Monstrous Motherhood

The Unbearable Complexity of Motherhood

“I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums / And dash’d the brains out…”

— MacBeth, Act I, scene VII

I have struggled with my own motherhood for years. It’s actually all I write about in my own fiction, and what I have learned from the psychology that accompanies the close study of one’s own writing is that I am terrified of becoming a monster and also perhaps it’s too late for me and I already am — but so are most mothers in this country, because of the impossible social structures from where we mother. Am I still a monster if everyone around me is also a monster? Is monstrosity relative?

Today’s episode of The Money with Katie Show explores so many things involving motherhood I don’t even know where to start, but the guest, Meagan Day, gave a book recommendation, Another World is Possible, which is about solutions to problems across the world, and while that sounds vague, she spoke specifically about Norway and how they fundamentally changed/eliminated the concept of the motherhood tax, or a motherhood wage penalty, by changing the culture profoundly through a financial solution — make it “financially irresistible” for dad’s to take paid parental leave (Papa Perm).

Trad wife culture and pronatalism suggest that motherhood is a moral imperative, a sacred duty that women must embrace with grace, gratitude, and good gorgeousness (is that a word?). But beneath the aesthetic of cottagecore aprons and soft-focus family portraits lies something more insidious: an economic strategy disguised as personal fulfillment. These ideologies romanticize unpaid labor while erasing the systemic conditions that make mothering in this country a near-impossible task: no universal childcare, no paid leave, no safety net. They don’t just celebrate motherhood; they conscript it. And in doing so, they shame women for struggling under the very weight society refuses to carry.

So clearly society is the monster! I mean, obviously. But just in time for Mother’s Day, the discussion on The Money with Katie Show is about fathers, and how fathers, men, need to be a more direct contributor to the family dynamic, and that will translate to the financial world as well — as long as the society supports and in fact demands it. Maybe I read into that, but the capitalist society under which we’re familiar in this culture is a macrocosm of “traditional” heteronormative family dynamic, though ironically, for our capitalist society to function, a single earner household doesn’t work! So capitalism is the monster.

I’m just going to say what I haven’t said yet, and is really the baby elephant in the room — the children are the monsters.