Jessica Grose Wants Moms to Stop Feeling Guilty
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American motherhood is a strange thing. The United States both obsesses over mothers—we are the country that made family values into a catchphrase, after all,—and denigrates them. The country consistently ranks at the bottom of developed nations in terms of maternal health and benefits like family and parental leave. Millions of American women live underneath this paradox, and the whiplash it induces can often make the already difficult job of parenting feel unbearable.
Jessica Grose has been covering all these contradictions for years as an opinion writer at The New York Times and in her popular newsletter on parenting for the paper. In her latest book, Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood, Grose outlines how this came to be in America and, crucially, offers real solutions to the current crisis. Parenting has only become more difficult post-pandemic, and Grose’s book is both a validation of what so many parents are feeling and a lifeline of support, mapping a possible way out of the crisis, if we choose to take it. Here, she speaks to BAZAAR.com about motherhood, a more expansive vision of pro-choice politics, and the trap of believing in a “natural” version of parenting.
Both political parties in the United States talk often about wanting to support families and have a lot to say about mothers. And yet, the actual policies you outline in the book that could really help families and mothers never seem to come to fruition. Why is this there that disconnect?
Okay, so there's a number of things. One, it is extremely expensive. To provide high-quality childcare costs a lot of money, and there's no political sugarcoating around that. It's expensive, as it should be, because it is skilled work; it is hard work. The people who provide it deserve to be paid a good wage. And so, you can't massage that into a message about no new taxes. It will require money. If we don't raise taxes, it will require taking money from other things and saying this is actually a priority, and nobody wants to do that. So that's number one.
Number two, there are extremely conservative Republicans who believe that women should not be working outside the home and their only role should be as mothers and caregivers, and they should be domestically oriented 24/7. They are, population-wise, a minority in this country who believe that and yet they have outsized political control. So the people who are in that pocket will never agree to support any of this, because in their minds, the father is the head of the household. He should be supporting. Anything that would subvert a patriarch leading a family is un-American to them and their definition of what America looks like and what America should be. Statistically speaking, I want to say at most it's 20 percent (of the voting public), but their desires and beliefs control so much, especially federally speaking.
Third, I think a lot of people once they're out of needing childcare are not animated by it politically. And that saddens me, because it's a national good that kids are in positive high-quality care. If I knew how to make more people believe that, I would be a very happy person.
When you have these big problems, they always have multiple causes and reasons why they're not getting fixed. But honestly, at the end of the day, it is expensive. You cannot sugarcoat that. It should be expensive. Some things cost money and they should, because we want them to be high quality. I don't want the Shein version of childcare. I want the well-constructed, expensive version of childcare. For everyone, not just for wealthy people.
There seems to be an amnesia around mothering, particularly of small children. It seems to be a real challenge to changing things.
Part of it is a lot of "I went through it and it was hard and you should have to go through it, too, because it's good for you to do." I don't even understand that sort of mindset. Why wouldn't you want to make it easier than it had necessarily been for yourself?
Part of our conception of being a good mother is feeling guilty and martyring yourself. And so, as long as that's part of the package of how we define good mothering, we are never going to move away from these ideas, because it's almost like we think that we should suffer, and if we're not suffering, we're not doing a good job. And if we don't feel bad, we're not doing a good job. Those ideas are so deeply, deeply baked into all of our experiences as much as we want to get away from them.
It's funny, in talking about this book and trying to give advice, it makes it seem like I have it figured out, which I do not. I feel guilty constantly. But what I think the process of writing the book has done for me is whenever I do feel bad about something, I can take a beat and be like, "Okay, why do you feel bad about this? Do you feel bad about this, because you're falling short of a positive value that you have and something that you want to teach your kids or do for your kids? Or do you feel guilty because of bullshit cultural ideas that you don't even believe in yourself?"
I think just even being aware of these pressures that have nothing to do with you as an individual or your relationship with your kids is helpful. I think that's one thing you can do on an individual level. But again, part of the big takeaway of the book is we have made all of these problems individual problems, and they are not problems that individuals can solve in any satisfying way.
So much of the talk around the “best” version of motherhood is this idea of “natural” motherhood. It appeals to people across the political spectrum—that there’s some “natural” way to give birth, take care of babies, raise children, and we only have to “get back” to that.
It's seductive, because who wouldn't want this beautiful bonded experience with your babies? I mean, it looks beautiful, it looks full of ease. It is a wonderful vision. Who wouldn't want it to feel like, “Oh, this is as natural as walking across the street and as easy, and this is what I was built to do; this is what I was born to do.” Of course, that sounds delightful. Sign me up.
But I think a lot of the time that the “natural” way is conveniently the way that is the most time-consuming and difficult for mothers. That goes back to the martyring and suffering that we think that we deserve in some kind of twisted way because of all of these centuries of ideals. And goes back thousands of years to Judeo-Christian ideas of women and mothers, and that we are supposed to suffer and all that. So it's very deeply baked into our ideas.
A huge part of modern motherhood is about performance.
You're doing a dual performance, right? Because you're performing in public, you're out in the streets, looking a certain way or your kids are acting a certain way, and you will have public in-person feedback about that. But then, there's also the social media performance, which is new. And it's obviously not mandatory, but I also think it's reductive and silly when people are like, “Well, just get off social media.” I mean, that's how most people connect and keep up with each other in the year 2022. So asking them to do that, that's not helpful.
I found it very moving, talking to a lot of women who had really difficult experiences through their motherhood journeys. Either their kids were in the NICU for a long time, or they had multiple losses and their in-person connections could not understand that specific experience, because it was so isolating and it was so sad. And they actually needed practical support and information (from social media) that people who had not gone through it would not have.
But in terms of the performance—what was really fascinating to me in the pregnancy chapter was I thought the pandemic would be all negative for people in terms of their experience of pregnancy and birth. And multiple people said, "Actually, no, it was a relief to not have to perform feeling good all the time in public." Many people do not feel great when they're pregnant, whether it's morning sickness, whether it's just being exhausted. The public expectation when you are out and about as a pregnant person is that you're going to be glowing and cheerful. And not just having to do that was really a relief. And a lot of people didn't even realize that it was a stress on them until they didn't have to do it anymore.
And I don't mean to say that in a way, pregnant women should never go outside. No, that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm more saying we should recognize that that is kind of a stressor on people, that they will get feedback from strangers.
In terms of the future of American motherhood … there’s hysteria in certain corners about the falling birth rate and the number of women choosing not to become mothers.
No one should have children that they don't want to have. Just full stop. However, I do think, and this is from a reproductive justice framework, not being able to feel that you could support the children that you would like to have … that's not freedom to me. Reproductive freedom would be able to have the number of children you deeply want to have.
And so, I feel like something that's under-discussed is that there's a lot of polling about how people who are already mothers are having fewer children than they would like to have, because they can't afford to have more children.
And so, that to me is an area that should be better supported by policy. It's funny, it's almost where it's like I feel like I agree with these super-right-wing policies. Obviously, we don't agree about much, but I think people should be able to have the number of children they would like to have.
It feels too fantastical to think that people who are coming at it from totally different viewpoints could get something done, but it's like, "Could we get something done?" Because I think a lot of progressive people would agree that people not having the number of children that they would like to have and that they have the love to give and the emotional wherewithal to support … that's sad to me.
And, yes, of course, climate is an issue. Let's put that aside. Everybody should be mindful of the impacts of future generations on the planet. However, if people are saying, “I want a second child, I would like a third child and I'm not having those children, because I can't afford it,” that to me is not reproductive freedom.
Whenever I see anyone who's wringing their hands about a falling birth rate, it's like, "Yeah, why would you want to (have children)?" It's totally just logical. You're making it way harder than it needs to be for 95 percent of people. You have to be so wealthy in this country to not be worried about the cost of education, health care, all of those things for your generation. You have to be in the top 5 percent of the income bracket to not be worried about those things for your offspring. And that does not seem good for society.
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