Why I write about motherhood
and why Distracted is proud to be "another mum blog"
I often read about women saying they want to avoid writing about motherhood.
It’s as if we are afraid to write about it in case people will say that now that we had children it’s all we can write about; all that we are about. In becoming a mother we have lost too much of ourselves - and of our old lives - that there is nothing else left.
In some ways I feel this, completely. I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to hark on about my kids all the time; children can be incredibly boring, especially when they aren’t your own and I, a millennial woman with an interesting job and opinions of my own, have plenty more to write about than motherhood alone.
And whilst that is true, I do not want to shy away from writing about motherhood.
This is partly because that aspect of my life is inescapable. I think having been an almost stay-at-home mum for two and a half years, and a reluctant one at that, I have nothing much else to talk about than motherhood and crucially, very few people to talk about it with. I have tonnes of feelings and experiences I want to share and writing is the only way I can do that. For me motherhood has been all encompassing, it would be weird not to write about it.
Another reason is that I am a feminist and in a society where we encourage women to shut up and get on with it, I want my voice to be heard.
I didn’t want Distracted to become “another mum blog” in the sense that I am far removed from the trad-wife influencer culture you may associate with mum blogs, yet blah blah blah being a mum seems to be all I can talk about. I think this is me grappling with my pre-mum self and her belief that motherhood is boring. Of course now, I know that it is anything but boring.
Lucy Jones is her book Matrescence describes her perception of first-time motherhood:
“I thought motherhood would be gentle, beatific, pacific, tranquil: bathed in a soft light. But actually it was hardcore, edgy, gnarly. It wasn’t pale pink; it was brown of shit and red of blood. It was the most political experience of my life, rife with conflict, domination, drama, struggle and power.”
Lucy Jones, Matrescence (2023)
Since reading Lucy Jones’ Matrescence, I have felt stronger about writing about the trickier parts of motherhood. That we must share honestly and openly in order to make others feel less alone, to provide solace as we struggle through a time in our lives where the system is working against us.
Motherhood is hard, and trust me I know it can be harder than I have it.
This throws up a lot of guilt for me. I often think I do not have the right to moan from a place of such privilege and I am sure many people may feel the same way. I have two healthy children and I am parenting them with a supportive partner in an affluent country where we don’t want for anything, really. What do I have to complain about?
This guilt is something Cathy Rentzenbrink brings up in her book How to Feel Better,
“I still seem stuck in this rut of believing that any distress I feel is ungrateful and indulgent. Now, with an ever-increasing awareness of global suffering enabled by twenty-four-hour news, I feel even more conscious of my good fortune. I was born to loving parents in a comparatively safe and prosperous part of the world and we always had enough to eat. I have a health child and do high-status and fulfilling work. I am mired in a deep shame at being unable to feel content.”
Cathy Rentzenbrink, How to Feel Better
The guilt we feel is unhelpful in that it stops us from sharing when we feel down and when we are finding things difficult, which does our mental health no favours. Cathy explains that one key to feeling better in ourselves is to share and offload these feelings.
, author of Life, Almost wrote about a similar feeling, in her iPaper article, about her experience in lockdown with her son, who was born after four previous unexplained miscarriages.“Even now, I feel a little ashamed – as someone who had wanted desperately to become a mother – that having a baby in lockdown almost broke me. In hindsight, was there a shadow of post-natal depression and anxiety? Maybe. But it felt harder than normal to admit to struggling.”
, My Covid Baby starts school tomorrow…, iPaper
Jennie writes that she was not alone in this feeling as “The number of new parents who said they felt uncomfortable seeking help for how they were feeling rose from 18 per cent before the pandemic, to 34 per cent during it, according to a report on the early years by the Royal Foundation.”1
I was certainly one of those parents, because I thought I was feeling bereft in my isolation for no good reason; other people out there in the pandemic were suffering unimaginably, people were dying, yet I was bothered about the fact that I was sat inside my nice house with a new baby and my partner, who I loved. We had food, we even had toilet roll - I felt like I had nothing to complain about, yet I look back at that time and I feel similarly to Jennie, in that I mourn the experiences and support that we didn’t have during that time. I mourn the fact that we lived in fear and anxiety and in isolation and that nothing was normal.
I remember there was a call for mothers to contribute to Daisy Lane’s book Motherhood in Lockdown later in the pandemic and I felt I had nothing to say, so I didn’t contribute. No one would want to hear about my suffering that wasn’t anywhere near as acute many others. I was certain there would be more interesting stories out there. Stories more worthy of sharing.
Now, I think it is the normalcy of the experience that means that it should be shared.
In reading Matrescence, I was shocked my how similar her experiences were to mine and I have noticed many other mothers reviewing it in a similar way. We are shocked that the ongoing sense of failing is normal, that the feeling of completely losing ourselves is to be expected - with biological explanation, even, and the relentlessness of looking after children in a system designed to work against us is testing to our mental health.
What struck me in reading Matrescence was that Lucy’s message of how normal it all is is the important message; that is what I needed to hear. It is not that I am somehow doing it wrong, or that my support network is particularly weak or that my relationships have failed, this is all normal. This is all to be expected. What isn’t normal and what isn’t helping anyone are the stories about motherhood that we tell that aren’t true - those that perhaps are only told because they align to expectations society has of motherhood - the stories that are told through omission.
The stories that aren’t told for fear of shame fuel the fire of high expectation we have of motherhood. This can be damaging for new mums, for example, who aren’t able to find much advice on combination feeding and who then feel that giving up breast-feeding isn’t an option. It can be damaging when those limited experiences shared about sleep-training, potty-training and disciplining toddlers can fail to provide an unbiased view and make people feel like they are doing it “wrong”. It isn’t fair to only show the good bits that we are proud of, or the stories where it all goes “right”. Motherhood is messy and complicated and we are doing a disservice to new mums and our society by hiding that truth.
For me the magic of the Distracted community comes when I write something I am almost worried to publish. I think it could be too far and that people won’t understand my thinking on a particular issue or experience in motherhood - I press publish anyway and the comments flood in about how relatable it is. I feel seen and I am left questioning why I was worried to publish it in the first place. Whether or not I have been able to shake off those unrealistic expectations of motherhood despite having experience of the contrary - and why that is?
I appreciate I am privileged in many ways but I still feel strongly that I need to share that I, even in these privileged circumstances, am still finding motherhood hard. I want others to feel like they aren’t the only ones, for us to create support networks where we can share without shame or judgement, and importantly for us to create an expectation for new mothers that is more realistic so we, as a society, can work with those raising children, rather than against them.
What do you think - Should we share the tougher aspects of motherhood?
As a new mum/dad did you feel blind-sided by the gulf between expectation and reality?
Come join me in the comments I would love to hear your stories.
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My Covid baby starts school tomorrow – I still mourn his lost childhood, Jennie Agg (03 September 2024)
I was so angry that no one told me quite how awful it could be. My brother had told me I had no idea how hard it would be but he was laughing and it felt so condescending that it made me angry. It was helpful, or specific. And I know everyone’s experience is unique and we don’t want to be negative to pregnant women who are probably already living with anxiety about many things, but the number of mothers after my child was born who told me their challenging versions… I wish I’d known sooner so I didn’t feel like such an anomaly. And I also think things might not have been so bad if I’d been told more of the important things. Now I ask people expecting if they’d like advice and if they say yes then I share the things I wish I had known as gently as possible. Like how hard that second (or first full) night will be and how normal that is. The night sweats. The things you need to know if you want to breastfeed and where to go if you’re struggling. So many things.
I couldn’t agree more Kylie-Ann, so well articulated. It’s so true what Lucy Jones says about a lack of interest in motherhood before becoming a mother too - surely we should all be invested and fascinated in sharing, looking at and holding space for the place from which we all begin. Motherhood writing is for everyone! ❤️