By every metric the researchers examined, parents lag behind their childless peers, but mothers are affected far more adversely. The numbers don’t lie—not exactly. There is an obvious correlation between having children and the death of what could otherwise have been an uninterrupted, ambitious academic career.
Childbirth trauma is a major public health issue in the United States, as well as globally, with up to one third of mothers1 describing their birth experiences as traumatic, and up to 20 percent reporting clinically significant symptoms of PTSD, though the number is likely higher given the prevalence of underreporting, misdiagnosis, and an absence of routine screening protocols and any formal diagnosis.
ow do modern-day moms really feel? It’s a question almost no one in positions of cultural power actually takes the time to ask. We hear endless talk about closing the “gender pay gap,” designing workplace policies to shove mothers back into offices, and celebrating women who “do it all.” But when was the last time anyone paused, looked a mother in the eye, and listened to how she feels about the relentless messaging that motherhood is somehow lesser?
Maternal instinct, or any instinct really, is biological and automatic- Maternal intuition, on the other hand, is different. Intuition comes from experience, memory, and attention. It’s developed over time, and allows mothers to read and respond to a given situation without having to take the time to reason through options. But at some point in history, in conjunction with industrialization, advances in childhood technologies, and the institutionalization of childhood, intuition in large part ceased to be passed down.
The line that feminists neglected motherhood has become the standard entry point for arguments about why feminists shouldn’t neglect motherhood now. Yet mid-to-late twentieth-century feminist work on motherhood and mothering is rich and complex. To view it as failed or inadequate because other feminisms and other priorities became dominant risks replicating the matrophobic dynamics this feminism sought to challenge
The hard truth about breadwinning wives and masculinity is this: society has changed, but our expectations of men have not fully caught up. Men still feel pressure to provide. Women still tend to prefer higher-earning men. And couples still navigate outdated assumptions baked into modern relationships.
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