The social and cultural conditions of motherhood are actively cruel to women.
In pregnancy and birth we are often not listened to, or patronised, or have our pain minimised by medical professionals. The induction rate is sky high and it’s not uncommon for women to suffer quite extreme birth injuries and be expected to get on with it, to care for a newborn, often with very minimal support, and not make a fuss. We are often discharged, in pain, with very limited pain relief, bleeding, to care for a baby, sometimes having been awake for 3 or 4 days solidly.
Statutory paternity leave is 2 weeks. I read somewhere the other day that the average mum on maternity leave spends 8 hours a day alone with her baby.
We experience broken sleep for years on end, in my case 4 years and counting, and are expected to just carry on, go to work, earn money, listening to and managing screaming and crying and tantrums at all hours of the day and night.
Work and childcare are non functional. Most households need two incomes. Childcare is expensive, even with funding, work is often inflexible. We’re expected to work like we don’t have children and mother like we don’t work. If you work full time you might be made to feel guilt, if you don’t work you’re lazy.
The mental load! The sheer weight of the responsibility of organising everyone and everything, the cooking, the planning, and the amount of information we need to remember on a daily basis, of who needs to be where at what time, who needs to take what to school, who we need to buy a birthday present for, is proper cognitive labour. If you ask your husband to do it, he probably will, but it’s just another fucking thing that you need to do in asking. If he’s anything like mine, he’ll be a good husband and a good dad, but he just will not ‘carry’ it all in the way that you do.
School is term time, 9-3. 6 weeks to navigate over the summer. Arranging work, sorting childcare, trying to do activities with them to keep them and yourself sane (still not sleeping, still often listening to screaming).
Then there’s the cultural and social pressure. Can’t breastfeed? Failed. Had a C section? Failed. Oh they have to share a bedroom? Failed again. Are you feeding them well? Are they on track developmentally? Are they making friends and coping at school?
This model of motherhood may not be what everyone experiences, but if it what you experience, this level of pressure, expectation and sheer workload on mothers is actively cruel. It’s a feminist issue, and I have been radicalised. I feel actual anger at the way mothers are treated at a societal level.
I have two children. I work part time in a career that I love. My husband is also doing his best, just like me. But the pressure and expectation, and sacrifice of self, work, and autonomy is just not the same. I’m not depressed, I love my children desperately and I enjoy my life. This is not really a discussion about my own personal motherhood, but the general pattern within society.
Anyone else?