I am ashamed to admit that before I became one, I was not kind to mothers. In the audacity of my youth, I sneered at the single mindedness I saw in my friends who were having children. Of course, you think your child is special, I thought. You’re biologically coded to think that. Being a mother is the single most ordinary thing you could do.
Before I had a child, or a desire to have one, I resented the implication that motherhood was an experience bigger and more impactful than anything I had experienced up to that point. When mothers expressed the immense difference in their perspective since having kids, it felt like they were devaluing the experiences of women who didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t.
While some of my friends have been supportive of my decision to become a mother, others haven’t. Credit: Istock
But once I was pregnant, I realised how isolating it is to be plunged into an entirely different world – one of appointments, bodily changes, and teeming with unsolicited advice – and not be able to navigate it with the support of your best friends, either because they don’t have children and can’t relate, or because they don’t have children and aren’t interested.
It’s entirely natural to want to share huge new feelings and experiences with your friends. And the reality is that as a first-time parent, they are massive to you, even if they aren’t to others.
Society has created a divide between women with and without children – one that posits each as needing to defend itself against the other, and that doesn’t recognise that between those two distinct ends of the spectrum are many women whose experiences lie somewhere in the middle.
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When I first told some of my friends without children I was pregnant, their reactions were varied. One expressed her dismay that I would be becoming “one of them” and would no longer have time or interest in her. Another listed all the things I would miss out on – parties, trips, drinking and dancing – because of my pregnancy.
Their responses shocked me because though I was growing a baby, I hadn’t suddenly stopped being interested in anything outside of that. The idea that I would no longer want to go to dinner or gigs, to have brunch and talk about books was preposterous.
Fast-forward over a year: my son is eight months old, and I haven’t changed much as a person. I have all the same interests and priorities as I did before, I’ve just expanded them to include my kid and all that raising him entails.
