Musings on Motherhood
For a recent project at work, I found myself falling deep down the internet rabbit hole of “mommy bloggers”. This is a specific sect of bloggers whose identity is so tethered to motherhood, they have built a brand out of it. Their Instagram bios read something like “Wife. Mama of 3” or “Family of four and two fur babies Franklin and Simon.” (Mention of dogs contributes to the overall sense of domesticity they are trying to cultivate.) Some women go so far as creating Instagrams for their four year olds and tagging them in posts like food bloggers tag brands of crackers or indie olive oil.
So many of the blogs I see online, those run by women, are, at their core, mommy blogs. It’s not that all these accounts offer unsolicited parenting advice and they don’t necessarily designate a section for kid friendly recipes among those for the braised short ribs their husbands love or lasagna for a crowd. Rather, on these self-proclaimed lifestyle blogs, the women who run them predicate their lifestyles–and their identities–on motherhood. Even some of the most influential women, whose identity on the internet was born out of business or art or entrepreneurship, identify first with motherhood. Arielle Charnas, founder of the successful lifestyle blog, Something Navy, who has accumulated a following of over 1.3 million on Instagram for her sense of preppy-Scandinavian style, self identifies in her bio as “mom of 3. wife” first and “founder. cco'' second. Lauren Bush, the CEO and co-founder of FEED Projects, the impact driven lifestyle brand with a following of over 130 thousand, self-connotes as “mama” before citing herself as a social entrepreneur and hunger activist. Other female entrepreneurs who use their bios to call out their business are sure to keep photos of their children at the top of their grid in an overt celebration of motherhood and its aesthetic.
Mommy bloggers fall victim to the process of self objectification. When an individual treats themselves as objects to be viewed and evaluated based upon appearance. Mommy bloggers evaluate their success as mothers against the validation they receive for their particular brand of mothering which they showcase online.
However, the fact that many of these mommy bloggers have made livings out of their prolific posts showcasing Disney vacations and holidays spent in matching pajama sets, inherently suggests that motherhood alone is not enough for these women. That their need to seek community online, with other mothers, mostly, undermines the idea that mothers are totally and implicitly fulfilled in their role. That they feel isolated in their nucleus and are searching for a sense of connection elsewhere. And yet we continue to celebrate mothers online and elsewhere for fulfilling a purpose that may or may not have been of their own choosing.
It’s Mother’s Day and so these things have been on my mind. And this week we learned that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade as early as June, making it more difficult for women to choose a purpose and a path that isn’t motherhood. Nearly 1 in 4 women in the U.S. are expected to get an abortion at some point in their lives. Women of color will bear the brunt of further abortion restrictions. According to The Associated Press, Black and Hispanic women get abortions at higher rates than their peers. Women of color also experience higher poverty rates and could have a harder time traveling out of state for an abortion. Which is to say banning abortion doesn’t mean abortions won’t continue to take place. But rather that safe abortions will be harder to access, also disproportionately threatening the lives of women of color. The affects of overturning Roe v. Wade, stripping individuals of their rights to an abortion, are innumerable and devastating and continue to disproportionately affect marginalized groups, propagating already drastic disparities in wealth, health, class, and wellbeing even further.
Recently, on a postgrad trip to California with some of my friends from college, the issue of motherhood was brought up on a hike through Sequoia National Park. “I think motherhood is a woman’s highest purpose,” one of my friends said. What an interesting thing to say to a group of women right out of college who are so profoundly unsure of their purpose.
Who are we before we become mothers? And if we never become mothers, either by choice or by circumstance, are we condemned to an existence searching for a sense of identity, searching for purpose, that we will never otherwise find?
In my early 20s, trying to figure out who I want to become, motherhood isn’t the end goal. I think we struggle when we are young to find our purpose because purpose is meant to be nuanced. Finding purpose is not as easy as having children. Even mommy bloggers are searching for something beyond the identity which gave them a platform to begin with. In December, the New York Times Magazine published an essay titled “The Abortion I Didn’t Have”. “I couldn’t consider abortion or adoption, but the weird thing is I also couldn’t consider having a baby. I never decided; I never chose.” Who we are and who we become, if or if not mothers, should be a choice that everyone is entitled to. And how I wish to live in a world where this choice is protected equally and unequivocally.
Sharing some resources about the impact of overturning Roe v. Wade and how to help below.
https://www.guttmacher.org/abortion-rights-supreme-court
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html