How Dare Anyone Struggle With Having Young Children?
Chappell Roan said something normal about motherhood on Call Your Daddy and naturally, no one took it well.
Chappell Roan’s comments about her friends who are mothers frequently being miserable have gone… off the rails, in the public discourse. Those reading this without context may be asking such questions as “what did she say? what did she say?” Well, gentle reader, it was this:
“All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who’s happy and has children at this age … I’ve literally not met anyone who’s happy, anyone who has light in their eyes, who has slept.”
…..Okay. What’s the big deal here?
While I do not think Chappell Roan is very good at PR (I’m sorry. I love her. She’s just not.), as someone who deeply wants children and craves motherhood, I do think this is… a true statement that basically any 27-year-old would agree with. Having young kids is hellish. That’s not a secret.
I’ve always wanted children. This is not a very standard experience, from the conversations I’ve had with friends, but I have always craved raising, mentoring, supporting a family of my own. Getting the chance to watch them grow sounds like a joy.
What doesn’t sound like a joy is handling so much of the actual work that comes with parenting, with little to no societal support. The United States famously has some of the worst parenting leave policies among high-income countries — and in fact, is one of the only high-income countries that requires no paid leave. From Gretchen Livingston and Deja Thomas for Pew Research Center:
U.S. families also often lack an outlet or second setting for kids to go to. According to the Department of Labor, U.S. families spend between 8.9% and 16.0% of their median income on full-day care for just one child, with annual prices ranging from $6,552 to $15,600 in 2022.
Why is this? Because while wealthy nations contribute an average of $14,000 per year for each toddler’s care, the U.S. spends only $500.
The spending leads to a much better system. From Claire Cain Miller for the New York Times:
“Typical 2-year-olds in Denmark attend child care during the day, where they are guaranteed a spot, and their parents pay no more than 25 percent of the cost. That guaranteed spot will remain until the children are in after-school care at age 10.”
Imagine the joys of motherhood! In the U.S., many parents in big cities famously have to fight for daycare spots. If one parent isn’t working, there isn’t typically enough money for daycare, so the child stays at home — meaning no breaks at all for young mothers, even those that don’t work. Many young families rely on older family members to provide care. But what if those family members aren’t nearby? What if they’re not able to provide care? Choices about when and where and how to work as a parent are currently predicated on the needs of a society not built for mothers — or, frankly, parents in general.
And also notably, many parents, even both-working ones, are not splitting things equally — and mothers, even working ones, are still bearing the brunt. Amrita Vijay and Andrew Stephens wrote for Substack Emergency Contacts about what 50% parenting would actually look like, and it’s not quite what you’d expect:
“In a study where researchers examined time spent on household labor versus what each couple self-reported, they found that BOTH men and women felt that they had achieved an equal division of labor when the man did 35% of the work, and the woman did ~65%. If a man did more than 35% of the work, both parties reported that he did the majority of the labor.”
So in order to actually split domestic labor 50-50, we need to move past where the couple both think it’s 50-50. Maybe your man is willing to do what he thinks is 50%, but is your man willing to do what he thinks is 65%? Not necessarily.
The state of raising children in the U.S., then, as a 27 year old, sounds like exactly what Chappell Roan said it is — hell. So why is it, then, that my Instagram feed is taken over by people who seem to have become convinced she actually said that children are demons and she hates them?
E.J. Dickson wrote for The Cut about the intensity of the backlash to Roan’s really, fairly standard observation:
“Recently, there’s been a cultural shift from acknowledging the realities of motherhood to papering over them. During the early 2000s and 2010s, there was nothing particularly subversive about going online and proclaiming that being a mom is really hard. In fact, it was pretty much par for the course among both liberals and conservatives alike… Now, if you spend a lot of time on the internet, where our feeds have filled up with images of willowy blonde housewives nuzzling their infants’ heads, it’s hard not to feel like there’s a concerted effort to downplay the difficulties of motherhood in favor of promoting its rewards.
Not only do women now have less say in how or when they choose to have children in the first place, they also have to pretend to enjoy every second of it, or risk being labeled deficient. It’s not just that Chappell Roan is right — every mother of young kids knows she is. What’s changed is that now, they’re under immense pressure to pretend she is wrong.”
We’ve entered a very deep tradwife culture. To act as if having kids is anything but the world’s deepest magic is now blase. Which is, frankly, very odd. No one has kids expecting it to be a joyful experience every second; people have children because they expect the joy and fulfillment to outweigh the pain. What is wrong with saying, frankly and firmly, that you may like kids fine but you don’t want the pain?
It’s only wrong if you see women as defined by their need for motherhood.
As Sara Petersen argued well in their Substack, the idealized mother has become an image, moreso than an individual woman who has made her individual choices. In an ideal world, we don’t see having or not having kids as meaning liking or not liking children; plenty of people love kids and want none of their own. We won’t see working or not working or working part-time or working for a few years as stating some gendered message; we’ll only see them as choices.
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