I recently learned there is a growing industry in coaching women on whether or not to have children. I’ve started to picture them sometimes, these coaches with their tea and tissues, merrily sketching out flowcharts, calculating the predicted longevity of the NHS perhaps, the likelihood of our planet becoming hostile to human life before the theoretical child turns 21, the hormonal appeal of matching “mummy and me” outfits from Zara, etc. And then, presumably, sending the client off with an answer. Permission to live a certain life.
I am regularly fascinated by the way we are led to believe that there could ever be a correct answer to this question – a relatively new one, and one complicated by the anxiety caused by the economy slipping backwards while the science of fertility leaps forward. And I am regularly livid, too, at what seems to me to be a terrible incuriousness, an avoidance of complexity, around anything related to motherhood. The new choice-coaching industry thrives alongside an ongoing discourse about the ways we talk about motherhood, after the publication of a Vox piece late last year, “How millennials learned to dread motherhood: to our generation, being a mom looks thankless, exhausting, and lonely. Can we change the story?” The internet lit up. Well, my internet at least, an internet of women between the ages of 30 and 50, swaggering, thirsty, cynical, eager. And while I usually enjoy nothing more than a brisk debate about the politics of motherhood, this one left me oddly cold.
Until shortly before I had a baby, aged 33, I was blithely unaware of any books, news or what came to be called “content” about parenting at all. When I started talking and writing about the experience, I did so as if I was the first mother on Earth – I think, possibly, it’s the only way. It was 2014, I was trying to convey the many emotions it’s possible to hold at one time, including love, ambivalence, joy and regret with honesty and without shame, and I got shit for it. I still do. But it became more acceptable over time, partly because there were more opportunities for more women to share the bits that might indeed make others “dread” motherhood, partly as a reaction to previous stories that seemed to sugarcoat the experience and partly because the dark stuff is just so much more interesting.
The truth, of course, is that having children and being a mother is not simply one thing. It is not just “thankless, exhausting and lonely”, it can also be profound, delightful and enriching, and it can be all these things in the space of a single mealtime. It is real life. And I am regularly surprised that intelligent people (who can accept that is the case for, say, marriage or work) are so often willing to believe otherwise. Especially when doing so, when ignoring the complexity, creates unnecessary division and isolation. The idea that it’s the discussions of the problems with parenting that need to be policed or changed, rather than the lack of economic and emotional support that create these problems, is regressive and infuriating. I could go on – the way we are encouraged to think about motherhood, to me, feels incredibly… babyish.
Should you have a baby? I do wonder how the coaching goes, in its spreadsheets and linen. Are you prepared for a life of care, of responsibility, judgment, privilege and pain? Can you come to terms with the fact that it might be bad for you, might be painful, might cost you your job, your friends, your mental health, while also improving your life in a myriad of small bright ways our language is not yet equipped to meet? Yes? Show me your bank statements. What if the child has additional needs, what if your own parent dies, what if… what if you try and it doesn’t happen? What if it deflates your relationship? What if you become a bore? What if you only want one? What if the choice you believe you’re making freely is stained or constrained by ideas of duty, fear or prejudice? What if that choice is a myth all of its own? What if you come to be one of those people who vapidly believes childless women lead less meaningful lives? And what if, knowing all the many daily hells of having children, their impact on your life, on your planet, you still want to have them? What then? Should you have a baby? God knows.
There is no right answer. There is only magical thinking, luck and the daily reminder that there are a thousand different ways to live a life. And then, within this life, this choice, are another thousand opposing feelings, anxieties, desires, losses, grey areas and joys. Contrary to all voices suggesting otherwise, this choice is not a clean one. Don’t we all emerge brightly, wailing, a little bloodied, wondering what could have been?
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on X @EvaWiseman
