If Motherhood is So Great, Why Does it Feel So Hard?
Could it be the anti-woman/anti-mom policies and laws, combined with social pressures and expectations?
I thought this piece would be easy to write, but it wasn’t. I wrote an essay a few weeks ago about the things I hate about motherhood. It resulted in some really unsurprising blowback. People telling me I was a bad mom, ungrateful, and selfish, among other things. Most was off substack, since it was a paid essay here. But it got me asking myself the question, “if motherhood is so great, why does it feel so hard?”
That question led to this epic essay, which honestly could have been twice as long and I edited down as much as I could. But it did involve hours and hours of research, as well as writing, to ensure I got all of my facts right and that I was presenting this with as much clarity, honesty, and truth as I could.
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If you believe the conservative politicians, Christian nationalists, and the tradwives of instagram, being a mom in America is great. Not just great, in fact, but that the role of mothers in our society is one of enormous importance and merit.
JD Vance has even gone as far to say that women (not men, just women) who do not have children are a drain on the country and have no real value. His famous “childless cat lady” quote includes the charming idea that women who are childless are deeply unhappy because they opted not to do the one thing that gives women’s lives meaning — having children.1
And yet, as a mom in America, it doesn’t feel to me like those beliefs have any basis in reality. It’s propaganda at best and gaslighting teetering into oppression at worst. And none of it is supported by the real experiences of moms all across this country, as well as the policies or lack thereof that exist in regards to motherhood.
And it had me asking myself the question, if motherhood is so great, why does almost everything I experience as a mom, tell me a different story?
For example, if motherhood is so great, why is it so expensive to give birth?
According to Forbes, it costs on average $18,000 to give birth in a hospital in America. Now, if you happen to have insurance, that knocks down the out of pocket cost to an average of $2800 — although the actual cost depends on the state where you give birth. Even with insurance, $2800 isn’t pocket change. 2
So, why isn’t giving birth fully covered by insurance? Oh and these costs are the same whether or not the pregnant person gives birth to a live baby or has the profound misfortune to experience a loss. Imagine getting a bill from the hospital after giving birth but not coming home with a baby.
None of this seems like a system designed to support mothers. In fact, our for-profit health care system seems like it exists to punish mothers, not make it easier for them to grow their families.
Speaking of giving birth, if motherhood is so great, why is the maternal mortality rate so incredibly high in the US, especially when compared to other high-income countries?
In the United States, 22 out of 100,000 women die from childbirth-related complications, 80% of which are preventable. That might seem low, until you notice that the country with the next highest maternal mortality rate is Chile, with 14 maternal deaths per 100,000. On the low end, Norway sits at 0 deaths per 100,00.
Also, 22 maternal deaths is an average of all people who give birth in the US, but when you separate out black women, you’re looking at nearly 50 maternal deaths out of 100,000 live births. That is staggering.
Many things lead to these shockingly high numbers: lack of paid maternity leave, lack of postpartum support, health care deserts that make it hard for women to seek help if they need it postpartum, gaps in health care coverage postpartum, and blatant medical racism.3
And if motherhood is so great, why is postpartum support so minimal? Why is a 6-week check-up considered to be enough?
I had 3 home births, which is a story for another time. My midwives stayed with me for hours after I gave birth, checking my vitals as well as helping me get into the shower and eat.
They checked on me 24 hours later and 48hrs after that. I got an in-home visit at the end of my first week and 2 weeks postpartum, as well. I also had a 6-week check up, but was in regular communication with my midwife and doula for my first birth during those first few weeks and months.
Yes, I paid for these services — out of pocket since my health insurance didn’t cover midwifery care. But it cost about the same as if I’d given birth in a hospital, after insurance.
While I am grateful I had the privilege to seek out these services, why is midwifery care not integrated into the US health care system? Could it be because these are services that primarily support the health of the mother postpartum and not the infant?
Also, a 6-week check up is utterly insufficient for postpartum health and well being — which is why I point to the midwifery model of care. This model of care centers the experience of the person who gave birth, not just the baby, and generally includes more frequent check-ins with mom postpartum.
It could also include lactation support and postpartum doulas who give the birthing parent opportunities to rest instead of constant infant care. It could include check-ups throughout the entire 4th trimester and beyond, to ensure that mom is healing the way her body should and giving her the care she needs, physical or mental. This approach could also be worked into the more standard medical model and it would likely save lives. 4
I’ll add that all parents deserve guaranteed paid postpartum leave, which is something not available universally in this country.
But it’s clear why this doesn’t exist. First of all, it’s because republicans don’t want women to go back to work after giving birth. The expectation is that women should stop working and stay home to raise their children.
It’s the same reason that universal child care isn’t a thing.
The problem is that our country actually needs women in the workforce.
So the lack of these vital services — guaranteed paid leave postpartum and universal, affordable childcare — is a reflection on how little this country values the work women do, both paid and unpaid.
It’s an utterly undisguised form punishment to the women who go back to work postpartum, by choice or otherwise.
If motherhood is so great, why did republicans vote against a bill that would have offered federal protection for IVF (in vitro fertilization), as well as requiring it to be covered by health insurance?
All but 2 republicans blocked this bill not just once, but twice. Which should be surprising to me, given that at the debate on Tuesday, JD Vance tried to rebrand the republican party as pro-family. Except that the “pro-family” party is only pro-certain-types-of-families.
I wonder why the “pro-family” party would not want people to grow their families? That’s a head scratcher.
If motherhood is so great, why are doctors refusing to care for women who are miscarrying? Why are women bleeding out in parking lots? Why are women dying of sepsis and organ failure when they have treatable medical emergencies?
A few names: Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28 year old mom, died because the ER in Georgia refused to give her medical care for over 20 hours until she was suffering from organ failure and sepsis. By the time they decided to operate, it was too late and now, her 6 year old son will grow up without his mother.
Candi Miller, a 41 year old mom of 3 children, died because she was too afraid to go to the ER “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” Although she was told not to get pregnant again because her health was fragile and another pregnancy would be dangerous, birth control is not 100% effective. Post-Dobbs, she was not able to get the medical care she needed. Her 3 children will now grow up without their mother.
Amanda Zurawski was told that her pregnancy was not viable, but since she lived in Texas, she could not get an abortion. She was told to wait until her body “naturally miscarried”, which carries a higher risk of infection and danger for the pregnant person.
A few days later, she did get an infection, which led to septic shock, which led to scarring on her uterus and fallopian tubes — all of which has made the likelihood of Zurawski getting pregnant again, very low.
And then there’s Deborah Dorbert, who carried her pregnancy to term, despite being told by doctors that her baby would not survive for long out of the womb. She lives in Florida and despite this diagnosis, doctors refused to induce labor early so she could end the pregnancy and spare her newborn a few horrible moments of gasping for breath before dying. Not to mention, spare Dorbert the utter trauma of carrying and delivering a baby she knew would die in her arms.
After she did eventually give birth, Dorbert describes retreating from motherhood from the sheer pain and grief of loss. Her marriage suffered. And she doesn’t want to go through another pregnancy.
Can you imagine why not?
And before anyone jumps in saying that these cases are few and far between, they are not. These are just among the many stories you can easily find in a google search.
Does this sound to you like a country or a culture that cares about mothers?
To bring it closer to home, I asked moms who read my substack as well as a few friends to offer their own response to the open ended question, “if motherhood is so great, why_________________?”
And their responses were incredible.
Brianna asked, “If motherhood is so great, why I am in perpetual burnout?”
Great question, Brianna. I wonder the same thing.
Could it be because I am constantly trying to feed my kids food they don’t want to eat, even if it’s food they’ve happily eaten before?
Could it be because I spent 7 nights in a row sleeping on the floor of my son’s room because he kept waking up in pain from his broken collarbone and didn’t want to be alone, but that also means I am exhausted during the day when I am trying to teach and write and take care of myself?
Could it be that even when I do make time for myself, I always feel like I have to play catch up for that time I took that was just for me?
Could it be that even though my husband is around and works really hard to take things off my plate, he doesn’t typically make our kids breakfast, pack their lunches, or make dinner?
He doesn’t usually go grocery shopping, do the laundry, start the dishwasher, walk the dog, deal with scheduling doctors appointments, sign permission slips, email teachers, order our kids monthly medicine or deal with the online pharmacy when things go wrong. That’s just the short list. Could that be leading to my burnout?
Even the queen of the tradwives, Hannah Neeleman herself, succumbs to burnout and exhaustion, occasionally resting for an entire week in bed, according to her husband — who seemed to use it as a way to demonstrate how great of a dad he is.5
But maybe a more balanced parenthood equation would have both parents exhausted, because parenting is hard. But not fully burned out 24/7.
Just a thought.
We could easily add onto this question, “If motherhood is so great, why are moms so stressed?”
The question of whether or not moms are stressed isn’t actually up for debate, nor is it just “those moms.” The US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, issued an urgent public health advisory regarding the impact of stress on parents.
In an interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR, Murthy said, “As I dug into the data, I found that 48% of parents - nearly half of them - say that most days, they feel completely overwhelmed by stress. That's an extraordinary number. And I also found that parents are struggling with loneliness at disproportionately higher levels, particularly single parents, more than three-quarters of whom report feeling lonely. This has really important implications for the mental health of parents, which we now know, in turn, affects the mental health of kids.”6
Why are we stressed? Same reasons as burnout plus so many other things that are often out of our control.
I worry that I don’t spend enough time with my kids, even though I try to make extra special time with them all of the time. I worry that I work too much when they are home, even though I try to get it all done when they’re at school and in turn, I feel like I’m not giving them enough attention. Which almost feels silly to write out after I just spent 10 minutes painting my 5 year old’s nails and my older 2 are happily camped out in front of the TV watching Gravity Falls.
But I still feel it.
I worry that my occasional vocal outbursts, from frustration or rage, will actually do them lasting harm. That they’ll think because I got angry, I don’t love them as much — even though I am the queen of repair and always apologize when I yell or say unkind things.
I worry about what happens to them when they’re not with me. Mean kids, bullies, peer pressure to do things they don’t want to do.
I worry about sending my kids to school knowing that I can’t protect them from another kid or adult who shows up with an automatic rifle and unchecked rage.
I worry about so many things and the stress multiplies and I while I love my kids, I hate the stress that comes with being responsible for them, sharing my life with them, and loving them.
Alison, a mom and a grandma, asks, “If motherhood is so great, why do I feel like my happiness depends on the happiness of the little creatures (now big creatures) that I spawned?”
It’s the flip of that common saying, “if mom’s not happy, no one is happy,” and it feels just as true.
She continues to say that she feels it now, even as her children are young adults with children of their own. And even though my kids are still young, I get that. I know that my own parents just want me to be happy and healthy and safe. At different times in my life, I could tell that my unhappiness weighed on them, even though I was adult.
I think this gets into a bigger issue of moms always being defined by being a mom, first and foremost. It’s an identity that is inescapable — it is always a part of who we are and yet many moms (at least all of the ones I’ve talked to about this), don’t want to only be known as “mom.”
We want to be more than mom, but especially when they’re little, our entire lives revolve around our kids. Which is normal and sometimes necessary, but also sometimes suffocating and difficult.
Several moms asked variations of this question, “If motherhood is so great, why don’t dads want to do it? Why do they think it’s not legitimate, full-time work?”
I often wonder if moms were paid an actual salary per child, if and how that might change the way we approach parenting. And maybe if we did, more dads would take it seriously and want to do it in the way moms usually do.
Because I think the underlying issue here is that the expectation is that mom will do all of the hard things, the boring things, the emotionally draining things, in addition to the household things, and dad will contribute when he’s willing.
Are some dads are more involved and it’s a more equitable parenting partnership? Absolutely. That’s just less standard.
For me, it’s not that my husband is unwilling. He does a lot. But I do more.
No, it’s not a contest. I’m not keeping a mental tally. But he also just doesn’t even think to do certain things, doesn’t want to do certain things — but someone has to do them. And that someone is me.
People will jump in and say, “well, just ask him.” And I have, but thank you for that super helpful advice.
What would be more helpful is if he thought of those things himself. If I didn’t have to spend the mental energy to ask him to do all of the little things I do that keep our family just barely functioning.
This is both the mental load piece AND the assumed “default parent” piece.
One parent, almost always mom, is constantly keeping a running list of all of the things that need to get done — for the kids, for the house, for additional paid work, and even for herself, if she’s lucky.
It’s almost more work to take things off the list and hand them to her spouse to reduce her mental load, as well as actual tasks. It would be a lot easier if she was not the only one with that running list.
You can probably see why more dads don’t want to do “motherhood” but I can give you a few more reasons.
Dawn asked, “If motherhood is so great, why is being a mother to sit in a place of constant judgement from everyone?”
What a fantastic question that I do not have a good answer to.
Moms can do nothing right in the eyes of the world. It’s like the speech America Ferrera’s character in Barbie gives about women, just replace the word “woman” with “mom.” And change a few details.
Everyone has an opinion about what it means to be a good mom.
The tradwife version requires homemade meals 3 times a day, subservience to husband, boatloads of self-sacrifice, and the notion that being a mother is the absolute best thing in the entire world.
The gentle parent version requires validating emotions, leading with empathy, avoiding yelling, and having the ability to regulate your own emotions when your child is fully unhinged.
There is no ultimate way to be a good mom, but everyone from parenting experts to republicans in congress has an opinion about it. And not only can it feel impossible to live up to those external standards, but it’s also hard to live up to your own expectations.
Moms can’t win.
This leads right into a question I have which is, “If motherhood is so great, why are people silencing our stories?”
Whenever women, including me, talk about how hard motherhood is or how sometimes we hate it, we’re met with vitriol and shaming.
On a small scale, this often looks like publicly calling us bad moms for “complaining” about the challenges we face, both mundane daily stuff that drives us nuts and the less typical, but utterly daunting experiences that make us feel powerless as parents.
But in the age of social media and being chronically online, I could see comments like this being used against a mom in a more serious setting. A legal setting, for example.
And that’s really scary.
If you read the book, The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, you can easily see where this leads. And it’s a dark, terrifying place.
One of my friends suggested that “If motherhood is so great, why is parenthood used as propaganda?” And that has given me pause.
Certain factions in this country are trying to make motherhood sound great, but are doing absolutely nothing to actually support mothers.
If you have to spend a lot of time convincing people that something is good, maybe you’re actually covering up the fact that you know it’s not.
To be clear, it’s not that I think being a mom is a bad thing. I love my kids. Unlike what some folks would like you to believe, I think it’s possible to absolutely adore your kids and also completely despise some of the circumstances of your life that exist because of them. Multiple things can be true.
But you cannot say that you value moms and the important work moms do, when the way that moms are treated, through policy and law, as well as cultural norms and expectations, is not great.
And you do nothing to change them.
If we want to create change, we need to start by listening to moms. We need to create the circumstances which make motherhood feel less restrictive and more supported.
This will take massive work.
This requires an absolute sea change in how we treat moms and motherhood, but I do believe it’s possible.
*******
Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear what you think would help moms and make motherhood less hard in the comments.
If you want some satire about this exact issue, please read ’s satirical piece on her substack — I didn’t read it until I was finishing edits for this essay, but it had me laugh/crying. Read it here.
An exhausting video of clips of JD Vance talking about women. Watch at your own risk.
Article from Forbes detailing hospital costs as well as postpartum costs of having a baby in all 50 states.
This article in US News is about a study done in 2022 comparing maternal mortality rates across wealthy nations, as well as the reasons why the US maternal mortality rate is so high.
This is the article, written for The Times (a UK based publication) by Megan Agnew. Daniel Neeleman is quoted saying, Hannah is sometimes “so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.”
Wonderful article! The other day, when I was “complaining” about something to my husband, he asked “well, do you regret being a stay-at-home mother?” Absolutely not. But when I made that choice 14 years ago, I had the expectation that I could return to work when the kids were in school…but, life had other plans. Now I’m homeschooling 2 autistic kids, ages 14 and 6.
The load of “motherhood” is so much more when the children have extra needs. The “mom” cloak that I wear seems that much heavier.
THIS EXACTLY! I agree with everything times 💯 & thank you for sharing my piece!!! ❤️ 😭