On the Myth of Motherhood as Self-Improvement
And why I care as someone who has no kids and no desire to have kids
I often warn people I’ve just met that they’re free to follow me on Instagram but cannot hold my Stories against me. “It’s where my Id lives,” I explain. “You have to promise to keep liking me even after watching them.” I add that I’m not one to slide into their DMs to argue about politics or that they’ll be exposed to some horrific Edgelord memes. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. My Id is frivolous, perpetually thirsty, too Bravo-obsessed, quick to go for the joke, and a ravenous eater. It flies in the face of my oh-so-carefully-curated intellectual persona hehe. But yes, my Id sometimes reacts automatically and without any filter to the hot-button issues of the day and goes on an off-the-cuff-rant.
That’s what happened on June 11, when The Cut account spewed out its latest clickbait (I say this with admiration): “What If Motherhood Isn’t Transformative At All?” by Anastasia Berg. “Finally”, my Id muttered. “A mother is brave enough to say it.” Berg is an editor, a mom, and a philosophy professor and she tackles the concept of identity with a trained philosopher’s lens. She describes her experience of motherhood as one where a series of assumptions never came to fruition–she didn’t feel like her core identity had been completely reconfigured, she didn’t feel like her love for her child was unlike all the other loves, and she aptly points out how projecting this radical transformative belief onto women can cause feelings of inadequacy and isolation.
It’s a thoughtful take. In comparison, this was my gut reaction:
