Becoming a mom

On alienation, a lack of rituals, and a lack of resources on empowered, anti-abusive parenting

It hit me recently that I feel alone in my decision to become a mother. I don’t feel totally alone — I have a loving partner is very on board with this journey and we are in it together. But in the larger culture and my larger community, I feel very alone. And this aloneness is extremely painful.

I am about to embark on one of the most life changing and spiritually profound journeys a human being can go on. It will change me utterly. It will be full of risk, and challenge, and I will come face to face with existential terrors. I will lose things. I will become someone else. I will have the massive responsibility of creating the conditions for healthy growth, belonging, and development. Even in the process of trying to become pregnant I am on a rollercoaster of feelings and I know that the journey has barely begun.

In a totally alienated capitalist society there are no collective rituals to honour and prepare for the journey ahead. I can expect to fight and struggle with the medical system to have my basic human rights respected in the pregnancy and birth process. Stories of pregnancy, birth, and parenting are treated as only relevant to parents, and therefore these stories are not freely available as human stories that everyone should know and have access to. Mothers remain some of the most unsupported, unacknowledged, and unseen members of society, their essential work taken for granted, and many people barely concealing their annoyance at the exuberant, chaotic wonder of little kids.

Liberation for women who don’t want to be mothers is often expressed through mockery or degradation of mothers. Which is unfair, because while mothers are fulfilling the expectation that women become mothers, they are in no way supported, celebrated, or seen in the massive amount of work and vulnerability that is inherent in that choice.

All of this is painful. And there is another layer of pain for me.