you've mentioned feeling self conscious about motherhood content before, but i wonder how many of your readers are 1) mothers or 2) interested in becoming a mother one day or 3) not interested in becoming a mother themselves, but are curious to understand more about the experience. this poll is probably too prying to run and won't be as novel as the clean sheets debate lol, but i reckon a majority of your readers would fit into one of these buckets. not that you are doing this, but i hate the thought that you might be censoring your experience or art to try and appeal to the most readers. we pay to be here because we love your writing, and that is your art, and the most compelling work comes from what feels most true to the artist. ignore this comment if none of it resonates, but i just want to ensure you feel supported by us (been a paying sub for a long time so feel justified to speak on behalf of all the readers lol) to share what feels most authentic to you.
p. s. i found myself thinking "what stroller is hayley going to get for 2 kids?" because i remember your qualm with the yoyo not having enough storage and i thought wow i hope she gets the uppababy vista of her dreams lol so pls report back with your double stroller choice.
also, i can't stop thinking about this, but i think you have an incredible niche! it's hard to write about motherhood in a compelling way and you do it *so* well.
ok last thing i promise; when i was pregnant last year i found myself going through your archive for lists and recommendations and your birth story and all of those resources were so helpful as i was the first of my friends to be pregnant!
I also went through / go through the archive so much as a newly first time mom! Truly re-listening to the pods with Harling and Crystal have gotten me through many stroller walks and nap time attempts.
Completely agree, all of your motherhood pieces have helped me more deeply understand close friends’ journeys into motherhood and now are giving me so much context for my own decision to pursue it.
So heartwarming to see these comments of other readers who feel the same way. I hope you continue to write about it all!
I agree with this comment and have wondered the same! And I think about this often as I find myself censoring my own “verbal motherhood content” with my childless-by-choice friends. They always protest my censoring, sharing that anything that is deep for me is interesting to explore for them, and I realize it’s my own projection. With that being said, it’s hard to tamp it down given our very obvious lifestyle chasm so if that’s a concern due to childless readers, I do get it! But like this commenter, I hope you feel free as a bird to write about absolutely anything that feels real for you.
Love this ❤️ I agree that fighting to hold on to “your old self” makes becoming your new parent self harder, and almost denigrates the role of being a mother. Everything got easier for me when I let that go.
I loved the book Matrescence by Lucy Jones. It’s essentially about how much you biologically and psychologically transform when becoming a mother, and makes an excellent point about how we make so much space for “coming of age” stories about adolescence in modern culture and yet seem to have so little time for stories about the experience of becoming a mother. I thought it was such a good parallel to draw - another time of having a “before” and “after” and yet we don’t expect adults to become children again after adolescence, so why do we feel so much pressure to go back to who we were before becoming mothers?
Since becoming a mother I find myself frustrated by how often the experience seems to get flattened into either “I hate being a mother - I miss who I was” or “I love being a mother - I was born to do this and never tire of it” because we don’t give it enough space or think that it’s uninteresting to talk about. For me it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever been through so I felt almost lied to! Now I find myself seeking out as much content as possible that dives into the nuance and complexity of it all.
Anywayyyy all this is to say I would love to hear your thoughts on Matrescence and I am here for more motherhood content!!
I agree, Matrescence is essential reading! I listened to the audiobook in the weeks after having my second baby (and struggling - again - with severe post partum anxiety) and remember feeling like ‘wait! so I’m actually just normal to be feeling so totally fucking mad!’
Not sure it’s everyone’s experience but I found the change so different second time (PPA aside) and everything went so much quicker. Now (with a 4yo and a 1yo) I seem to have this constant pitter patter of anxiety about time passing, while also looking forward to the (hopeful) promised land of a 3yo and a 7yo (in our house we say ‘when we have Bluey and Bingo’)
Wow I felt all of this after becoming a mother, most of all the feeling of being lied to! It was awful for a few years there, I felt I had gone mad and everyone was telling me in gushy tones how happy I must be. It’s so much more complicated! It’s changed me forever, and I’m just now starting to accept that change (5 years later!) and realize wow, devoting myself to motherhood these past five years is something I needed to do, I simply couldn’t keep up with anything else, and the external noise was not helpful so for me I had to surrender. But it came with feeling deeply misunderstood by friends without children and just very isolated. It’s still hard, but I can at least see: look at this amazing little girl, and now start to think with curiosity and gentleness, who am I now? What do I want? Thanks for this comment, wish I had known about that book!
I'm not a mother and I almost definitely never will be, at least in a direct sense. But your essays about motherhood are often the ones that end up having the most lasting impact on my life or thinking. Beyond just getting to appreciate a window into an experience I won't have and probably would've liked to, I find that very often the themes, observations etc in your motherhood writing quite easily translate into my own, seemingly unrelated experiences. I think about your extinction burst essay, which ostensibly relates to potty training, literally every day at the moment.
It seems to be a widely recognised phenomenon that specificity in writing breeds universality. And I think so often about how there is no big picture to see if not for the small details. Perhaps in the zooming in, you allow us to see things that make that broader perspective more complete? Anyway, motherhood is a singular experience, but your reflections on it allow me a deeper entry into my own singular experiences. So in terms of professional consequences of writing more about motherhood, my perspective as a long(ish) term reader who isn't a mother, is that it makes you a better, more interesting, and somehow more relatable writer, for whatever that's worth.
“…lamenting that my only essay pitches concerned motherhood, which people only want so much of…”
I’m so curious where this idea comes from and why it persists, Haley! I’m 5 months postpartum and I find there to be so much depth to this entire experience (from trying to get pregnant, to being pregnant, giving birth, surviving the early postpartum weeks, and noticing my entire sense of self shift) that genuinely all I want to read is anything concerning motherhood 😅 I often find myself looking for writing on the topic and mostly come up dry— I’ve revisited so much of what you’ve written on motherhood over and over again (and am always hoping that you’ll write more about it!)
Becoming a mother has been so fascinatingly mind and life-altering. I feel like I now live on another (more beautiful, more complicated) planet. It is hard for me to grasp how and why we culturally choose to keep the topic so opaque and why we continue to operate under the assumption that parenthood is boring or twee when the reality is that it is so, so textured.
yes!!! agree it feels like living on another planet. I told my students when I was on maternity leave I wouldn’t be answering any emails because I would be on “planet Baby”
My version of the water bottle spilling on the bed was, during my pregnancy I was so bone-tired that I would come home from my teaching job and collapse into a dead sleep on our couch with my keys still in the front door. Hours later my husband would come home and find me like this. It happened too many times to count!
Part of the reason I delayed pregnancy and motherhood until I turned 40 was because I knew the social penalty for becoming a mother is so harsh. You can no longer assume your full personhood will be recognized in any situation, there’s an asterisk with this identity alteration that will now always color the perception of everything you say or do. I expected that shift and it’s real, but at the same time, in the trenches of motherhood, I have mostly been too consumed by my own experiences to worry much about what others think of me.
What I didn’t anticipate was how insane the physical experience of pregnancy and postpartum have been, and how ignorant I was of the whole process before it became my life. Now, the hunger I have for details about other women’s pregnancy, birth and postpartum experiences is bottomless. I have arrived here with a feeling of bewilderment - how can it be possible that the general population is so uninterested in the most extreme transformation the human body is capable of? There is a common posture of disgust and condescension towards the pregnant and postpartum body that feels like the ur-form of misogyny.
I often return to Molly Young’s zine “Privacy” (which I managed to get a copy of on recommendation of this newsletter, if memory serves) because the lack of writing on pregnancy really does feel like a black box - how to describe something so all-consuming to a hostile audience? The common platitudes doled out to express appreciation for moms don’t change the fact that our societal structure punishes people for becoming parents and especially moms. I felt it was deeply unjust to be economically compelled to work full time during pregnancy and at 11 weeks postpartum. It was just the beginning of the punishment - as soon as you become a mother you are set up to be given impossible choices that you have to make anyway. This is a felt sense, that as a mother, first person narrative is treacherous to attempt because in motherhood you lose your main character energy.
But like Mother says, “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay”…
“There is a common posture of disgust and condescension towards the pregnant and postpartum body that feels like the ur-form of misogyny.”
This! And maybe just “motherhood” content in general?
Saying this as a mother of two kids who for years had no interest in being a mother. 100/10 recommend motherhood and I am so grateful for your writing about it, Haley.
“There were years in my early twenties where I scarcely thought about anything other than “who I was going to be,” and while that would be inexcusable now, it was appropriate then.”
My younger sibling and I talk about this all the time and our goal to think about ourselves less. I’ve found that having a dog and now a baby as well have brought an involuntary but welcome sense of presence to life, although of course my focus could be seen as now more insular to my immediate family. But I know my sibling is really craving that as someone who often leans introspective to their detriment. Anyways, find this topic fascinating to explore!
as a single, not-mother (but an always-existential Thought Daughter) i just wanna say that the way you write about motherhood as it intersects with all of life has never ever come across like your world has shrunk. i can’t say i can relate to the experience of parenthood shifting your relationship to the world on a literal level, but as a reader of your writing, i have always come away more inspired to expand my own self-directed limiting beliefs. the explorations of your varied and passioned explorations have only grown richer as you’ve shifted into another valence of perspective with parenthood. not trying to just blow smoke. obviously this essay is far more textured than just “i’m scared i’m becoming a mommy blogger,” but for me at least, you’ve never ever been “just” that. in fact, usually after i read the weekly 15 things, or your essays, i come away feeling like “how the hell does she have the time and space to engage with the world so deeply AND parent a toddler???”
not sure if the friend you’re referencing is tavi gevinson, but her writing and work with rookie mag left me feeling the same way when i was a neurotic but deeply sensitive teen worried i’d never have anything to say except about myself. you two have both been such important voices in my silly little journey of growing up!!!
lastly, i just need to say that this pic of you and sunny is the cutest thing ive ever seen in my life. she’s your literal twin! and she has no idea how lucky she is to have such a thoughtful and impassioned mother!!!!
this is hitting hard today. thank you, Haley. im due with my first in October and I’ve found myself toggling between surrendering to the instinct of total absorption in this pregnancy - how endlessly interesting and acute and meta it is all at once, how it’s recasting so much of how I see society, even reshaping my understanding of my own family and friends - and trying to pull out of my absorption and be “normal” so I can connect with said family and friends. ive been surprised by a ripeness of anger and resentment in me, not feelings im usually so conscious of, and i think its at the very fact that this tension exists, that it feels like a burden for me alone to carry, this choice between being reduced to Pregnant or not known at all. the invitation to zoom in, regardless, feels warm and welcome. maybe it’ll soften this defensiveness im just now recognizing in myself :’)
Motherhood content is not necessarily niche, I argue that you're on the cutting edge of a cultural shift. SO many readers either have children, want children, know someone who wants/has them (or just have their own mothers!) and I don't think it's alienating to people who are childfree to explore your own experience of this fascinating, universal yet subjective, experience. I am along for the Maybe Baby ride wherever it goes - I love your writing on every topic! And the topic of motherhood is FAR from boring. I think it's internalized misogyny and the de-valuing of anything feminine that makes motherhood feel blasé. Writing about it on this level has rarely been done, if at all!
I’m also expecting my second and saw a post the other day that said, “if you have one kid you’re a lady with a baby, two or more and you’re a MOM.” It feels like the antipathy toward mothers gets greater the more children you have, so of course now I’m spiraling about resetting my coolness baseline. All to say I’m feeling many of these feelings with you, thank you for this!
New reader, not a mother, have been absolutely inhaling your content. I'm a similarly aged woman in Brooklyn, and I've been struggling with what feels like the loss of my friends with kids. Your essays have been really eye-opening about their experience and that everything is going to be different now, but that's not a bad thing. I feel more like I can still have a place in their lives, but it's going to more up to me to make it.
I'd been brushing off a friend's "come up to Westchester whenever" as not genuine (she cancels constantly when we try to make post-work/lunch plans in the city), but I've taken her up on it. She was so excited and I feel bad that I didn't Get It before now.
Hi Haley! Woman without kids speaking, who doesn't really intend on having any, barring any sudden and acute interest! I am grateful for this eloquent, detailed window into the "parallel lives" of your family, and your dispatches from the front, brushing up against the human condition at a slightly different angle than me.I always look forward to reading. xo
I loved this so much! I would also love more motherhood content, you have such a unique and balanced voice on it.
And another vote for matresence and Rachel cusk’s a life’s work: on becoming a mother (the og). On the lighter side, Catherine newman’s waiting for birdy about parenting her toddler while pregnant with her second is lovely.
Re full immersion, I didn’t look at my phone for a month postpartum and it really helped with being present (my partner would check it for me occasionally and act as correspondent lol).
Hope you feel as well as you can for the third tri and things continue to feel more settled in!
Hi Haley! I adore your content and have been a paying subscriber for a few years now.
As a childfree woman of 30, with very few chances of changing my mind, I have to admit I sometimes feel a little bit disappointed when the weekly essay is about pregnancy and motherhood, as I feel it is a topic that has been much treated in Maybe Baby (as romantic relationships and friendships have been too but I'm more committed to these topics). But, as an empath (lol), I totally get that having kids is a topic that gets totally in the way of other things in one's life, as you write very well.
I am positively interested in reading and learning about other people's ways of living, even if I'm not interesting in living it myself. But, if I start to follow a content creator for the insights they can share about their lives, and the insights start to be about one specific topic that is not what I was interested in in the first place, I get less committed. But it's totally normal that what content creators have to share changes with what they're experiencing in their lives!
As you mention often, parenthood seems to makes you shift (as you write, "I now knew “the truth”—that your pre-kid life, values, and concerns weren’t that important"), and I feel that as a childfree I will never really experience a change that intense and brutal in my day-to-day life. I can relate very deeply with other essays you write, but with those about parenthood, not so much, and that's OK! I feel like a lot of childfree people experience that feeling of "light disappointment" when a friend or a parasocial relationship on the internet starts having kids, because it will very often change their topics of interests and/or contents. I would be interested to have your point of view on the subject, if you know someone that shares this "light disappointment" for example.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this honest opinion with you as I value and respect your work and the care you give about your readers ❣️ (ps : English is not my first language, I hope my tone is conveying the right message!) (ps2 : I do love the Sunny content though.....)
Also wanted to add that your essays about motherhood makes me reflects sometimes about my parents, how they raised me, my own childhood... Or, as I'm starting to have close friends getting pregnant or giving birth, they will help me get a grasp on what they're living ! I might not experience motherhood myself but I reckon that it is an universal topic (you have been a kid or will raise one one day, or come across kids in your life) that has many other aspects that I can relate to other than *the* actual kid.
Beautiful essay, just requested the book from the library. I very much enjoy your thoughts on motherhood and parenting. My only regret is that I'm farther along than you, and want your observations on the phase I'm now in (teen kids, aging parents, perimenopause, MARRIAGE)!
After a relatively normal week of parenting my 7 month old and working and all the other things, I texted a friend that I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, I was so tired. She asked if I had had an extra busy week, and I told her that I feel like I’m trying to keep 8 plates spinning at the same time, and there is no end in sight. My pre-baby self would sleep in a little, or zone out in front of the tv or go get a facial if I were particularly exhausted, but that’s just not an option anymore.
The exhaustion (and the mania that results from said exhaustion) is from mentally keeping allllllll the plates spinning all day long. Should I be working more? I still haven’t texted a girlfriend back and it’s been a month. When is the last time my husband and I were alone together for more than 45 minutes? What about that massage gift card that has been on my fridge since December bc SeLf CaRe? Those plates need to keep spinning but also the baby is awake and laundry needs doing. How can you not lose yourself?
I have found a community of moms who are on the same planet (ie our babies are all the same age) has kept me relatively sane and laughing through it.
The more space devoted to the mind-fuck that is motherhood, the better. Your perspective is so valued. Keep writing about it and I promise I’ll keep reading.
The mom friends are sooo life giving. So many of my previously casual friends have now suddenly become lifelines as we have babies around the same ages.
you've mentioned feeling self conscious about motherhood content before, but i wonder how many of your readers are 1) mothers or 2) interested in becoming a mother one day or 3) not interested in becoming a mother themselves, but are curious to understand more about the experience. this poll is probably too prying to run and won't be as novel as the clean sheets debate lol, but i reckon a majority of your readers would fit into one of these buckets. not that you are doing this, but i hate the thought that you might be censoring your experience or art to try and appeal to the most readers. we pay to be here because we love your writing, and that is your art, and the most compelling work comes from what feels most true to the artist. ignore this comment if none of it resonates, but i just want to ensure you feel supported by us (been a paying sub for a long time so feel justified to speak on behalf of all the readers lol) to share what feels most authentic to you.
p. s. i found myself thinking "what stroller is hayley going to get for 2 kids?" because i remember your qualm with the yoyo not having enough storage and i thought wow i hope she gets the uppababy vista of her dreams lol so pls report back with your double stroller choice.
Long time subscriber and completely agree with you! No one is writing about motherhood like you and I am always pro more of it.
agreed!
also, i can't stop thinking about this, but i think you have an incredible niche! it's hard to write about motherhood in a compelling way and you do it *so* well.
ok last thing i promise; when i was pregnant last year i found myself going through your archive for lists and recommendations and your birth story and all of those resources were so helpful as i was the first of my friends to be pregnant!
I also went through / go through the archive so much as a newly first time mom! Truly re-listening to the pods with Harling and Crystal have gotten me through many stroller walks and nap time attempts.
Completely agree, all of your motherhood pieces have helped me more deeply understand close friends’ journeys into motherhood and now are giving me so much context for my own decision to pursue it.
So heartwarming to see these comments of other readers who feel the same way. I hope you continue to write about it all!
Yes! I am not planning to be a mother, but find Haley’s motherhood pieces so genuinely interesting!
Seconded!
I agree with this comment and have wondered the same! And I think about this often as I find myself censoring my own “verbal motherhood content” with my childless-by-choice friends. They always protest my censoring, sharing that anything that is deep for me is interesting to explore for them, and I realize it’s my own projection. With that being said, it’s hard to tamp it down given our very obvious lifestyle chasm so if that’s a concern due to childless readers, I do get it! But like this commenter, I hope you feel free as a bird to write about absolutely anything that feels real for you.
agree 1000%
Agree!! I loved the motherhood pieces before I ever contemplated children, now with a 6 week old I have returned to them with new eyes.
yep yep yep!
Love this ❤️ I agree that fighting to hold on to “your old self” makes becoming your new parent self harder, and almost denigrates the role of being a mother. Everything got easier for me when I let that go.
I loved the book Matrescence by Lucy Jones. It’s essentially about how much you biologically and psychologically transform when becoming a mother, and makes an excellent point about how we make so much space for “coming of age” stories about adolescence in modern culture and yet seem to have so little time for stories about the experience of becoming a mother. I thought it was such a good parallel to draw - another time of having a “before” and “after” and yet we don’t expect adults to become children again after adolescence, so why do we feel so much pressure to go back to who we were before becoming mothers?
Since becoming a mother I find myself frustrated by how often the experience seems to get flattened into either “I hate being a mother - I miss who I was” or “I love being a mother - I was born to do this and never tire of it” because we don’t give it enough space or think that it’s uninteresting to talk about. For me it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever been through so I felt almost lied to! Now I find myself seeking out as much content as possible that dives into the nuance and complexity of it all.
Anywayyyy all this is to say I would love to hear your thoughts on Matrescence and I am here for more motherhood content!!
I agree, Matrescence is essential reading! I listened to the audiobook in the weeks after having my second baby (and struggling - again - with severe post partum anxiety) and remember feeling like ‘wait! so I’m actually just normal to be feeling so totally fucking mad!’
Not sure it’s everyone’s experience but I found the change so different second time (PPA aside) and everything went so much quicker. Now (with a 4yo and a 1yo) I seem to have this constant pitter patter of anxiety about time passing, while also looking forward to the (hopeful) promised land of a 3yo and a 7yo (in our house we say ‘when we have Bluey and Bingo’)
Being a mum is so weird and amazing and tiring.
Absolutely agree with all of this, especially “it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever been through” !!
I felt lied to also!!!
Wow I felt all of this after becoming a mother, most of all the feeling of being lied to! It was awful for a few years there, I felt I had gone mad and everyone was telling me in gushy tones how happy I must be. It’s so much more complicated! It’s changed me forever, and I’m just now starting to accept that change (5 years later!) and realize wow, devoting myself to motherhood these past five years is something I needed to do, I simply couldn’t keep up with anything else, and the external noise was not helpful so for me I had to surrender. But it came with feeling deeply misunderstood by friends without children and just very isolated. It’s still hard, but I can at least see: look at this amazing little girl, and now start to think with curiosity and gentleness, who am I now? What do I want? Thanks for this comment, wish I had known about that book!
I'm not a mother and I almost definitely never will be, at least in a direct sense. But your essays about motherhood are often the ones that end up having the most lasting impact on my life or thinking. Beyond just getting to appreciate a window into an experience I won't have and probably would've liked to, I find that very often the themes, observations etc in your motherhood writing quite easily translate into my own, seemingly unrelated experiences. I think about your extinction burst essay, which ostensibly relates to potty training, literally every day at the moment.
It seems to be a widely recognised phenomenon that specificity in writing breeds universality. And I think so often about how there is no big picture to see if not for the small details. Perhaps in the zooming in, you allow us to see things that make that broader perspective more complete? Anyway, motherhood is a singular experience, but your reflections on it allow me a deeper entry into my own singular experiences. So in terms of professional consequences of writing more about motherhood, my perspective as a long(ish) term reader who isn't a mother, is that it makes you a better, more interesting, and somehow more relatable writer, for whatever that's worth.
“…lamenting that my only essay pitches concerned motherhood, which people only want so much of…”
I’m so curious where this idea comes from and why it persists, Haley! I’m 5 months postpartum and I find there to be so much depth to this entire experience (from trying to get pregnant, to being pregnant, giving birth, surviving the early postpartum weeks, and noticing my entire sense of self shift) that genuinely all I want to read is anything concerning motherhood 😅 I often find myself looking for writing on the topic and mostly come up dry— I’ve revisited so much of what you’ve written on motherhood over and over again (and am always hoping that you’ll write more about it!)
Becoming a mother has been so fascinatingly mind and life-altering. I feel like I now live on another (more beautiful, more complicated) planet. It is hard for me to grasp how and why we culturally choose to keep the topic so opaque and why we continue to operate under the assumption that parenthood is boring or twee when the reality is that it is so, so textured.
yes!!! agree it feels like living on another planet. I told my students when I was on maternity leave I wouldn’t be answering any emails because I would be on “planet Baby”
My version of the water bottle spilling on the bed was, during my pregnancy I was so bone-tired that I would come home from my teaching job and collapse into a dead sleep on our couch with my keys still in the front door. Hours later my husband would come home and find me like this. It happened too many times to count!
Part of the reason I delayed pregnancy and motherhood until I turned 40 was because I knew the social penalty for becoming a mother is so harsh. You can no longer assume your full personhood will be recognized in any situation, there’s an asterisk with this identity alteration that will now always color the perception of everything you say or do. I expected that shift and it’s real, but at the same time, in the trenches of motherhood, I have mostly been too consumed by my own experiences to worry much about what others think of me.
What I didn’t anticipate was how insane the physical experience of pregnancy and postpartum have been, and how ignorant I was of the whole process before it became my life. Now, the hunger I have for details about other women’s pregnancy, birth and postpartum experiences is bottomless. I have arrived here with a feeling of bewilderment - how can it be possible that the general population is so uninterested in the most extreme transformation the human body is capable of? There is a common posture of disgust and condescension towards the pregnant and postpartum body that feels like the ur-form of misogyny.
I often return to Molly Young’s zine “Privacy” (which I managed to get a copy of on recommendation of this newsletter, if memory serves) because the lack of writing on pregnancy really does feel like a black box - how to describe something so all-consuming to a hostile audience? The common platitudes doled out to express appreciation for moms don’t change the fact that our societal structure punishes people for becoming parents and especially moms. I felt it was deeply unjust to be economically compelled to work full time during pregnancy and at 11 weeks postpartum. It was just the beginning of the punishment - as soon as you become a mother you are set up to be given impossible choices that you have to make anyway. This is a felt sense, that as a mother, first person narrative is treacherous to attempt because in motherhood you lose your main character energy.
But like Mother says, “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay”…
“There is a common posture of disgust and condescension towards the pregnant and postpartum body that feels like the ur-form of misogyny.”
This! And maybe just “motherhood” content in general?
Saying this as a mother of two kids who for years had no interest in being a mother. 100/10 recommend motherhood and I am so grateful for your writing about it, Haley.
“There were years in my early twenties where I scarcely thought about anything other than “who I was going to be,” and while that would be inexcusable now, it was appropriate then.”
My younger sibling and I talk about this all the time and our goal to think about ourselves less. I’ve found that having a dog and now a baby as well have brought an involuntary but welcome sense of presence to life, although of course my focus could be seen as now more insular to my immediate family. But I know my sibling is really craving that as someone who often leans introspective to their detriment. Anyways, find this topic fascinating to explore!
very much the Jemima Kirke advice that made me both lol and also groan with recognition: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fanother-iconic-jessa-coded-piece-of-advice-by-jemima-v0-diw117h44rsb1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da2f6da066c9b8b2eb5253bad0f67eb244cf4e230
Lolllll ugh exactly
as a single, not-mother (but an always-existential Thought Daughter) i just wanna say that the way you write about motherhood as it intersects with all of life has never ever come across like your world has shrunk. i can’t say i can relate to the experience of parenthood shifting your relationship to the world on a literal level, but as a reader of your writing, i have always come away more inspired to expand my own self-directed limiting beliefs. the explorations of your varied and passioned explorations have only grown richer as you’ve shifted into another valence of perspective with parenthood. not trying to just blow smoke. obviously this essay is far more textured than just “i’m scared i’m becoming a mommy blogger,” but for me at least, you’ve never ever been “just” that. in fact, usually after i read the weekly 15 things, or your essays, i come away feeling like “how the hell does she have the time and space to engage with the world so deeply AND parent a toddler???”
not sure if the friend you’re referencing is tavi gevinson, but her writing and work with rookie mag left me feeling the same way when i was a neurotic but deeply sensitive teen worried i’d never have anything to say except about myself. you two have both been such important voices in my silly little journey of growing up!!!
lastly, i just need to say that this pic of you and sunny is the cutest thing ive ever seen in my life. she’s your literal twin! and she has no idea how lucky she is to have such a thoughtful and impassioned mother!!!!
sorry for writing an essay, love you haley!
this is hitting hard today. thank you, Haley. im due with my first in October and I’ve found myself toggling between surrendering to the instinct of total absorption in this pregnancy - how endlessly interesting and acute and meta it is all at once, how it’s recasting so much of how I see society, even reshaping my understanding of my own family and friends - and trying to pull out of my absorption and be “normal” so I can connect with said family and friends. ive been surprised by a ripeness of anger and resentment in me, not feelings im usually so conscious of, and i think its at the very fact that this tension exists, that it feels like a burden for me alone to carry, this choice between being reduced to Pregnant or not known at all. the invitation to zoom in, regardless, feels warm and welcome. maybe it’ll soften this defensiveness im just now recognizing in myself :’)
Motherhood content is not necessarily niche, I argue that you're on the cutting edge of a cultural shift. SO many readers either have children, want children, know someone who wants/has them (or just have their own mothers!) and I don't think it's alienating to people who are childfree to explore your own experience of this fascinating, universal yet subjective, experience. I am along for the Maybe Baby ride wherever it goes - I love your writing on every topic! And the topic of motherhood is FAR from boring. I think it's internalized misogyny and the de-valuing of anything feminine that makes motherhood feel blasé. Writing about it on this level has rarely been done, if at all!
I’m also expecting my second and saw a post the other day that said, “if you have one kid you’re a lady with a baby, two or more and you’re a MOM.” It feels like the antipathy toward mothers gets greater the more children you have, so of course now I’m spiraling about resetting my coolness baseline. All to say I’m feeling many of these feelings with you, thank you for this!
New reader, not a mother, have been absolutely inhaling your content. I'm a similarly aged woman in Brooklyn, and I've been struggling with what feels like the loss of my friends with kids. Your essays have been really eye-opening about their experience and that everything is going to be different now, but that's not a bad thing. I feel more like I can still have a place in their lives, but it's going to more up to me to make it.
I'd been brushing off a friend's "come up to Westchester whenever" as not genuine (she cancels constantly when we try to make post-work/lunch plans in the city), but I've taken her up on it. She was so excited and I feel bad that I didn't Get It before now.
Hi Haley! Woman without kids speaking, who doesn't really intend on having any, barring any sudden and acute interest! I am grateful for this eloquent, detailed window into the "parallel lives" of your family, and your dispatches from the front, brushing up against the human condition at a slightly different angle than me.I always look forward to reading. xo
I loved this so much! I would also love more motherhood content, you have such a unique and balanced voice on it.
And another vote for matresence and Rachel cusk’s a life’s work: on becoming a mother (the og). On the lighter side, Catherine newman’s waiting for birdy about parenting her toddler while pregnant with her second is lovely.
Re full immersion, I didn’t look at my phone for a month postpartum and it really helped with being present (my partner would check it for me occasionally and act as correspondent lol).
Hope you feel as well as you can for the third tri and things continue to feel more settled in!
Hi Haley! I adore your content and have been a paying subscriber for a few years now.
As a childfree woman of 30, with very few chances of changing my mind, I have to admit I sometimes feel a little bit disappointed when the weekly essay is about pregnancy and motherhood, as I feel it is a topic that has been much treated in Maybe Baby (as romantic relationships and friendships have been too but I'm more committed to these topics). But, as an empath (lol), I totally get that having kids is a topic that gets totally in the way of other things in one's life, as you write very well.
I am positively interested in reading and learning about other people's ways of living, even if I'm not interesting in living it myself. But, if I start to follow a content creator for the insights they can share about their lives, and the insights start to be about one specific topic that is not what I was interested in in the first place, I get less committed. But it's totally normal that what content creators have to share changes with what they're experiencing in their lives!
As you mention often, parenthood seems to makes you shift (as you write, "I now knew “the truth”—that your pre-kid life, values, and concerns weren’t that important"), and I feel that as a childfree I will never really experience a change that intense and brutal in my day-to-day life. I can relate very deeply with other essays you write, but with those about parenthood, not so much, and that's OK! I feel like a lot of childfree people experience that feeling of "light disappointment" when a friend or a parasocial relationship on the internet starts having kids, because it will very often change their topics of interests and/or contents. I would be interested to have your point of view on the subject, if you know someone that shares this "light disappointment" for example.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this honest opinion with you as I value and respect your work and the care you give about your readers ❣️ (ps : English is not my first language, I hope my tone is conveying the right message!) (ps2 : I do love the Sunny content though.....)
Also wanted to add that your essays about motherhood makes me reflects sometimes about my parents, how they raised me, my own childhood... Or, as I'm starting to have close friends getting pregnant or giving birth, they will help me get a grasp on what they're living ! I might not experience motherhood myself but I reckon that it is an universal topic (you have been a kid or will raise one one day, or come across kids in your life) that has many other aspects that I can relate to other than *the* actual kid.
Beautiful essay, just requested the book from the library. I very much enjoy your thoughts on motherhood and parenting. My only regret is that I'm farther along than you, and want your observations on the phase I'm now in (teen kids, aging parents, perimenopause, MARRIAGE)!
After a relatively normal week of parenting my 7 month old and working and all the other things, I texted a friend that I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, I was so tired. She asked if I had had an extra busy week, and I told her that I feel like I’m trying to keep 8 plates spinning at the same time, and there is no end in sight. My pre-baby self would sleep in a little, or zone out in front of the tv or go get a facial if I were particularly exhausted, but that’s just not an option anymore.
The exhaustion (and the mania that results from said exhaustion) is from mentally keeping allllllll the plates spinning all day long. Should I be working more? I still haven’t texted a girlfriend back and it’s been a month. When is the last time my husband and I were alone together for more than 45 minutes? What about that massage gift card that has been on my fridge since December bc SeLf CaRe? Those plates need to keep spinning but also the baby is awake and laundry needs doing. How can you not lose yourself?
I have found a community of moms who are on the same planet (ie our babies are all the same age) has kept me relatively sane and laughing through it.
The more space devoted to the mind-fuck that is motherhood, the better. Your perspective is so valued. Keep writing about it and I promise I’ll keep reading.
The mom friends are sooo life giving. So many of my previously casual friends have now suddenly become lifelines as we have babies around the same ages.