About eight years ago I was at a conference that was mostly a waste of time until the last day when I found myself at a round table with the Patron Saint of Relationship Wisdom, Dr. Esther Perel.
I couldn’t tell you what someone like Esther was doing at this godforsaken conference, but I’m thrilled she was because now I get to tell you this story.
At the end of her roundtable chat, one guy raised his hand to ask how he could be a better partner to his pregnant wife given that her “brain was changing and she had all these hormones controlling her. And she gets…you know.”
Oh boy.
Suppressing my inclination to scream at the top of my lungs, I let Esther handle this one. Also, I wasn’t allowed to “handle it” as I was not the speaker.
The eloquence with which Esther ripped this guy’s question to shreds made us all sit up a little taller in our seats. With dignity and grace, she said, “Listen, your wife’s brain is fine. She’s not broken. Use your empathy and perspective-taking skills. Ask her what she needs and she’ll tell you. Remember she’s pregnant, not an invalid. Her brain is working fine, in fact, it’s working overtime building a skeleton, muscles, organs, and a full. on. nervous. system. This is a dumb question.”
Ok fine, she did not say these things exactly, but it sure felt like she did. That was the essence.
The pièce de résistance was at the end when, in her signature nondescript accent, waving her hands, she asked, “What is this with you Americans and the ‘change your brain?’ you ask about.” It was as if she was posing an existential question for us to clarify for her as representatives of America.
(She used American similarly to how my immigrant family uses it: to mean, “You idiot.”)
Esther continued. I’m paraphrasing, but this is what I remember: “Everything changes your brain all the time. You look at a flower and your brain changes. You listen to me and your brain changes. Change isn’t negative, but you say it like it is. What do you think ‘change your brain‘ means’?”
Excellent question, Esther.
Her point was that we falsely equate “change” with bad.
Our brains are neuroplastic. It’s an asset, not a liability (See: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain ).
What Esther wasn’t saying, but I will, is that this kind of rhetoric (masquerading as “helpful”) is suppressing his wife.
In psychologist Darcy Lockman’s book, All the Rage , she interviews neuroscientist Lise Eliot about the least controversial topic in the world: gender and brain development. They talk about the whole “natural mothers” fallacy. Or is it a fallacy? That is the question.
I have been told by everyone in the world that motherhood comes naturally to women. My own mother regularly informs me that when she was in graduate school they taught her that a woman’s love is unconditional, but a man’s is conditional, and that that’s just science. Yikes. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Ooof.
My ex-father-in-law “warned” me that “the baby will come and you won’t notice anything else. You’ll see.” I don’t think he realized how much of his own experience he was revealing to me. I did see, I saw that he and everyone else were wrong and very very bad at what they called “science.” As well as seeming to know me.
Like most cishet women, I was deluged before I could speak with all the ways in which I did not know anything about the world unless I was a mother. Self-actualization is only possible if you are a mother! Because until you are a mother, you don’t know who you are, what you want, what matters to you, what matters in life, and what it really is to love.
We love using “motherhood” as a way to disqualify other ways of being a woman or even being valid as a human.
Remember last week when we talked about how psychology was founded on the denial of women’s experiences? This, my friends, is an extension of that.
Neuroscientist Eliot says it more eloquently on page 88 of All The Rage:
“It’s bullshit. Our brains get good at whatever we’re faced with doing.” As in, you’re not natural at parenting. You get good at it. You learn it. It is a learned skill.
You’re not a natural at parenting. You get good at it. You learn it. It is a learned skill.
Read the book to find the overwhelming amount of data that supports this.
The part that I found most astonishing, namely because I did not know this part, was this bit of data from Bar-Ilan University in Israel ( pages 90-91, All The Rage ):
“The researchers concluded that the differences between the three groups were not so much a function of biological sex or genetic relatedness to the infant, but rather, of how much time the subjects had spent in intimate contact with their babies. They write: ‘Assuming the role of a committed parent and engaging in active care of the young may trigger [a] global parental caregiving network in both men and women, in biological parents, and in those genetically unrelated to the child. Such findings are consistent with the hypothesis that human parenting may have evolved from an evolutionarily ancient alloparenting substrate that exists in all members of the species and can flexibly activate through responsive caregiving and commitment to children’s wellbeing.'”
Translation: There is no such thing as “natural” motherhood. If you spend more time with your kid, you get your alloparenting substrate activated. BOOM.
Bolding above is mine because 🤯 [head explodes]. It makes so much sense. Women died giving birth constantly. Men had to take over. So of course we have the same brain structures. They just needed to be activated and the mitigating factor was (drumroll please) time spent with child.
A natural mother is an invented idea. The person who spends the most physical time with the kid gets the “instincts” (aka has the necessary brain circuitry turned on). Men are not inept, quite the contrary. They’re merely absent, thanks to the myth that sits next to the Natural Mother myth: Be a Good Provider.
The men are “providers” myth is as corrosive here, especially for the men who (almost all) cower under the weight of their responsibilities and later hold it against their wives and children, and so often maintain that “they are the real victims,” (see my piece on abuse from last week).
Because in many ways they are victims. No one wins in this system.
When we say it is, “men’s duty to provide,” but narrowly define “provide” as money, house, and food – we rob men of the opportunity to connect with their kids and develop their “instincts” and we rob ourselves of the actual partnership mothers’ need.
When we say it is, “men’s duty to provide,” but narrowly define “provide” as money, house, and food – we rob men of the opportunity to connect with their kids and develop their “instincts” and we rob ourselves of the actual partnership mothers’ need.
I’m so sad for all the children who’ve grown up without a father providing actual co-parenting, co-partnering, and fathering.
Mothers don’t need to be provided for. They need partners.
Mother’s Day is this weekend and my feed is drowning in well-meaning attempts at “supporting” and “appreciating” mothers with things like candles with puns on them, sparkly jewelry, fluffy socks, and, for some reason, a very expensive sky-blue tea kettle.
Much like the confused boy at Dr. Esther Perel’s roundtable, these gifts are not how you support mothers. You support mothers by objecting to the systems that diminish their freedom to be a person in the world. And you reject the idea that “motherhood” is a woman’s thing.
You support mothers by objecting to the systems that diminish their freedom to be a person in the world. And you reject the idea that “motherhood” is a woman’s thing.
Celebrate parenthood by actually supporting systems that support parenting.
Push back on schools ending at 3PM. Stop valuing office “face time” over bedtime. Reject two paid weeks of mat leave and take 12 – 24. Campaign for paid family leave at your organization (hire Sarah she can help). Pass common sense gun laws (don’t @ me bro). Don’t say “She’s not working,” when someone is on family leave. They are very much working. They are simply not getting paid.
Be the guy who calls out the school when they call his wife first because they assume he’s at work and she’s available. Shame your friends who openly cheat on their wives. Especially, if those wives are sitting at home with their kids. Stop normalizing neglect from men and calling it “work.” And for the love of god if you’re a dude reading this and your wife sent a Mother’s Day gift to your mom – you can celebrate Mother’s Day this year by growing up.
Get yourself a copy of All The Rage . It’s a clickbaity title for a very serious book. Binge-listen to Where Should We Begin ? and read Mating in Captivity ( the TED talk gives you the gist ). Listen to Anne-Marie Slaughter. Hire Sarah K Peck to talk to your organization about paid family leave. Ask yourself sincerely why it’s “bad” that your son is playing with a baby. For real. Why.
That’s what I would like for Mother’s Day.
No more candles. Some accountability and systemic reform, please.
And that tea kettle…
Margo
