Motherhood does not define me. There, I’ve said it. I love my daughter dearly. She brought new worlds and concepts into my life that I would never have discovered without being a parent; but it was not a natural role for me. I never came to a point where I thought it was easy because every time I got the hang of it, she got bigger, older, changed, so that it was like learning the rules all over again. Parenting is like dating someone who changes every few months, but you’ve already married them, so you just have to figure it out as you go. You can buy all the parenting books you want, nothing prepares you for the reality of having a tiny human-being dependent on you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. It was, and is, the most overwhelming and challenging task I have ever attempted. My daughter is in college now, in the dorms. Other mothers I know bemoaned their empty nest but I was ready for less hands on parenting. She’s twenty, and I’m thrilled that she is starting her own adventures out in the larger world. I’m a little terrified at the thought of her being out there on her own, but mostly I’m just excited that we raised her to legal adulthood.
I know I would be a different person if I had not had a child, and since I like who I am, I’m happy with what I discovered of myself and learned along the way. But I’m here today to strike a blow against this ideal: that women are defined by motherhood and that not having a child makes any woman one bit less a woman. That’s bullshit. If a woman chooses not to have a child, that is her choice, let her make it, leave her alone about it. Stop asking women in their twenties, thirties, or Gods forbid, forties, when they are going to have children. First of all, unless that’s your uterus walking around in that woman’s body, it’s none of your business. Second, why should you care if this other woman has a child? Because it’s almost always women who do this type of bullying. Yes, I said it, bullying. I saw it as bullying when I was in my twenties and early thirties, married for years and had no children but was constantly being asked, when, why not, why don’t I have children yet? Strangers would ask me this – constantly.
I finally started answering, “I’m concentrating on my career.”
They said, “What if you wait too long and then you can’t have children?”
I said, “Then I won’t have children.”
They never seemed to like that answer.
My first husband and I were married for ten years before we had the house with a room for a nursery. I felt that I had had enough therapy so that I had dealt with the worst of my childhood demons and wouldn’t share them with our daughter. I stopped using birth control and within three months of trying we were pregnant. Let me add that I had a terrible pregnancy, like my mother before me, and was very ill. I was in and out of the hospital trying to keep our baby inside long enough to be born and survive. I did not glow. I did not enjoy the process of producing an entire human being inside my body. There were very few Hallmark moments during my pregnancy. If you decide to get pregnant, please do not go into it thinking that it will all be cute booties and wonderful moments of ever growing closeness with your spouse or domestic partner. Check out how well your own mother handled pregnancy and that may give you an idea if it’s going to be “normal” or exciting like mine was, trust me, an exciting pregnancy is not what you want.
Was it worth it to get our daughter? Yes, hell yes. Do I regret having her? Not for a minute. But I did not make being a mother the end all, be all, of my life. Her father helped make her, so I made sure he helped me take care of her. At one point in my pregnancy when he’d done something that made me doubt he was understanding that I saw parenting as a shared event, I told him this, “If you make me raise this baby as if I’m a single parent, I will be.” Never argue with the pregnant woman who is puking her guts up trying to bring your child into the world. I stood my ground and made him help me as much as possible. One, because that seemed fair to me, and two, because I had books to write, stories to tell. I’d wanted to be a writer since I was fourteen-years-old. I’d only wanted to be a mother since my early twenties. I was never one of those people who defined myself by marriage and children. I’d never planned on marrying. I was a writer. By the time our daughter was born I had six novels and numerous short stories published. She’ll turn twenty-one this year and I am planning the tour for my thirty-eighth novel.
My editor at that time worried when she found out I was pregnant. She thought it would make me soft, lose me my edge. My first novel written after her birth had the highest kill count of anything I’d ever written. Motherhood didn’t make me soft, it made me fierce. It made me more committed, determined to succeed. It made me cranky when our daughter was very small, because lack of sleep will do that to you. Even with my now ex-husband dividing up the newborn caregiving it was beyond exhausting. My hat is off to all new parents because it was the hardest stage of parenting for me. It just gets better after that.
Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are expecting their first child together. Amanda is a wonderful musician, singer, bard, and recently, writer of her very own book. Neil is an amazing writer of novels, children’s books, comics, screen plays, pretty much if it can be written he’s done it and done it well. They posted a lovely photo of Amanda and a female fan promptly commented to Amanda that she had ruined her career as an artist.
First, the fan hit Amanda in the fears of many female artists when they decide to have a family. Will children take all my creativity and time? Will my art die? Will I change so much that I can’t write, or sing, or paint? I said publicly on Twitter that all that is bullshit. I’ve written short stories and thirty-one novels since my daughter was born. Having a child didn’t make me less of who I am anymore than marriage did. You remain yourself no matter who you bring into your life, even if it’s a whole new human-being. I understand the fears though, but I do not understand the other woman telling Amanda such hurtful lies, because I’m proof that they are lies. You don’t have to give up your life to be a mother, and before someone says it, no I did not have a nanny for my child. When she was born I couldn’t have afforded it and I also decided that I wanted to be the main input on our child, not a stranger that I paid, but that was my choice later on, when she was born it was just my ex and me to do it all. I would take her to childcare first for a couple of hours a day, and then gradually longer, but I learned to write in McDonald’s play lands while she explored the kiddie hamster trail. I wrote anytime she slept. Her naps were my chance to do a few pages. I handed our baby to my husband at the door when he came home from work and then vanished into my office. (This may have contributed to our eventual divorce.) I wrote on the kitchen table with the baby in a pumpkin seat beside my portable computer. If you are not determined and driven you can combine parenting and a career as an artist.
I believe that Amanda Palmer is driven and determined. She also has Neil Gaiman, her husband, in her corner to help. I had some help from my ex-husband, but when I married a second time I found even more help in Jonathon. He took care of her when she was sick more than I did so I could make my deadlines. He picked her up from school more often and he brought his wonderful mother and step-father into our lives so that by the time our daughter was seven, or eight, they were grandma and grandpa. One of the best things I ever did was offer his mother a chance to be a full-time grandma. I had more help as our daughter headed into double digits than I ever had before. It’s only now as Jonathon has more empty nest syndrome than I do, that I realize how much I pushed my new husband into the deep end of the parenting pool. He was twenty-five and had never been married and I just excepted him to step up. He did, but it’s only now that I realize how hard it must have been on him as an only child to suddenly be a dad. I have faith that Neil and Amanda will step up for each other as artists and parents and as a couple. It can be done, and done well, it just does take effort, planning, compromise, and a determination to make it all work. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t mix art and babies because that’s just not true.
But one thing that is strangely absent in the whole online furor about whether Amanda can be her artistic self and a mother is that no one has raised the same doubts about Neil. Yes, the woman carries the baby in her body, and the man can’t do that, but why is it assumed that the woman will sacrifice her career for parenthood but the man doesn’t have to?
I am the main breadwinner for my family, but I have had people ask me already if I’m going to be a full time grandmother and help my daughter raise her kids when the time comes. I say, no, and they look at me strangely. They have never asked the same question of my husband. I plan to do what most successful writers do: die when I’m old and gray, still typing away at my keyboard trying to tell that one last story. I expect Neil Gaiman will do the same, but I’m willing to bet that no one has asked him if he’s going to quit writing and become a full time grandpa and help raise his grandchildren, just as no one thinks a new baby will end his career.
If you want to stay home and be the primary parent for your children, then do it. If it makes you happy and you can afford it, then do that, whether you’re a man, or a woman, but please stop assuming that because we are women that it’s automatically our job to sacrifice everything for diaper duty.
