Women, Children, and Worth
A ridiculous number of people connect being a “real woman” with being a mother and a wife. If you don’t want to have children, I stand behind your decision 100%. If you don’t want to be married, ditto. You are You regardless of your relationship to other people, desire and/ or ability to have children, assigned sex at birth, adherence to society inflicted gender roles, job title, etc.
However, in recent conversations, I’ve noticed the following point seems to get lost or overlooked: women who have kids (by birth or other circumstances) still have value and identities. Their offspring have value and identities, too. As a reminder, nobody starts life as an adult — that’s not how humans work. The moment you decide to cut ties with women because they have kids, or block children from social gatherings, you have negated their identities in the exact same way that others have done to child-free women. Children look up to adults for clues about how the world works. They learn about their worth and their mothers’ worth based on how adults around them treat them, or don’t.
You may feel like your mom friends deserted you. You may be sick of seeing only pictures of your friends’ kids on social media instead of the old versions of your friends, cocktail in hand or hanging onto a river raft for dear life. [Kudos to anyone who can do both.] The thing is, Mamas are tired. For a period of time highly dependent on a variety of factors, we forget that such antics were ever possible. Can you imagine the fatigue and nausea of an all-night bender despite not drinking for 10 months? Can you imagine third degree perineal tears and how that impacts one’s ability to stand up, sit down, and use the toilet? Our bodies don’t look or work the same way; due to substandard medical care and non-existent leave, some issues may never fully recover. As a result, it may be some time before we want to be in front of a camera lens as opposed to behind it. On top of this, all of our attention is now focused on a little one whose very existence depends on us not sleeping through the night for … I’m not sure when that part resolves itself.
Your mom friends are exhausted, lonely, probably in need of pampering, and longing to feel like themselves again. Being in the public’s eye right after birth entails a struggle with the desire to look like you once did — a societal pressure to be pretty above all else — at a time when everything about your body feels broken. New moms spend a year watching their bodies become the heaviest they have ever been in a society obsessed with skinny bodies. Fun fact: it’s hard to go to the gym if you’re still waiting to use the bathroom without crying.
An internal tendency to withdraw in response can be amplified by additional external forces. Strangers feel emboldened to come up to new mothers and offer unsolicited advice and criticism. Children cry, a lot, often over random and sometimes quite funny things. When this happens in public, mothers are expected to simultaneously appease their little ones and random unsympathetic adults.
Communal design pushes mothers further into isolation as most public spaces are not child-friendly. It’s even harder to hit the gym when infants aren’t allowed on the treadmill, and on-site childcare is not provided as part of a membership. In restaurants, libraries, schools, and workplaces, diaper changing stations or restrooms big enough to supervise a potty-training child are not a given. When amenities are present, they are typically available in the women’s restrooms only, not the men’s, meaning that, regardless of a relationship’s inner dynamics, women become the de facto wiper of butts. The lack of accessible toilets in terms of ADA regulations is already literally criminal; in practice, establishments typically provide toilets for every able-bodied human except kids and parents. Most stalls barely have enough room for a handbag: now picture trying to handle biological needs in these spaces with a tiny human you can’t leave out of your sight. My seven-year-old wasn’t even allowed to use the bathroom at my gym when I was being dropped off one day. Your mom friends have lost their social circles, job opportunities, and their identities as independent human beings. And, on top of this, they have lost their ability to pee or change their tampons in public facilities.
While women are definitely judged harshly by society for not having kids, that judgment does not magically disappear after having one, either. We need to support each other. If you miss your friends after major life changes, tell them that. They need to hear it. They likely miss you more than you know.
