I was unconscious when my daughter was born, the result of a long, frightening labour, which ended in an emergency c-section and a botched anesthetic. When the sharp tip of the scalpel revealed that – yes – I could feel everything, a gas mask quickly put me to sleep. The events of my daughter’s birth proved traumatic for me and I spent the first two years of her life confronting and recovering from postpartum depression. The healing process forced me to examine an awful sadness and raw vulnerability, to think about its roots, its texture. I felt tremendous guilt about my depression: as my daughter continued to thrive, I struggled to feel the joy I could see in her. As I recovered, I came to discover my sensitivity to popular motherhood magazines, which often present a narrow notion of motherhood and which also increasingly use fear-based rhetoric as a marketing tool. As a woman struggling with postpartum depression, I was already excessively frightened about my baby getting hurt; I already felt the crushing weight of my inability to protect her from unforeseen dangers; I already was convinced I had not done enough as a mother. Popular motherhood magazines exploit these feelings and are a disservice to all of us, but they are particularly dangerous to the already-thinned nerves of mothers with postpartum depression.

The existence of this toxic rhetoric raises important questions, for which there are no easy answers. I am interested in exploring not only the roots of this language, but also its effect on how we understand feminist solidarity. Motherhood can be a strange feminist no-woman’s-land, a force that wrongly separates women: mothers from non-mothers; mothers from mothers. When we talk about solidarity, we not only need to think about the role of motherhood in feminist experience, but also the complicated notion of solidarity itself. In their central piece, Erin Hurt and Layne Craig reference bell hooks’ call for dissent. I begin, then, by echoing hooks: “Again and again I have to insist that feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose” (hooks 65). Solidarity in motherhood depends upon a celebration of multiple pathways to mothering, to motherhoods. Popular motherhood magazines work against a feminist commitment to difference, advocating instead for a motherhood driven by fear, perfectionism, and insecurity. We need a new rhetoric of motherhoods, one that is about diverse maternal experiences and that relies on a language of acceptance and security.

Words Matter

The pervasive fear rhetoric in popular language about motherhood fosters isolation over solidarity. Rather than encourage multiple representations, much of the language about motherhood presents a singular model rooted in fear and hopeless perfectionism. One issue of the popular magazine, Parents, exemplifies this phenomenon with startling power. I choose to focus on only one issue to underscore how fully fear rhetoric overwhelms this singular publication. In what follows, I will explore the significance of this language and the danger it poses to feminist solidarity. Imagine a new mother, struggling with postpartum depression, flipping the pages of the April 2008 issue of Parents magazine:[1]

Mixed in with the terror is a condescending tone towards mothers, an assumption that mothers are insecure and out of control. While the magazine regards mothers as utterly responsible for the protection of their children against countless unseen, larger-than-life threats to safety and well-being, the publication simultaneously casts them as less than fully competent. Perhaps the rationale is that mothers are so broken by fear and consumed by the work of protecting children from danger that all other competencies fall to the wayside. Despite the damages, the standard self-sacrifice expected of mothers remains in tact: children should be thoroughly entertained in their homes by the brilliance of their mothers’ creativity, ingenuity, and – despite the constant worry – surprising ability to be playful.[2]

In the April 2008 Parents issue, we can read the condescension and low repute towards mothers’ competency in the headlines and article contents. For example, a page dedicated to “Manners” features an anonymous “Q&A,” representative of the concerns of the unnamed readership. Two of the questions are especially striking. The first is, “How do I get my 6 year-old to stop interrupting me when I’m chatting with other people?” The second is perhaps even more helpless, “What should I do when a child is kicking the back of my seat at the movies? Do I talk to the child or the parent?” (60). These are the conundrums, according to this issue of Parents, of the common reader. On the topic of children’s manners, the magazine directs parents on how to communicate with their children. In a small subsection titled, “Privacy Matters,” the magazine advises, “Follow these tips to walk the fine line between involved and intrusive” (174). What follows is a series of “do/don’t” tips, printed with authoritative capital letters: “DON’T barrage your child with questions if you notice she’s getting anxious” and “DO ask your child if he’d like to talk about something later in the day, but don’t argue with him if he says no” (174). Both articles depict a parent – most notably a mother, since the magazine itself is overwhelmingly marketed to women – who not only needs explicit instruction, but who also cannot independently problem-solve in the most mundane situations. This is a peculiar contradiction to the hefty responsibilities of protection placed on mothers by most of the magazine pages.

The tension between tremendous responsibility and startling helplessness suggests a pervasive lack of control. Such spinning-out-of-control is at the core of the motherhood depicted in these magazine pages. This experience of lost control is the mother’s private struggle. When children are safe, healthy, and entertained, she knows safety is never fixed: emergencies and unforeseen dangers always lurk nearby. An advertisement for an asthma medication depicts a small child, startled and sitting up in bed, with her hand on her chest (77). This endless state of vulnerability is motherhood’s predicament. An article on weight loss, “No More Diet Disasters,” speaks to the private, inner desire for control that the rest of the magazine exploits (76). The subtext below the title offers some explanation for “disasters”: “You knew that getting back to your pre-pregnancy weight would be tough, but no one told you how much temptation moms face all day long. Whether you’re guilty of sneaking your toddler’s leftovers or snacking in the supermarket, we’ve got ways to help you resist” (76). In this case, motherhood is threatened from the inside: not merely by external “temptation,” but from an inability to “resist.” Once again, the magazine offers women needed direction.

Mother Rhetorics: Continuing the Conversation

The politics of motherhood have received attention from important feminist voices. Still, much work remains. As we explore the meaning of feminist solidarity – through feminist support groups, classroom practices, activism for mothers’ rights – we confront the power of words to separate us. The popular rhetoric of motherhood presents an illusory solidarity, exclusively defining motherhood as a fearful, paranoid, and vulnerable experience.

Much has changed since Jessie Bernard explored the history of an often isolating motherhood as it extended into the early 1970s. In The Future of Motherhood, Bernard describes early 20th century motherhood, where ineffective birth control measures found women lamenting multiple unwanted pregnancies. Referencing Anne Firor Scott’s work with women’s diaries, Bernard writes: “Their letters and diaries were filled with anguish for, in the general romanticization of motherhood, then, as until yesterday, it was ‘only in private women could give voice to the misery of endless pregnancies, with attendant illness, and the dreadful fear of childbirth’” (54). While advances in birth control and pregnancy care have improved women’s lives, particularly in the western world, motherhood demands further study. There remains an unmet need, as Bernard writes, to “give voice” (54). Only through interruption, the collective and diverse resistance to rhetorical tropes, can women reclaim motherhood as a varied, difficult, under-supported, joyful, imperfect experience.

Advances in women’s rights have not been able to set motherhood free. Instead, popular language about motherhood transplants these advances into a culture of domestic overachievement, over-protection, fear, and a narrow portrayal of maternal bliss. Judith Warner makes much of this argument in her powerful, if flawed, book, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. Activists, like Ariel Gore and the grassroots group, “Momsrising,” highlight the political inequities that nurture our cultural consciousness. Compositionists like Harriet Malinowitz, Eileen Schell, and Arabella Lyon have explored mothering and the work of academia. Still, we face an enduring problem – one of language, politics, culture, and feminism – that demands a solidarity grounded in voicing motherhood’s many realities. Instead, we continue to embrace the fantastical – from the overwrought, unseen dangers to our children, to the drive for unachievable maternal perfection, to our national obsession with celebrity mothers and their babies. As long as we choose feigned reality and a totalizing rhetoric of motherhood, we have not – as feminists, mothers or not – sustained solidarity. The fallout on the ground is a neurotic, lonely approach to motherhood, toxic to us all, and particularly dangerous for mothers with postpartum depression.