Mothers: Do You Have More In Common With Other Moms Than You Do With Childless Women?

Although it's been almost two years since my second child Sylvie was born, I recently started reading Life After Birth: What Even Your Friends Won't Tell You About Motherhood by Kate Figes with Jean Zimmerman. It was published in 1998 and was the first of a small number of books that address the incredible changes a woman must face after having a child. There are a lot of books on pregnancy and childbirth and a lot of books on parenting and child development but there are not many at all on this particular subject. While I was pregnant with Luke, my first, six years ago, Andi Buchanan was kind enough to send me a copy of her excellent collection of personal essays, Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, and I think that it is the only book I read at the time that addressed what might happen to me, physically, emotionally, mentally, and socially, after I gave birth.

Of course, the things that happen to you after you give birth and take your new baby home are the kinds of thing you have to experience in order to even begin to fully understand them. It is one thing to read that breastfeeding might be difficult and another for your breasts to blow up to the size of balloons and hurt so much you're tempted to prick them with a pin, to see if relief might come with the pop. It is one thing to be told that you will be exhausted and another to actually feel so tired you could lie down on the dirty floor of a busy grocery store and fall asleep immediately. It is one thing to read you might not be very interested in sex again for some time and another to feel as if you might scream if your partner even touches the back of your hand with the tip of his little finger. It is one thing to be told that you have never before felt such love as the love you'll have for your baby and it is another to be taken hostage by an emotion so powerful, intense, and daunting that "love" isn't a strong enough word for it   -- or, worse yet and not uncommonly, to feel nothing much at all, at least in the beginning. 

In Life After Birth, Kate Figes contends that these kinds of intense experiences mean that mothers have more in common with one another than they do with other childless women who have similar backgrounds and interests. In almost an aside, she writes:

Motherhood is a great leveler. The most privileged mother has far more in common with a socially and financially deprived mother than with a childless woman from the same social background. As I searched for differences among mothers I became acutely aware of the fact that their experiences felt uncannily similar. Money, education, and expectations inevitably affect the way that women manage motherhood, but the essence of the experience is essentially the same. The experience of childbirth differs from woman to woman depending on her physical makeup, her state of mind, the position and size of the baby, and the environment she gives birth in, but the physical rite of passage of giving birth is the same for every woman. It is an extraordinarily powerful event that can be enjoyable or nightmarish, but either way it is a landmark memory.

She points out that almost almost all mothers share a sense of wonder at the miracle of procreation; sooner or later feel frighteningly intense maternal love; find it difficult to manage the demands of work and motherhood; undergo mental and physical difficulties related to pregnancy and labour and often don't have time to recover; and find that their relationships with their friends, families and, most importantly, their partners, have changed in unexpected and unpleasant ways.

I agree with all of this, yes, but I found myself taken aback by the assertion that I have more in common with other mothers than I do with, say, my childless friends who share my background and interests. What does this even mean, to say you have more in common with one person than another? After all, having "things in common" isn't something you can objectively measure. Certainly being a mother is now a central aspect of my identity, perhaps even the most important, but I am still the person I was before I had my children. Do I now have more in common with, say, an impoverished fifteen-year-old mother of four in an African village, someone who doesn't even speak the same language I do, than one of my good friends, a lawyer by training, an avid reader, and a writer of my age and social class, who also happens to be a woman who hasn't given birth?

Although it's true that I have perhaps a better understanding of that other mother's emotions and concerns than I ever would've before, and more compassion for her, I still can't possibly understand the challenges she faces in her day-to-day life and, in fact, wouldn't be able to survive them with my sanity intact were we to somehow change places. And, having spent a lot of time with other stay-at-home mothers over the last five years or so, many of whom are much younger than I am and who don't share my interests or educational background, I must say that I think I might've gone crazy long before if I hadn't been able to talk about anything other than motherhood and childrearing with like-minded (and yes, childless!) friends every now and then.

What do you think? Are you, by virtue of having given birth, a member of a new sort of tribe that transcends class, social, and economic boundaries? Do you have more in common with other mothers than you do with any other childless women? Or does that kind of thinking marginalize mothers even further?

 

Comments

[Steph Burgis]

I have mixed feelings about that. Yes, it is a strong bond, but then, it's a very limited one. There's more to my life than my parenting, and for a friendship to be strong and vital, I really NEED to be able to have more than just motherhood in common. This just feels like saying that women who have the same careers have more in common than women who have different careers...which sounds plausible on the face of it, but then, I need a lot more than a shared career to make a real bond. As mothers, we all share an essential job and passion and a certain set of experiences, but that might or might not make for a strong friendship.

Of my closest friends, half aren't mothers, and while I can't vent to them (or share the good bits of mothering with them) in the same way I can with my mom-friends, I share different things with them which are also vital to who I am as a person. And botho f my closest mom-friends are also writers like me (the part that sparked our friendship in the first place before I ever had a child), so we spend at least as much time talking about our writing (another consuming passion we have in common) as we do about our parenting.

And now I'm rambling. So I really should have just left it as: mixed feelings!

[Steph]

No, no, your ramblings are very helpful, Steph. I have mixed feelings about it, too -- for me, sometimes just having motherhood in common is enough and other times, well, it isn't.

[Kerry]

It's not been my experience. I think being a mother does give you access to a level of understanding only other mothers can relate to, but it's not a substantial enough connection to create a friendship. In fact, motherhood has brought me into contact with some women I'd never have met otherwise, who I have nothing in common with but our children and that we're free in the mornings, and I don't think I've ever spent time with people so UNlike me-- a learning experience, but not necessarily a fun one.

But what a delight it is to discover mom-friends who would have been friends even without the kids-- friends who share my passions, and have others that inspire me. For me, these friends are the highlight of my stay-at-home mom-life.

[Melissa]

Well! Well. Well...

I think the idea of quantifying how much we have in common is a little silly-- it's not only a phenomenon of quantity, but also of quality, degree, priority, etc.

I often find that I have little in common with other mothers, because we appoint different value and meaning to those shared mothering-specific experiences. I kind of think it's not enough to have had the same experiences, if we interpret those experiences entirely differently.

[hush]

I think Figes is essentializing motherhood in a manner that marginalizes various groups of mothers and fathers. I'm sure she is very well-intentioned, however, Figes' simplistic assertion that all women are either in or out of this wonderful "tribe" of (read: real) mothers who remember giving birth creates a false dichotomy that completely excludes and renders invalid the experiences of mothers who did not give birth, and/or gave birth at a period in history when childbirth sedation was a common practice, and/or are mothers who have given birth but are not raising their children, and/or are women engaged in "other mothering" who are taking on child-rearing roles in nontraditional ways... the list goes on and on.

Further, Figes glosses over the many rich and textured experiences of people who are technically "childless." My friends who are currently "childless" but who have experienced the agonies of infertility and loss; my other friend who has been trying unsuccessfully to adopt and at one point held a baby she thought would be hers until the birth mother changed her mind - well, I think it is cruel and inaccurate to lump their experiences together with all people who have never wanted a child, never parented a child, never experienced pregnancy, under the general category of "childless."

[Steph]

Thanks for commenting, Kerry, Melissa, hush -- lots of good thoughts.