What ‘sad mother’s literature’ doesn’t say about motherhood – 02/19/2024 – Equilíbrio

Almost 12 years ago, before going on maternity leave, a friend lent me the book “A Life’s Work” by Rachel Cusk, a visceral account of the first months of motherhood.

Later, my friend sent me panicked messages, asking me not to read about crying with colic and lost identity for fear it would plunge me into despair. Her warnings were so dissuasive that later the book acquired fantastic properties in my sleepless imagination; I dreaded reading it for fear that its contents would compel me to push my golden-haired baby into a passing stranger.

Since then, countless authors have written about the dark side of motherhood, in thrillers like Ashley Audrain’s “The Impulse” and Julia Fine’s “The Upstairs House,” as well as the novel “Soldier Sailor”, by Claire Kilroy, the autofiction “Maternity”, by Sheila Heti, and the memoir “Free Woman”, by Lara Feigel.

This flood of, for lack of a better term, “sad mom literature” has served as a corrective to the veneration of motherhood, and gives literary voice to a period of women’s lives typically dismissed as emotional and incoherent. However, these books about maternal ambivalence and struggle can have negative consequences. In a recent essay in the online magazine Vox, journalist Rachel Cohen explains “How Millennials Learned to Fear Motherhood.” She writes that: “Women my age have absorbed cultural messages that motherhood is thankless and draining, damaging careers, health, and friendships, and destroying sex lives. Today, it’s genuinely difficult to find mainstream depictions of mothers who aren’t stressed to the limit.” , depressed, isolated or increasingly resentful.”

No one is blaming books exclusively for the drop in birth rates. High childcare and housing costs are a deterrent. More positively, social changes are encouraging increasing numbers of men and women to flout convention and choose a life without children.

However, like Cohen, I find myself wishing for a more light-hearted depiction of parenthood. The problem is that describing the virtues of children risks sounding Pollyannaish or proselytizing. There are few things more irritating than an inattentive parent trying to convert a non-believer — or worse, someone struggling to have children.

Social media is, of course, saturated with positive representations. Recently, I’ve been fascinated by Carrie Johnson’s Instagram posts, showing that life with three kids under four is all wonders and Fair Isle sweaters. Her husband, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is barely in the photo.

Sara Petersen, author of “Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture,” says this type of omission highlights a trend on social media that creates “a version of motherhood” that is “apolitical,” contributing to a “fantasy of a beautiful, natural version of motherhood that exists solely as a result of a mother’s loving labor, not through the padding of money, resources, and childcare.”

The “sad mothers’ literature” genre has served as a useful corrective to cloying clichés. Books can feel like a lifeline when your world shrinks in the early months of motherhood, like Cusk’s did for me when I finally picked up her memoir. She wrote about reaching a point “where my understanding of my baby’s caloric intake, sleep hours, motor development, and crying patterns is professorial, while the rest of my life resembles a deserted village.” Of course, I knew the first few months would be difficult. But knowing and understanding are not the same thing.

Traditionally seen as anti-intellectual or uncreative, with Cyril Connolly’s declaration that there is “no darker enemy of good art than the crib in the hallway” long serving as a sexist warning, the act of caring has been elevated through fiction and memoirs, like Cusk’s, to a topic worthy of literary examination—though there were antecedents, one of my favorites being Celia Fremlin’s “The Hours Before Dawn” (1958). In books, the arc of parenthood can be seen as an adventure, with setbacks and triumphs, like becoming a mountain climber or pursuing a great love affair, worthy of investigation.

It’s true that much of my time is dedicated to monotonous and repetitive tasks — after hours at a recreation center, I sometimes feel my brain hurting with boredom. But I dispute the notion that your brain atrophies with motherhood. There may be less time for theater or reading, but watching babies and older children interact with the world inspires new ideas. Interacting with your children can provide greater insights into your own emotions, psychology, and family bonds than months on the therapist’s couch. It’s not just that kids keep you in touch with trends, but their ideas break with old ways of thinking. Their interests take you in new directions. Their worlds become yours. I probably won’t do much with the information I got about Paris Saint-Germain or chess YouTubers. But it does not matter. It taught me about enthusiast tribes.

I suspect that identifying the positive aspects of children runs the risk of making you seem sentimental. (I haven’t even mentioned love.) Writing about motherhood carries its own dangers, marking someone as softer than their peers who focus on serious issues of economics or geopolitics, as if children and parents are not part of the economy or the world.

There is a broader cultural tendency to view darkness as more dramatic or authentic than joy. Novelist Ursula Le Guin once argued against Tolstoy’s claim that happy families are all the same because it implied “that happiness is easy, superficial, ordinary, a common thing not worth writing a novel about”, while “unhappiness is complex, profound, difficult to reach, unusual, unique, indeed, and therefore a subject worthy of a great and unique novelist.”

The truth is that being a mother can be boring and tiring, but it is also joyful, creative and stimulating. If there were no advantages, no one would do it. Surely it’s worth investigating?