaitlin! Really appreciate it. I'm gonna request the Sarah Knott book from the library now. And look up your first book too!
This piece covers a fascinating scope of motherhood and all the expectations and criticism a mother faces. I personally have felt a deeper connection to my kids through writing about them, since the process requires contemplation of their emotions and experiences. The only time I have felt ick sharing our lives with others is when posting photos online. The presence of the camera in children’s faces has far more potential to interrupt a sacred moment than a piece of writing that’s removed from the experience.
Thanks for this, Ginny. I *do* think it's whatever works for the family. (My kids LOVE making videos with their dad / actively ask to be filmed.)
No doubt!
This was really lovely! I do think it's SO interesting to be a mother, even the most mundane parts.
Thank youuuu!
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH AMELIA!
Thanks for writing this piece, and for the hard work of writing in general. I knew early on I didn’t not want a mother path, and for about 10 years in my thirties I put effort into creating space for parents & kids to participate in community as artists and activists. More than class analysis—which is important to examine, but private child care still leaves kids unconnected to parents—I think it’s important to also notice that the dedication to individual solutions rather than collective ones puts tremendous burden on child bearing people to nurture and manage an entire family’s emotional labor as well as their own creative needs. I don’t know how you all do it, I commend you, I wonder where you get care & attention & I dream a time where children & parents are integrated into communities that create easily accessible & safe frameworks to support the ongoing demands of helping bring the children of earth into adulthood. Keep loving keep fighting. Good luck
Thanks for this, Moe! I kind of get into this struggle in my illustrated memoir project, Resume Gap, which I've shared on here. Here's a link to the first chapter: https://ameliapmorris.substack.com/p/resume-gap (If you're interested, you'll have to go through my back log to find chapter 2, 3, etc!)
Thanks!
This was absolutely gorgeous. I’m a mother/writer (of the same sort) as well and I find myself dreaming of a four-hour coffee date with you to discuss this piece and all the threads it contains. Alas, we probably couldn’t get the childcare😅
Ahh thanks for reading, Amber!! Really appreciate the kind words.
Thank you for this. First, I can’t imagine writing for 10hr a day and traveling yet still being preset with my son???? To each their own. I truly wish people would stop critiquing those who aren’t critiquing them. Second, I do hope to be more available to my son as well because my mom raised my brother & I on her own and i felt like as I got older she became less available as she started reclaiming her life when I got to high school. So you’re not alone! Lastly, I do hope my son (he’s 17mo!!) reads my private journals and public essays one day so he knows how hard it is but also how much I love him enough to keep going thru the hard stuff. like I love writing the great stuff too, but how can that be understood without knowing the counter. Anyways thank you, wishing you well!
Thank you for reading and for your thoughts, Carrington! Really appreciate it
This is gorgeous!
Thank you!
This was so beautifully written. So much to consider about my own family life, overcompensations, and writing. 💗 and thank you for all the book recommendations as well!
Thanks for reading, Lindsey!!
Much appreciated. Thank you.
Thanks for reading!