It's Kind of a Long Story... about BITCHES

Her bark is worse than her bite

Hey Drama Goblins,

I fully intended to write an original post this week, but that was… ambitious.

It’s been a busy week. Awesomely busy.

I flew to LA on Friday and spent all day and night on Saturday at the Cruel World festival, then was picked up at 5:30am for the airport. I jetted to Chicago for a fun afternoon and evening with my cousin, then up and at ‘em for a train to Peoria to spend the week with my son and his boyfriend at the home they bought last fall.

It’s been overwhelming in the best possible way.

So, with Mother’s Day recently passed and on my mind, I’m dipping back into the archives.

I’m so glad you’re here,

Lara

Mother Loaded

Short Story

A few years ago, I shared my belief that pets are not people, and women who care for dogs are not the “mothers” that should be honored on Mother’s Day. I caused a lot of pain and controversy. I still believe that, and I believe a few other things too.

Long Story

#UnpopularOpinion I saved until after Mother’s Day

A pet is not a child

A caretaker of a pet is not a mother

I bristle at the inclusion of “dog moms” at Mother’s Day. When your dog screams, “I hate you!” slams the door, stays out all night and staggers home drunk at 3:00am and you have to love them anyway, then you can talk to me about your “fur baby.”

Companions to animals often talk about the “unconditional love” they give and get. That is not a mom/child relationship. Momming is fraught with conditions, contradictions, complexities and challenges.

As we face the greatest threat to our ability to control our fertility in our lifetime, and the right to decide when, how and whether to be a mother is in danger, it's important that we not minimize what being a mother is.

Caring for and living in community with animals is a lovely, healing, healthy, and happy thing. Celebrate it! Embrace it! Let’s have a day for it! But it is not mothering.

That was a Facebook post I made on Monday May 9, 2022. I knew it might rub a few folks the wrong way, but I was absolutely unprepared for the deep hurt and pain it would cause. I lost a few Facebook friends.

At the time, I couldn’t remember ever feeling as bad over something I had done, nor had I ever failed so badly at reading the room.

Not all of the comments were negative. Many (maybe most?) agreed with me. And it wasn’t as simple as mothers agreed with me and women who haven’t birthed or raised children didn’t. Response was all over the map.

But those who were hurt and offended were very hurt and offended. They had a different view of me than they had before. Their esteem and respect for me was diminished.

I had long phone calls with two wise and principled friends to talk through it. One was nothing but supportive and didn’t think I did anything wrong. We laughed and thought the people who were offended were nuts.

The other helped me see things from different perspectives. She challenged me. I’m so grateful.

After a few days of a lot of thought and reflection, I posted this:

I’ve struggled with how and whether to share what I’ve learned as I’ve sat with the thoughts and feelings that resulted from the dog mom post. I don’t want to make the pain I caused worse. I don't want to be self-serving. I don’t want to demand more time, attention, and emotional labor than has already been given. My intention is to make it known that your pain had impact. It landed hard and I took it seriously.

I welcome any, all, and no responses. Both here and in private messages, or in any forum that feels safe and constructive.

With a link to a Google doc that read:

“The Mother of All Choices

The choice to have or not have a child is not the same as the choice to have or not have a pet. That was the “aha” moment I had in a long, challenging, generous, and supportive conversation with a good friend about the dog mom post. I realized that I had conflated the two in the past. 

I am not someone who believes that motherhood is something everyone should or inherently wants to do. If being a mother has taught me anything, it’s that it’s not for everyone. I've never questioned why a woman would make that choice. I respect it. I thought I understood it. 

I’ve never had interest in caring for or living with a pet. I have a clarity about that that I assumed was similar to the clarity that people who have chosen not to have children have. It’s innate. It’s simple. It’s unexamined. 

What I’ve been blind to is the privilege I enjoy in this culture as a mother. I don’t equate motherhood with an elevated capacity for care and compassion or with unconditional love, but I must acknowledge that I live in a culture that does. I don’t believe that motherhood is the peak expression of womanhood, but I must acknowledge that I live in a culture that does. 

Not having a child is not without social consequence. It’s informed by myriad things that are complex, deep, and none of my or anyone’s business. They include financial, medical, and trauma-based reasons that our culture cloaks in shame. They may include never finding the right co-parent. The barriers to LGBTQ mothering can be monumental. When asked, it’s common for women to answer, “I just knew I never wanted to have kids.” It’s the easiest to say and receive. Their reasons are personal and they are not owed to anyone, but it’s incumbent on me to understand there’s a lot informing them. 

I have experienced light and infrequent judgment and questions about having an only child. I usually say, "The voice that told me to have Max never spoke again." The truth is more complicated.

There have been times, places and spaces where my relationship to animals is seen as a lack of capacity for love, empathy and connection. That is not equal to the assumptions, suspicion, intrusiveness and curiosity that women who are not raising children navigate.

Our culture limits the socially and legally acceptable reasons and conditions both for having an abortion and for not becoming a mother, usually to extreme medical or financial circumstances. The other, personal, private, complicated reasons are not often discussed, addressed, honored, or privileged. It's rude to ask. My own experience has made me very vocal that when it comes to abortion, no woman needs to justify her reasons with extremes. That this is also true for not choosing motherhood was a blind spot.

I’m reluctant to address infertility because it’s a singular pain that I haven’t experienced, but owe it to the women who shared their experience to acknowledge it and try. They have chosen to be mothers, but it hasn't or didn't happen. There’s nothing I can say that will ring true or create connection between me and someone who has, nor does there need to be. I honor that anyone who goes through the physical, financial, and emotional experience of infertility understands motherhood on a level I don’t. 

The trigger for my post was that mothering isn’t being taken seriously by the Supreme Court, and the consequences of that are dystopian. There’s a section of the leaked Supreme Court Ruling stating that because single motherhood isn’t as stigmatized as it was in 1973, because some women qualify for family leave,  because medicare will pay for maternity care in some cases, and because there are “safe harbor” laws that allow an infant to be left at a fire station, that there was no longer a need for abortion. 

It puts into law that the many complex reasons a woman might choose to not become a mother either by carrying a pregnancy to term or raising a child could be mitigated by a few hundred dollars in tax breaks and a handful of unpaid weeks off work. As if mothering was easy and uncomplicated. As if it were no different than caring for a dog. 

That if a few small barriers were minimally lifted, women not only could become mothers, but they should. And must. And when this ruling is handed down, they will.

That enraged me. 

As the Mother’s Day posts on Facebook scrolled by on Sunday, I saw many that referred to “dog mom” and I conflated the phrase with minimizing and not taking mothering seriously. The line between the two seemed straight and strong. What I missed was that women who are not mothering children, whether by choice or circumstance, take mothering very seriously. And, that I didn’t take raising a pet seriously. 

Caring for a pet and creating that bond is something I’ll never understand. Taking an animal into your life, living with its comfort and companionship for years knowing that you are raising it to die before you will is a huge act of courage and vulnerability. It is not easy or uncomplicated, and it is worthy of respect. It is serious. 

I still believe that caring for a pet is not the equivalent of raising a child. I still believe that mothering is more complicated than caregiving and exchanging unconditional love. I still believe that words matter and mothering matters and that it’s a singularly intra-species experience. 

I am grateful for the opportunity to expand my perspective and believe a few more things, including what Mother’s Day is. It’s not just about mothering. It’s also about every woman’s relationship with her own reproductive choices, decisions, and journey. And the impact of those choices. And the right to make them. And the hurt and rage of not being able to. 

Mother is a gendered term, and gender is complex. The qualities and responsibilities we assign to women and men and mothers and fathers and parents are sometimes different and sometimes the same and sometimes big and sometimes subtle and are being challenged and are changing as we move towards bigger understandings of what they mean. 

That my growth came as a result of causing pain to people I like, love, and respect is a regret I’ll have to live with. 

As we were talking, I said to my friend, “I can’t recall ever feeling this bad about something I’ve done.” It has been weighing on me heavily. There have been many things I’ve done that I regret in my life, but they have been choices I made for myself that didn’t directly impact others. There have been things I’ve had to apologize for, but not this kind of one-sided depth of harm. At least not that I’m aware of. This experience has taught me there are still things about myself I don’t know, and many things about other women I also don’t know.

I took the comments and expressions of anger and hurt seriously. I felt I owed it to those who took the time to share them more than an apology. They need to know that their pain mattered. It made a difference. It landed deep and changed me. 

I needed time and space and guidance and reflection to take it all in and take more care with my words than when I did when I made the post.

I don’t intend to put this behind me. I will keep it with me. Beside me. To let it guide me not only toward greater openness, but to do the work to fight the forces we are united against. To create a world where every woman has the resources, support, and opportunity she needs to create the life and family that serves her best.”

The comments were overwhelmingly positive, and I’m not so humble that I’m not proud of myself for crafting that response and for the praise I got for doing so.

As the discussion in the comments continued, my gears kept turning and I added

A related area of thought this has surfaced is how women earn social capital. The big three are:

1) Beauty

2) Youth

3) Caretaking and selflessness

There is a hierarchy to how we earn #3

Raising children

Birthing (but not too many or to few)

Caring for other's children (and elders)

Caring for animals

If you're not even caring for a pet, are you even a woman?

It gets even more complicated when we layer race and wealth over these areas. BIPOC and poor women are often not privileged for birthing or raising children, and are elevated when they caring for other (especially white) children and elders

(If you're not watching Atlanta please do, there was an episode about this recently that was very well done)

That society demands we earn this capital is... exhausting. It's hard to parse out what truly serves us. What is fulfilling and what we're doing to meet out culture's demands. To ask, "Who does this system serve?"

Ironically (or maybe coincidentally? I sometimes get them confused) I spent Mother’s Day this year with a relative who has never had children, and was devoted to her pets, both of whom lived long lives, and the last of whom had recently died.

As we were driving around and having a fun day, I said I’d love to have her visit and stay with me. She said, “Well, I can do that more easily now. I know it’s not like having kids, but I’ve been coming home to a dog for more than twenty years. It’s hard not too. I’ve planned my life and my days around feeding and walking them and what they needed. It’s weird and hard to not have to do that anymore.”

She sounded exactly like I did when I became and empty nester, and I said so, “I get it. By the time Max went to college, he didn’t take up that much of my actual time. He was almost totally independent and self-sufficient, but it was the headspace he took up. I thought constantly and instinctively about where he was, what he was doing, and what he needed all of the time. That ‘I gotta get home’ or ‘I need to tell him when I’ll be back’ feeling took a long time to get over.”

I’ll never know what it feels like to care for a pet. She’ll never know what feels like to be a mother. And we each absolutely knew how the other felt.

Lara Sez…

Recs will resume next week!

Before I let you go…