A Professional Lady Correspondent Stares Down Motherhood

Gaia flows through me. I'm a cool mom.

Happy 2023, dear readers.

My latest essay is a long one, so I won’t drag things out with a similarly long introduction. The title here says it all: I’ve covered gender issues for much of my career. Now, I’m about to be a mom, which adds, minimum, nine zillion new dimensions to my thinking.

And so I have elaborated on exactly what has changed for me.

(The usual links and so on will come in a future newsletter. OK let’s roll.)

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I want to have a kid, but I don’t want to Be A Mom.

I don’t want to stand next to my partner at parties, watching him field questions about his career and hobbies, while I get “So…how’s THE BABY?” I don’t want motherhood to permeate all of my writing, my thinking, my identity. I don’t want to stress about bosses or colleagues thinking that I’m ducking out for maybe TOO many pediatrician appointments. I don’t want to worry that they’ll realize during my parental leave that, huh, they can get along just fine without me. I don’t want to tap my mental brakes when I consider ambitious projects because I’m a busy mom now. I don’t want “Mom” as a qualifier or a modifier or an amplifier – I don’t want to do something impressive in the nearish future (write a book, run a marathon PR, win whatever award) and for anyone to add, “And she’s a NEW MOM.” I don’t want my friends to dread my texts, knowing that an onslaught of “You’ll never guess what Junior said today” is coming, or perhaps my ninth “Guys I’m so tired and were you aware that being a parent is HARD” of the day. I don’t want my partner to feel he always comes second. I don’t want myself to feel like I always come twelfth. I don’t want my brainful of jokes and long-memorized Chopin preludes and quotes from novels and verbatim 30 Rock exchanges to be displaced by daycare pickup and dropoff times or encyclopedic lists of the preschool class’s food allergies. Other parents inform me that new-parenthood is the end of freedom and sleep and an easy marriage and unstained clothes and enjoyable vacations…and I’m not ready for my life to be drained of joy just yet. 

And this isn’t just about my anxieties. I’ve spent most of my professional life digging into sexism in one way or another, and a lot of that sexism manifests in how we treat moms.

I’ve covered the gender wage gap extensively. I know that overwhelmingly, it happens because of motherhood. I’ve covered paid leave (or lack thereof) and childcare availability (again, or lack thereof). I’ve covered the exorbitant cost of that childcare. I covered the economic hit that women took during the pandemic — I think a lot about a mom who, yes, had more earning potential than her husband, but also understood that she would be the one to cut her hours if schools remained closed. I know that while women face a motherhood penalty, there has been evidence that men are get a fatherhood bonus. That single, childless women are the happiest women. That dads get substantially more leisure time than moms. 

So.