In Jennifer Senior's New York Magazine piece on recent research into the joylessness of parenting, Senior recalls a time when her beloved 2-year-old son dismantled a wooden garage then proceeded to chuck the wooden planks at her head, leading Senior to turn to booze. But does it make her happy?

Signs point to no! According to Senior, "a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so." Duh, right? While joyless parenting may constitute a newfangled field of research, that whole joyless motherhood thing has been racking up its share of anecdotal evidence for quite some time. In the Atlantic, Sady Doyle recounts 60 years of its horrors: Simone de Beauvoir's observation that "the child is merely harassing and bothersome"; Adrienne Rich's assertion that children cause "the most exquisite suffering"; Mary McCarthy's fictional mother feeling that, "to her shame, [the baby] was a piece of hospital property that had been dumped on her and abandoned—they would never come to take him away."

Feeling soulless yet? What this edition of Sexist Beatdown needs is a couple of fancy-free non-parents who have not yet been trampled by the misery of child-rearing! So join Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I as we discuss the Stockholm syndrome of baby-making, the luxuries of upper-class depression, and the quiet despair we are told we will forever regret not having!

SADY: Hello, fellow non-parent! Enjoying your non-parental non-miserable lifestyle yet? Because I sure am!

AMANDA: God, I am too. I plan on enjoying it until I have children too late in life, at which point memories of my blissful childless years will only contribute to my ultimate unhappiness.

SADY: If only we were all having children immediately after leaving our parents' homes! Surely this would alleviate our misery. Also, it would help if we were not so rich and successful. This makes it harder for us, unlike the lower classes and immigrants, who simply take these bodily matters of procreation in stride. POOR PEOPLE: Not at all subject to undue stress in the matter of having kids!

AMANDA: Indeed. It is so very taxing to have the time to dote over our own happiness.

SADY: The thing is, I don't think that the news that raising children can be stressful IS NEWS. Like 74% of second-wave feminists were talking about how grueling it is to raise children, and/or to have that as your primary responsibility.

AMANDA: Haha. And now that it's shared, people are suddenly all like, "Should we even be doing this?"

SADY: Right? Like, "wow. It turns out this is HARD. Who knew?

AMANDA: "Who" indeed! I do find these studies of happiness interesting, but I find it strange that people are looking for some sort of definitive answer from them: Like, Everyone procreate! Or, Condoms!

SADY: Right. I mean: "Happiness Studies," in and of itself, which I hear is actually a growing field, is strange. We can measure what makes people happy or unhappy, but ultimately I guess I'm with Senior on this point: Are we questioning what role "happiness" plays in our life choices? I mean, I have recently come to feel that I might not want kids, but this has to do with the fact that I am (a) poor, and (b) high-strung. I can't get a dog without Googling care instructions obsessively and researching what sort of terrible ailments might wind up killing it. But was "happiness" what people had children for, ever, anyway? Maybe the issue isn't that "parenting has changed"—because it seems to have changed most fundamentally in terms of who has to do it—but that we EXPECT "happiness" from popping one out in a way we didn't use to.

AMANDA: Right. I think the happiness part is some new-agey conception of raising children. It's important to remember that joy aside, the fact is that now a lot of people get to choose whether they have children or not, and if so, when. And so it becomes much more of a quality-of-life question than a biological-necessity one. And so I think it's fair to expect that you do the thing that you think will make you the happiest. But there's also a lot of fear-mongering about that, because of that whole ovary-loss thing. So people are like, "If you don't have kids now, you will never be happy and you'll regret it for the rest of your life!" And people on the other end are like, "Once you pop it out, there's no turning back! Life-ruiner!" When, actually, I bet that a lot of people could find meaningful, happy lives doing either of those things.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, women are so, so frequently scared out of, like, LIVING, or doing anything other than having children ASAP, because they're told that their fertility is evaporating and they'll be unhappy forever if they don't have babies. And I think it's worth noting that a ton of the parents interviewed, who were speaking most directly about being unhappy and frustrated, were women. Men in that article were mostly "experts," even if they were also fathers.

AMANDA: Right, I think there is some stat in there that women are on the whole less happy. Which, you know, probably has something to do with that whole "shared parenting" thing not being completely shared, and the general added expectations placed on mothers. One of my favorite parts of the story was the suggestion that you "always regret the things you didn't do, not the things you did do." Like, why does the "thing I do" have to be having babies? There are plenty of things I won't be doing if I end up having kids.

SADY: Haha, yeah. "I will never regret not having children, when I die because my child threw boards at me and one of them had a nail in it and it punctured my skull and killed me." But I'm also wondering if being told that children are the KEY TO HAPPINESS (if you are a woman) has to do with the disappointment (among women) that children don't auto-fulfill you? I mean, Simone de Beauvoir talked about this. Her whole deal was that women are told having children will fulfill them, and then it doesn't, and then they hate their children. Her solution: Make something else in your life more important than getting pregnant?

AMANDA: But there's nothing more important than hating your kids! If you never do that, you will regret it for the rest of your life!

SADY: It's true. You'll never regret hating your kids as much as you'll regret not hating them. It is fun to think about fathers in all this, though. I mean, I like to imagine they're at least MARGINALLY more involved in dealing with the poop and the breaking things and the eighteen years of college prep these kids are all being put through now.

AMANDA: Right. The story did mention that the most unhappy parents of all were those who were the non-custodial parent (mostly fathers). So having a kid and not raising it? Depressed for life. Having a kid and raising it too much? Also depressed—single parents and moms in general were less happy. Solution: Move to Norway?

SADY: Right. I, predictably, DID enjoy the part where they were all like, "maybe if we had state-sponsored child care?" "Also, longer maternity leave helps?" Like: All of these things that feminists are advocating FOR WOMEN would actually make parents' lives easier, in the long run. OR, you could just live a life of heedless wanton non-impregnated self-satisfaction. Until you die, and there is no-one who will visit you at the nursing home. Except for that one robot seal thing.

AMANDA: Right. I mean, is that the whole point of it? That someone will be there to care when I die? That seems to be the last-ditch explanation when I press people on why this is necessary. I'm guessing it's more like a Stockholm syndrome thing.

SADY: Yeah. Probably. We love our tiny oppressors!

AMANDA: The baby captors stole our happiness! Join us!

Photo via Smithsonian Institution

* Figleaf points us to the myth that masculinity is perpetually "in crisis," from Rip Van Winkle onward.

* Amanda Marcotte on risk assessment in child-rearing:

There's so much pressure in our society not to talk about the very real risks of child-rearing, usually because of superstitious fears that talking makes it true. But I tend to think that it's best if people walk in with their eyes wide open. If you know that the risks include strained or terminated marriages, constant stress, and the inability to move about freely for many years, and you decide those are risks you're willing to take, then that's great. And I certainly believe the sense of satisfaction will outweigh the headaches for that person.

* Via Geek Feminism Blog: Is there a lady track at your workplace?

* Tracy Clark-Flory asks why more women don't shop at Best Buy. Speaking as a woman who has continually marveled at the fact that Best Buy stores still exist, I'm frankly impressed that anyone shops at Best Buy. Turns out there's also some sexism involved.

* D.C.'s Catholic University has got itself a new president. He's not a priest—the first not-priest to lead the university since 1982. So how does he feel about premarital masturbation?

Photo via The Library of Congress

. . . But allow me to ignore the cries of my soon-to-be decrepit ladyparts for a moment in order to re-write this headline to reflect a few possibilities that reporter Carolyn Butler omits from the accompanying story. But first: What's with these ovaries anyway, and why are they so darned stubborn?

Butler's story is a tale of modern career woman v. nature. In it, women who are busy pursuing their professional dreams in their 20's may be dangerously ignoring the silent extermination occurring within their own bodies—according to Butler, "women lose 90 percent of their eggs by age 30"—until it's too late. But don't "start freaking out," Butler tells her readers, who, being women and all, are almost certainly doing just that.

Onto the science: "Society has changed," fertility doctor Robert Stillman of Rockville's Shady Grove Fertility tells Butler, "but the ovaries will take another million years or two to catch up to that."

Stillman's evolutionary perspective prompts this strange analysis from Butler:

Since we don't have another million years to wait, many women thinking of having children are left with the predicament of balancing the personal, primal urge to partner up and procreate with worthwhile social goals such as pursuing higher education and a successful career—not to mention economic stability.

As someone whose personal, primal urges have always been telling her to learn stuff and use her brain for stuff, not to make babies, I am left confused by the idea that my impulse to start a career is seen exclusively as a "worthwhile social goal" that is somehow at odds with my "personal" interests. But then again, there's a lot I don't identify with here. Possible alternate headlines for this story that I would be more likely to get down with:

Adoption agencies have adjusted to many women's decision to delay having children. [Seriously, Butler does even mention this possibility].

* Robert Stillman of Rockville's Shady Grove Fertility has adjusted to raking in tons of cash from many women's decision to delay having children.

* Ovaries indifferent to what you do with eggs after they pass off responsibility to fallopian tubes, uterus

* Ovaries privately concerned that women will end this whole society v. nature charade by just delaying having children until death

* Ovaries confused as to why the decision to have children is presented exclusively as a concern of women in this article

* Ovaries going through particularly rough time right now, could use a couple million years to adjust

Bad news, parents: YOUR BABY IS PROBABLY A RACIST, and that means that you've got a whoooole lot of explaining to do. According to a Newsweek cover story, studies show that children as young as six months old "judge people based on skin color." And children as old as six years old will refuse to accept the possibility of a black Santa—but will eventually concede that "black Santa could fill in for White Santa if he was hurt." White people: Why are your widdle babies so racist?

a)  My kid isn't racist: We watch Sesame Street, and there are some very, very diverse Muppets on that program.

b) SHHHH! Don't say the R-A-C-E word around Jimmy! Everybody's equal, Jimmy. I'll explain that vague sentiment when you're older.

c)  Mall Santas.

d) As Sady of Tiger Beatdown and Amanda of the Sexist discussed in this week's edition of Sexist Beatdown: Uhh, maybe Newsweek is kind of exaggerating about the whole racist baby thing, since the real problem appears to be progressive hippie parents scared shitless about even raising the issue of race with their children. Okay, also mall Santas.

AMANDA: hey, racist baby.

SADY: hey there!

AMANDA: are you ready to discuss how modern equality-minded parents have all taken to blaming their latent racism on their impressionable young children?

SADY: ha, yes. the babies, they are all RACISTS! sort of. first of all, i think the very RACIST BABY tagline is kind of hilariously off, in that the actual "children as young as 6 months old discriminate on the basis of skin color" thing is, apparently, literally wrong. what children as young as 6 months old do is look longer at photos of people who are not the same race as their parents, according to the article. but, you know, that is not SENSATIONAL. so let's just imply with our headline that six-month-old white babies are already full of societally determined anger and hate.

AMANDA: but, importantly, it is also The Longer Gaze at People Who Are Not the Race of Their Parents That Shall Not Be Named. since the main parenting tactic unearthed in this story is: as long as I never mention race or racism, my child will come out unracist. to the point that some ostensibly nonracist parents DROPPED OUT OF THE STUDY when they found out they would be forced to discuss race with their children. "not under my roof."

SADY: yeah, exactly. and the result, apparently, IS that the four and five-year-olds end up with pretty fucked-up ideas about race.

AMANDA: and also, hilariously, report that they think their parents are racists, too

SADY: right. "do your parents like black people?" and 14% are like, "nope!" which makes sense, if the kids are getting shushed every time they ask about the existence of race. (1) They get the sense that race is a forbidden topic, and maybe therefore a Bad one, and may project their parents' fears of race discussion onto people of different races, concluding that THEY'RE what the parents are scared of. (Behold my extrapolation of in-no-way-expert conclusions!) (2) If you don't have someone TALKING about race, and pointing out the existence of racism and why it's bad, you're just left to soak up all the messed-up cultural stereotypes and racism like a little kindergarten-enrolled sponge.

AMANDA: yeah, and I think this points to a lot of the assumptions that these parents have about their children for no apparent reason. like Chris Brown's mom expressing shock that her child attacked his girlfriend, when that kind of thing was in the home and probably not addressed in any significant way. or parents insisting that their child would never rape someone, even though they failed to bring up in sex in any conversation. and I think this also goes back to the fear that, like, if you talk to boys about preventing rape, you somehow magically turn them rapists through the expectations you've laid out.

SADY: right. well, i think a lot of it is also the nature-vs.-culture thing, and this messed-up expectation we have that kids are inherently pure of all culture. like: if you never MENTION injustices, your kids won't be aware of them, and then they will somehow progress into childhood without ever noticing that people are treated differently and drawing their own conclusions about that! whereas the fact is that a large part of childhood is not only learning what your parents and teachers explicitly, verbally teach you, but getting socialized and learning to reflect the norms around you.

AMANDA: and it's such an obvious cop-out when you just state it like that. "I thought if I never MENTIONED why Santa was always white, my children would never shun the black Santa that entered their classroom." It doesn't make any sense! and so the burden of talking about this shit lies on the groups who are going to be most affected by it, which is why minority families talked about discrimination with their kids, and why girls get a shitload of advice on how not to get themselves raped.

SADY: right. exactly. it's about the comfort of privilege. like: kids who experience discrimination, on any level, are going to naturally bring it up with their parents, and parents are going to be more responsive to that. like, i think i was four years old when i first asked my parents why some people said certain things were not for girls, and why boys wouldn't let me do those things. (the things in question were pretending to be the Ninja Turtles* and/or soccer, but still, I THINK MY POINT HOLDS.) but if you ARE privileged, and you never directly experience discrimination, and all you have are these vague messages that certain aspects of your life (like, say, your race) are Not To Be Talked About, you're of course going to grow up completely blind to your own privilege and also unreflectively participating in it.

AMANDA: yeah, and another interesting thing that separates race from gender is that, if you're a girl, and you play the best fucking Raphael on the block, boys on your street may have the opportunity to recognize that and understand that girls can play Ninja Turtles. but if you think that Hispanic kids can't play Ninja Turtles – stay with me here – and you don't have any Hispanic kids on your block, you may grow up always assuming that Hispanic kids are shitty at impersonating superhero mutant sewer denizens. and that injustice cannot stand. so while gender becomes problematic through constantly reinforced roles, the problem with race is that there's sometimes just a vacuum.

SADY: right. the article does, to some level, address what happens in diverse schools. because the thought was, if kids are not raised in these mono-racial environments, they'll associate across races more and be less likely to make judgments based on race. but, nope! what happens, more often than not, is that even within a diverse environment like a school, kids only hang out with or form relationships with people of their own races. and that's complicated; i mean, i imagine that there are white kids having all-white friend groups because their parents are uncomfortable with dealing with non-white people and they're consequently uncomfortable with it as well. but i imagine there are also kids of color who are like, "oh, God, i do not want to deal with the white kids that are clueless and/or hurtful about race, i cannot educate anyone in the lunch room today, i just want to have my peanut butter sandwich and chocolate milk in peace."

AMANDA: and the interesting thing is that kids are pretty ready to accept it—to the point that when they watch a multicultural Sesame Street episode, they do not notice the message enough for it to change their habits. Santa, apparently, is untouchable, though.**

SADY: ha, yes. "even the little girl the most adamant that the Real Santa must be white came around to accept the possibility that a black Santa could fill in for White Santa if he was hurt."

AMANDA: Christmas is even more racist than babies are

SADY: I'm dreaming of a non-exclusively-white Christmas, myself.

* Incorrect! There were no Ninja Turtles when Sady was four. There were, however, Ghostbusters. And Sady was not allowed to play. NOT EVEN AS JEANINE.

** Upon further reflection, I can totally understand why some white kids would not accept a black Santa. To adults, Santa is just whoever puts on the suit, and there's no reason a black dude can't put on the suit. To children, Santa is one real dude who becomes very important to their well-being each December. And for their whole lives, they'd seen that dude reproduced in malls, on television, and in storybooks as the same rosy-cheeked white dude. At that point, it's against that kid's best interest to accept that Santa could be black. Because if Santa could be black, that means there is more than one dude being Santa. And if there's more than one dude being Santa, that means that Santa isn't really real. And once you acknowledge to yourself and your immediate family that Santa isn't really real, there's always the fear that the presents will stop mysteriously dropping through the chimney. The only way to circumvent the racism of Christmas, in my opinion, is to introduce black Santa to children at a very early age,

Photo by soulchristmas

This Week In Sexist History:

Good 'Ol Day: July 22, 1893

Dateline: Long Branch, N.J.

Subject: The summer of 1893 is nearly ruined for this sad sack New Jersey scene reporter—until the sexiest underage bather this side of puberty catches his roving eye!

What's lifting these male vacationers from the depths of their pathetic existences? If you've been studying your Sexist History, you'd know that the answer probably starts with Pretty and ends with Girls:

Oh, it makes no difference what shape you are in the freewheeling social scene of the Jersey surf! Unless, of course, you're "pretty girl" shaped, in which case your body will likely be obsessively detailed in the pages of the New York Times. Proceed:

Euugh! How old is the young lady in the red swimsuit, anyway? One the one hand, it's great that this girl is still in her spluttering-around-in-the-water bathing suit phase, and not yet in her crippled-by-body-issues bathing suit phase. On the other hand, I'm willing to bet the girl's sexy childhood innocence was shattered riiiiiight arrroooound July 23, 1893—the day this Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Reporter's ruminations on her sexy childhood innocence was printed in the pages of the New York Times.

How can Skeevy Turn-of-the-Century Reporter possibly redeem himself from the true skeeviness of ogling bathing children? By turning next to an even sleazier specimen: The Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Sketch Artist.

Done and done.

Drumming up a good teen sex scandal for the nightly news ain’t what it used to be. A couple decades ago, a news anchor could scare the shit out of some parents by just turning to the camera and posing a question: “It’s 10 o’clock. Parents, do you know where your children are?”

Nowadays, the advent of e-mail, cell phones, and GPS has ensured that parents always know where their children are. And so, local news reporters have been forced to dig a little deeper than that old rhetorical question for their parental scare tactics. Below, how to engineer a teen sex scandal using only a cell phone, a pair of blue jeans, and a few good "experts."

NBC Washington: “Gossip Site Causing Concern, Controversy in Montgomery County”

Rumors: Is your child spreading them? NBC Washington reports on this concerning new trend, noting that Montgomery County high school students “call each other names, spread rumors, and recently, a former Whitman high school student posted death threats.”

What’s to blame? A dangerous element that lurks, unseen, around us all: the Internet.

Andrew Ship, a high school counselor and “Internet safety expert,” walks solemnly down a high school hallway as he explains to parents the grave dangers of kids spreading rumors. “There’s nobody monitoring this stuff.…There’s no Internet police,” Ship says.

There is no “Internet police,” but there are real police—and like NBC Washington, they’re surfing teen boards, too. NBC reported that cops have “temporarily shut down the Web site twice in the last five months after a photo of a topless underage teen popped up.” Police have since monitored the site for illegal behavior. What the report fails to mention is that the new teenage forum for circulating gossip is actually far more regulated than schoolyard note-passing ever was—now, parents are let in on the notes, too.

In that way, the move from mail to message boards has actually encouraged teen sex scandals: It puts underage improprieties only a Google search away from a local news reporter hard-pressed for a sex story. Now, kids aren’t the only ones who can spread rumors about kids on the Internet!

—

Fox 5: “What Texting Acronyms Are Kids Using?”

Leather: Is your child lusting after it? Last month, Fox 5 D.C. published two stories on its Web site covering a list of online chatroom “codes,” titled “50 Acronyms Parents Should Know.” The acronyms included such standard kiddy fare as “A/S/L” (Age/Sex/Location), “POS” (Parents Over Shoulder), and “FOL” (Fond of Leather). This teen sex scare is constructed of a delicate local news logic: Teens use acronyms on the Internet. Sadomasochistic leather fetishists use acronyms on the Internet. Could your teen be couching his sadomasochistic leather fetishism in intricate abbreviated text-speak?

Even Fox 5 can’t be sure. The first story on the acronym blow-up, published May 23, took a novel approach to the teen sex scandal: reporting the trend while simultaneously debunking it. “Many people who see the list wind up howling with laughter, since many of the terms are completely unknown to most people, teenaged or otherwise,” Fox reports, before blaming “some local TV news reporters” for furthering the scandal.

In the second story, published May 25, “some local TV news reporters”—also from Fox—take a more traditional approach to the trend. “It may be an old list, but it doesn’t change the fact that parents want to decipher what it is their kids are reading and how they’re communicating online,” Fox reported. “Erin Jansen, founder of NetLingo, acknowledges that not all of the terms on the list are used by everyone.”

So, are your kids secret Internet sadomasochistic leather fetishists, or aren’t they? There’s only one way to be sure: Don’t ask them.

Combined, the two stories quoted the following sources: PC Magazine editor Sascha Segan; NetLingo’s Jansen; several Digg commenters; 21-year-old Arizona State University junior Jason Parks.
None of these people are teens. But many did think the list was ridiculous. “It looks like a lot of them come from online sex chat rooms, and not just any chat rooms, but sadomasochistic ones,” Segan said, in the second story.

What does a local news station do when even its adult “experts” won’t help further its teen sex scandal? Remember that a picture can say 1,000 sadomasochistic online acronyms—even if your kids don’t know any of them. Fox paired its overblown warning of youth Internet use with a shot, plucked from Flickr, of three blond-haired children gathered conspiratorially around a laptop. All are several years shy of tweendom—and decades away from serious leather play.

—

Fox 5: “Jeans May Cause Tingling Thigh Syndrome.”

Jeans: Are your teens suffering from them? This recent Fox 5 story is a typical “hidden danger of teen trend” piece: This time, wearing fashionably skinny jeans may make your thighs tingle.
If you’ve noticed your teen suffers from a compression of the “lateral femoral cutaneous nerve,” he may have been donning these super-tight, sexy leg coverings—under your own roof. The condition, known as meralgia paresthetica, or “tingling-thigh syndrome,” “usually affects obese people or manual laborers.” Now, numb thighs are beginning to afflict a demographic you actually care about. Tingling-thigh syndrome “is cropping up in younger people,” Fox reports.
How long has this condition been “cropping up” in younger people? Since you, too, were a younger person. “Skinny jeans are not the first pants to cause the condition,” Fox reports. “Super-low-rise jeans, popular in the late ’90s and early 2000s, were linked to meralgia paresthetica; and in the 1970s, there were rumors that snug jeans caused infertility in men and yeast infections in women.”
Older people lucky enough to have escaped sterilization by skinny jeans now have a new set of young denim enthusiasts to worry about. That is, until they reach the end of the story, which completely invalidates its premise. “Salon.com does counter that the condition may not be affecting very many people.”

WJLA-TV: “Sexting: New, Dangerous Teen Trend”

Teens: Do you hate raising them? Published May 15, this teen sex scandal story broke on WJLA-TV a full year after teen “sexting” hit the scare cycle. Sexting, or sending explicit photographs via cell phone, evolved from a centuries-old teenage pastime: creating and sharing nude depictions of sex partners. This tactic preys on society’s weakest—those who think their children are far more difficult to raise than any generation before them.

WJLA-TV works hard to make millennial parents feel sorry for themselves, calling the trend a “new” and “dangerous” “risqué game” that has “invaded middle schools.” According to WJLA-TV, “the phenomenon is raging as wildly as their hormones,” and boy, are modern hormones wilder than ever. This ostensibly local adaptation of the national teen sex trend story is devoid of place, names, or evidence of sexting. Of the 10 12-year-olds surveyed by WJLA-TV’s Julie Parker, half had “heard” of sexting. None had actually sexted.

Thankfully, a couple of anonymous parentals—who declined to stand by their boilerplate shock on the record—provide the necessary outrage. “It’s alarming. They’re not protected,” says one. “It’s really disappointing! It’s hard to be a parent today,” whines another. But not as hard as it is to be a local news reporter in search of underage smut.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

For this edition of "Sexist Beatdown," Sady (of Tiger Beatdown) and myself (of the Sexist) would like to extend a warm invitation to all men, children, good mothers, and bad mothers (abortionists will be tolerated, but the childless will be ignored).

This week, up for discussion is Ayelet Waldman: wife to Michael Chabon, mother to four, author of "Bad Mother," in that order! Waldman made women hate her in 2005 after announcing, in the New York Times, that she values her husband over her children. We don't really give a shit about that. What we want to know is: Does Waldman value husbands over children over good mothers over bad mothers over abortionists over the childless?

Let's sort of find out!

SADY: hello! are you ready to talk about how some lady HATES and/or does not maniacally worship her children?

AMANDA: I can barely begin to think about it because i HATE this woman so much!

SADY: i, too, am driven to the verge of madness by her statements! actually, this is technically somewhat true. i mean. i read the "modern love" column that "bad mother" was based on, and: all i could think of was, seriously, you're opposing the fetishization of motherhood by talking about how much you WORSHIP YOUR HUSBAND?

AMANDA: i know, right? where is the response Modern Love column that says, "i probably don't love either of them."

SADY: hahaha. i mean. if the whole weird mother/wife axis is about (1) being an untiring source of boundless Virgin Mary love and devotion for your children, and (2) keeping your man sat-is-fied, writing the article that's like, "i can't be all boundless or whatever with my kids because i'm too busy DOING IT with my hot husband, who I LOVE, and have i mentioned WE DO IT" is kind of... not necessarily a step FORWARD, you know?

AMANDA: yeah. i think she's a controversial figure for another reason, too. she wrote this essay, right, and it's basically a slap in the face to the whole love-transfer idea that's expected of a mother, and she even goes far enough to say she'd basically save her husband's life over her child's if they were like being held hostage by Two-Face or whatever and she had to choose. but then, she's spent about 4 years having to explain herself for that, and EVERYTHING SHE WRITES—her fiction, her nonfiction—is about being a mom! and obviously it's something that she appears to struggle with, but it has consumed her.

SADY: right? like, for someone who doesn't want to be defined by having babies, she sure does write a lot about having babies. and the "bad mother" label – the thing she seems to castigate herself for most fiercely is having an abortion when she knew the fetus wasn't totally healthy.

AMANDA: i know, that part made me so sad, that she has these own expectations for herself, and that even though she freely choses not to meet those expectations, she feels like a bad person for doing so

SADY: right? i mean, i can understand that being a difficult, emotional decision, but it really seems like that would only make you a "bad" mother if you had a really over-demanding list of requirements for being a "good" mother.

AMANDA: yeah. there is another really interesting unspoken element here. she met chabon 12 years ago and has had four of his children since then. she indicates that he was very early on — the day they met, i think! — clear that he wanted children. but that was never a priority for her. when she quits her job, it's not because she wants to spend time with her kid. she makes it clear she finds that boring. it's because she's jealous of him wanting that. you have to state the obvious here — the man that you love so much is the reason you have been burdened with motherhood.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and, i mean, she mentions that they got engaged three weeks after they met! which is clearly indicative of the fact that the whole "let's talk about kids and whether i want them on the first date" thing was not, ultimately, a dealbreaker.

AMANDA: yeah, and was her voice heard there? i mean she spent four of their 12 years just being pregnant with the kids. plus another pregnancy that was physically and emotionally straining. she sure had a lot of kids for not wanting them too much, right? what is the deal with that?

SADY: yeah, and then there's this, from the "modern love" column: "Every so often we escape from the children for a few days. We talk about our love, about how much we love each other's bodies and brains, about the things that make us happy in our marriage... And afterward my husband will say that we, he and I, are the core of what he cherishes, that the children are satellites, beloved but tangential." this is really caitlin-flanagan-y. SOMETHING is going on here, with the husband who tells you he wants kids and then you have four kids and then he tells you that you're the one that's most important, not the kids. SOMEONE is understating how important the kids are here, you know?

AMANDA: add that to the "abortion makes you a bad mother" thing and it's almost like, not making babies when you're able to make babies makes you a bad mother. what else explains the apparent lack of contraception here?

SADY: i get the sense that, really, waldman's either way more into having kids than she's letting on, or she's backed into this corner of defining herself as a mother while constantly talking about how she shouldn't be defined that way.

AMANDA: yeah, and i wish the people interviewing her (ok—i will send her an interview request when we finish this) would ask her these things

SADY: like, the mommy-guilt thing is interesting – "of woman born," by adrienne rich, is a good thing about mommy-guilt – because, yeah, women are constantly told HAVE BABIES HAVE BABIES HAVE BABIES and then they're told YOU'RE NOT DOING WELL ENOUGH WITH THE BABIES, so, it's like, childless or with tons of kids, you don't get to measure up, EVER.

AMANDA: and i get that she feels there are all these expectations that she has to face and can't live up to. but at the same time, there's the expectation to HAVE the kids in the first place, and she didn't have to do that—and then do it again and again and again. it would be interesting to know why, you know?

SADY: yeah, and we sentimentalize maternal instinct to the point that women who express ANYTHING deviating from the message of "i spend all day and all night thinking about my children and wanting more children and then knitting them booties and baby blankets and did i mention they are thirty-four and twenty-three" are demonized. but: there's got to be a way to tell the story of, "ok, so i have kids, and i didn't magically become a caring and perfect person who would allow her children to feast on her own flesh if necessary overnight" without slapping a title on it that's like "BAD MOTHER" and having to state that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if your kids were run over by a truck. i guess my thing is, there's a good story in here, and i wish it weren't so hyped and Mommy-Wars-ified.

AMANDA: yeah. i do appreciate that she's coming from a place of sincerity (almost to a fault), but i wish other people were asking her the right questions (instead of just, 'star jones doesn't like you what do you think of that'). or why don't you like play doh. ok — i have to GO. have four babies. wait, i mean, do my job

SADY: oh, well, good luck with that. YOU BARREN MONSTER.

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