A deep connection to humanity: Motherhood in the 21st century The Babblery, May, 2024 === Suki Wessling: [00:00:00] This is your host, Suki Wessling. A while back, I noticed something about young women, especially young professional women. When the subject turned to having children, it seemed like the same phrase occurred over and over. "It sounds so hard." And let's face it, that's not wrong, but there's a problem with that word and a problem with how we look at the struggle of gestating, birthing, and raising babies. It starts here. You might have heard this question, [00:01:00] how does this pain compare with the pain of childbirth? That's an idiotic question and frankly only makes sense to people who've never given birth because not all pain is created equally. The pain of shoulder surgery, that sucked and I wish I didn't have to do it. The pain I suffered in both my pregnancies and births, totally worth it. I got a baby out of that pain both times. Recently, my younger son was telling his girlfriend about how he had spent the last part of my pregnancy standing on my bladder. He thinks that's hilarious because, in retrospect, it is. The pain that our children cause us is almost always so dwarfed by everything else that creating, adopting, and raising children gives us. I spent the last year and a half asking many of the women I interviewed about their mothering experiences. I asked most of them to speak directly to those young women who say that phrase: being a mother sounds so hard. And without fail they were pleased to speak to these hypothetical women because without [00:02:00] fail they did not regret for a second all the pain, anguish, anger, frustration, and boredom that mothering brought. In other words, raising children was Jess Hua: challenging Rickey Gard Diamond: difficult Kristi Melani: tough Jacqueline Morgan: extraordinarily difficult Gail Borkowski: the hardest thing Shannon Murray: a time suck Felicia Rice: complicated Jacqueline Morgan: brutal, brutal Kimberly Blake Nixon: thankless Jacqueline Morgan: exhausting mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Suki Wessling: The first part of this program is going to feature birth, adoption, and mothering stories that range from inconvenient to harrowing, but I want you to keep in mind that none of these women regret the difficulty. The second half of the program will explain why they have no regrets. So as not to interrupt the flow of this blended conversation, I will let the women introduce themselves once. As we move through their experiences, their voices will be mixed together. Please consult the transcript if you'd like to see the speaker's names. Let's start with feminist writer Ricky Gard Diamond talking about the first hurdle young women face, whether they want to have babies at [00:03:00] all. Pregnancy, birth, and babies --- Rickey Gard Diamond: I loved being a mother. I did. I was surprised because I was one of these young women who didn't particularly like babies. When a baby came into the room you know, other women and girls would fuss over the baby, and I thought they were kind of homely and squirmy and not to my liking. Jacqueline Morgan: My name is Jacqueline Morgan. And despite the fact that I, felt at a very young age, that I never wanted to have kids and being told at the age of 27 that I wouldn't be able to have children, I am the mom of one biological daughter at 21. And a stepdaughter and stepson age 25 and 23. So I went from never wanting, and [00:04:00] also then believing that I wouldn't have children of my own, to having one my daughter at 36, alone the biological sponsor opted out from the very beginning. Kimberly Blake Nixon: Hi, my name is Kimberly Blake Nixon, I am 53, and I am a stepmother to two children who are currently 22 and 24 years old, and I have been their stepmother since they were 8 and 10. I never intended on having children, so it was just a choice that I had made early on in my life, and I have always been good with it. I've never regretted the choice. Shannon Murray: My name is Shannon Murray. I am a single mother to my gorgeous daughter, Sarah, who is 24 years old. When I was in my teens and 20s, like I would go out to dinner with friends and you'd hear a baby crying in the background and they'd be like, Oh, poor baby, and I'd be like, just shoot it. You know, I was, [00:05:00] they're like, you should never be a parent, you know, if that's your attitude about children crying in public, I'm like, they're just so annoying, you know, I didn't get it. Suki Wessling: So it's clear that not all moms intend to be moms or think they'll be a good mom, but pregnancy happens, and when it does, things can go very, very badly. Kristi Melani: Kristi Milani 51 years old, a mom of three. I was also told that I was at high risk for some, you know, internal issues that I was dealing with female wise. And so, I was really nervous because my son tried to come into this world at 21 weeks. We tried to slow that down. I went back to work and I, I felt like I was going into labor and it was about the 23 week mark that the doctor said, no work, you're on bed rest. That's it. people who know me know that sitting in a bed and [00:06:00] watching movies and TVs for four months, I mean, I'm thinking, I'm supposed to be having a pregnancy glow. This is not it. This is, this is not it. I'm, I'm in bed and I was so bored out of my mind that I would put a red Solo cup on my tummy and watch them kick it off because he was a kicker in my tummy. I missed out on the pregnancy glow. you know, I, I was, I was in a wheelchair for my own baby shower. Felicia Rice: My name is Felicia Rice. I have two children, two sons. One is my stepson who's 49 and one is my birth son who's 35. I had a home birth and I pushed for eight hours every time I thought of going to the hospital, you know, with the midwife, and every time I thought of, they'd say, maybe we, I'd say, no, no, no, no, no, because all I could imagine was these white shiny Tiled walls and bright fluorescent lights. And that was the absolute opposite of what the animal in me needed. And so I [00:07:00] pushed and I pushed and pushed. Finally, in the morning, I had this little boy with a bit of a cone head, but it, you know, not much. I just turned out to be narrow inside and nobody would ever have known that. I had a really good pregnancy. the hardest part was just exhaustion, physical exhaustion. Rickey Gard Diamond: it was a difficult birth. I had expected to get a spinal which didn't work and so I had a natural childbirth without any of the natural childbirth lessons. Jess Hua: My name is Jess Hua. I am an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I am also a mom of two children I have a five year old named Kaya and a two year old named KJ. I was asked about what was one very challenging thing about having children. And I think what immediately comes to mind is the birth of my second child. That [00:08:00] was not easy in that it was a difficult birth. I started hemorrhaging and I could feel the blood leaving my body. And it was fundamentally a life changing experience because it made me realize how fleeting life can be. Bettina Aptheker: I'm, Bettina Aptheker I have, retired from UCSC where I taught for about 40 years. We didn't know anything about our, my God, my first birth experience was like, I knew where it was going to come out. You know, I mean, I had no idea and, and we were so ignorant, we were so ignorant of our own bodies. And of course the doctor was always at that time, the doctors were overwhelmingly male and told you what to do. And the whole protocol around childbirth was, you didn't have any control over anything. They just, you were like, at least [00:09:00] I was, a body that upon which the doctors acted. Suki Wessling: Thank goodness that for most of us the birth experience has improved since the time when women were acted upon in birth. But once we have that baby, well, we have more information now, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier. Deborah Ruf: My name is Deborah Ruf and I'm the mother of three grown kids . They are currently ages 47, 45, and 40. As women, we have a ticking clock and there are only so many years that you can have children. And that means you're going to be on the young and unwise stage of your life. And that was hard because as a smart person, I thought I knew everything already. Most smart people do. They think I've got this, but we don't. So we're learning those lessons as our [00:10:00] children are growing. That we really didn't know what we were doing, and if only this, and if only that. Rebecca: My name is Rebecca and my child is 22. They were adopted as a baby and into a family where we already had three older children that were my husband's children from his first marriage. And so we had a blended family which had its own challenges in addition to our young child who had significant challenges as well. My child was adopted at a week old and was a beautiful baby and the apple of my eye for, um, the first couple years with the exception of having really extreme sleep issues. So I remember it being just excruciating. My husband [00:11:00] worked nights, so I was at home alone with this baby, and I even remember climbing in their crib with them one night thinking that that would help console them. Jacqueline Morgan: What was really hard being an only parent was the loneliness that emerged in those special moments, like the first steps. there's nobody there in that moment to share that with. Certainly there's grandparents and there's aunts and there's uncles, but, it was hard. Raising a child on your own, raising children on your own is extraordinarily difficult. It's exhausting mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Having a support system, having a group of, of, individuals to support you is absolutely critical. Kristi Melani: There were some other tough moments where he too was, was, you know, he was bullied as I was. Those are tough to watch your, your kids go through where you [00:12:00] just want to, you know, strangle the other kid. I may have exchanged some words with a sixth grader. Just gonna say, the mama bear in me . I went into the principal's office, like, hey, heads up, I may have just called out a fourth grader, but that's because you're not doing anything, so I'm gonna do it, so, there you go. Step-parents --- Suki Wessling: We're talking about mothering in this episode of The Babblery, but not every woman comes into mothering through pregnancy and childbirth. The divorce rate pretty much guarantees that many of us will take on stepmothering, and that comes with a whole host of new difficulties. Kimberly Blake Nixon: The first thing I did when I started dating their father was start reading a bunch of books about what it's like to date someone divorced with children. in every book that you can find, every book that I've found, and I have a library they all start the same way. Chapter [00:13:00] 1 says So you're thinking about becoming a stepparent. Don't do it. It's a thankless job. It never gets better. You will never have the love and appreciation of a real mother and that children will, you know, never ever really bond with you in the way you hope that they would. And then chapter two says, okay, you're still here. Here's some things you should know if you're going to go ahead and move forward. so, and it was rough. I mean, it was, you know, you go through the whole dating thing where you get to know them, but they're not really. They don't really care about all that. They just care that they're having fun when they're with you. I'm dating, right. But I'm also dating them because they are part of my new boyfriend's life. Felicia Rice: My partner was a wonderful father and it was very difficult circumstances with a fractured family. And I would just say that the [00:14:00] hard part there was that the family system was fractured we were younger. There was a lot of hot feelings. Jacqueline Morgan: And it's very, very, very hard to show up and consistently be the one that does all the work and gets none of the credit, none. And by credit, I don't mean, Oh, you're such a good parent. You're such a good mom. I mean, you don't get any of the love. It goes to that other parent that is in my estimation, doing none of the work, zero. I'll tell you, I would be an only parent a million times over before I would ever want to go down the being a step parent path because that is brutal, brutal. Suki Wessling: As our children grow and move out into the world, our relationship with them changes. They present challenges we never expected, and in the imperfect world of parenting, we attempt to rise to those challenges as best we can. Supporting teens --- Rickey Gard Diamond: I was not very smart and I planned my divorce for a juncture where [00:15:00] my oldest was just reaching her teen years. And it was a really difficult time for our whole family for all kinds of reasons I won't get into now. But there was a time when I thought, gosh, I don't know if my kids and I are ever going to be on the same terms again. They hate me. It's goodbye mom and slam the door and. I thought maybe this is the end of our relationship. Shannon Murray: She came out to me at the end of her freshman year in high school. She was 14. And she knew what I was about. She was concerned what the rest of our family was about. I've been an ally since kindergarten when one of the boys on the playground said my shoes didn't go with my dress and I needed to know more about his world and why he thought that. So lifetime ally and then, you know, she knew she could comfortably come out to me and then all of a sudden I became like the the team mom for all of her friends that didn't have parents that were supportive of their coming out journey, or their transition, or just them [00:16:00] discovering who they were on that whole spectrum of the lgbtq plus community. Bettina Aptheker: The children in general were reticent about coming out, telling their friends that they had two mothers, but this, that's the time period, you know, in which they were living. Shannon Murray: She also has a very minor learning disability, a little bit ADD, so a little bit of a dreamer. She's very creative as well. But she also has a strong science mind, so she's going into a biology field. But she has nearly perfect pitch, she has a beautiful alto voice, she plays a six string bass, she used to play violin as a kid , and then she just decided one day she didn't want to do it anymore, so she stopped, which broke my heart. Relationship with other parent --- Suki Wessling: In heterosexual couples, there is the added complexity of navigating gender roles in the home. Although certainly there are couples who have achieved parenting parity, research and many women's experiences show that mothering is significantly more difficult than fathering in most relationships. For women of Deborah's generation, lack of communication compounded the problem. Deborah Ruf: I pushed [00:17:00] my children's father away. He was hardly ever home for bedtime for the children. And it got to the point where they would reach for me and not want to go to him. Now, I didn't create that. But I kept it going out of resentment, and I, I was taking care of it all myself, We weren't communicating effectively and I'm sorry I didn't have the skills to do it better and to get him persuaded that he too needed to do it better and we needed help, but we floundered for too long and that, that made it very difficult. Suki Wessling: But a generation later, Shannon found that her partner still couldn't see the differences in their roles. Shannon Murray: My daughter's dad won't listen to this, but I would say even when we were married, I was pretty much a single parent. You know, I raised my daughter. He had influence. I raised her. And so, being a mom is not for the faint of heart. Being a parent. Raising a child, you know, you don't have to be [00:18:00] either biological, you could be a grandparent or an adoptive parent, but all of it's hard. Gail Borkowski: My name is Gail Thornton Borkowski I have two children, two young adult children. The hardest thing to date? I'm going to put that caveat in there because it's to date has really been about letting go and allowing them to live their lives and make mistakes and figure things out without me providing my own experience and wisdom and and being able to just step back and see them as adults and not the little children that came into the world that I just instantly fell in love with. Suki Wessling: We've been listening to women talking about some [00:19:00] of the difficult experiences they've had as mothers. Although I think the word journey is rather overused these days, parenting really is a journey you take with your child. Once you set out taking responsibility for a child's life, you're stuck on whatever path they lead you to. When we come back, I promise we're going to get to the good stuff. But first, when parenting, as Gail pointed out, never really ends. Wendy: There were always professionals at the table looking to point the finger at me and what I was causing. you know, she's 24 now and I can in earnest, claim that this is not my doing, [00:20:00] Part 2 --- Suki Wessling: Welcome back to the Babblery's episode on the challenges and joys of mothering. This is your host, Suki Wessling. We're next going to hear from two moms, Rebecca and Wendy, whose unique experiences really highlight the complexity of mothering. Rebecca and Wendy are friends, and they met because of their unusually difficult parenting experiences. Like all the other moms featured here, they have no regrets, but unlike most of the other moms, their unusual experiences put them in a whole [00:21:00] different category of parenting. We last left Rebecca after she had gone through extreme sleep issues with her otherwise wonderful newly adopted baby. Rebecca: The sleep stuff was very difficult. And then when they got into preschool, it became apparent that they didn't play the same as the other kids. And the preschool teachers, um, and I began having conversations and they had suggested that, and they were, my child was probably three years old at that point, that we have an assessment done by a non profit, we were living in Seattle at the time, that did assessments of young children to kind of, you know, kind of suss out whether there was something going on. And they assessed that, yes, there were some kind of behavioral challenges and some social challenges, and they put us on the track [00:22:00] with the school district before they went into kindergarten to get an IEP in place, which we did. Suki Wessling: An IEP is an individualized education plan that gives teachers guidelines for working with children who have disabilities. Rebecca: The behaviors at that point were very, Uh, volatile, a lot of tantruming, kicking, um, you know, very difficult to get them in a seatbelt in the car without having to like hold them down. Um, you know, it was just a lot of really volatile behavior and then just unusual behavior with other kids just didn't play the same way with kind of awkward in play situations that made other kids feel uncomfortable. Wendy: Hi, I'm Wendy and I also come from a blended family. I have one biological child. She is 24 now and I have two step [00:23:00] kids who are also college age. I'm an elementary school teacher, and I have experience in the preschool realm as well, and I knew almost within three months of her birth, that she was struggling significantly, and as she grew, those challenges grew with her. They were, uh, both physical and, and emotional. The diagnosis, however, wasn't done until I think she was about four or five years old when we started to get actual diagnoses. And those changed over the years, which is incredibly frustrating and confusing. And so, um, at a certain point, I became a single mom and working in the school system where she also was. I had both the insider view and [00:24:00] was very much an outsider as a parent in an IEP. I had done all kinds of courses on, um, management of, of a classroom. And then all of a sudden, once I was that parent, whose child was behaving within the school day, but falling apart as soon as I came to the door, all of that came back to me and I felt so much shame for judging other people. And I don't think until you've walked in those shoes, you can't, absolutely cannot have that understanding and the, it's just such a different There are particular reasons for those, those kids falling apart, as well as a different milieu that they're coexisting with their parents versus their teachers and their, their peers. Suki Wessling: On the [00:25:00] spectrum of parenting challenges, Rebecca and Wendy went through some of the toughest. They were blamed by professionals for their children's behavior, both before and after diagnosis. The children's issues caused strain in their families, damaged relationships, and cost them incalculable amounts of time and money. Eventually, both of their children spent time in residential care, and as young adults, they still work to overcome and live with significant disabilities. And if this sounds like the horror story meant to dissuade young women from motherhood, it's not. Because although Rebecca and Wendy were given a tough challenge, they met that challenge. And the fact of humanity is that parenting is a gamble. The odds are actually great for most of us, unlike the odds at a roulette table. Most of our kids will be healthy, will find their way, and may even achieve beyond our expectations. But some of our children teach us to readjust our expectations, to take joy in smaller things, and to remember that any life, no matter how challenging, is [00:26:00] worthy of nurturing. Here's Rebecca, whose baby, you may remember, didn't sleep. Rebecca: I was in love with that baby. They were the joy of my life. I mean, I had never been so happy to have that little person in my life, you know? I just remember looking at them and playing with them and being on the floor. I mean, I had not had my own child before, and it gave me joy in a way that I had never had in my life. Suki Wessling: And here's Wendy who bonded with her daughter even more deeply through the challenges. Wendy: When it was just the two of us, we did so many great things together, both creatively and, um, and otherwise, just, we were always together. And she's really funny, has such a great sense of humor. And I think, part of her, her challenge is that [00:27:00] disability enables her to view the world in a way that most of us don't see. And when she will make statements, she herself thinks it's really funny. So as a family unit, she was the one that would bring us together, and then she would make these statements. We'd all be at the table, and it would be silent, like a really difficult moment, and she would just make that elephant in the room very identifiable, just in plain terms, just outright, boom, here's how it is. Rebecca: Being on the autism spectrum from a very young age had a huge facility with language and would say the most incredible things and had the most unusual and incredible interests. You know, it's offered a different kind of rich life with a child that I might not have otherwise been exposed to. Why is such a difficult job worth the trouble? --- Suki Wessling: We're [00:28:00] capping off. The 'mothering is hard' section of this episode with Rebecca and Wendy's experiences because yes, sometimes mothering is even harder than we anticipate. Yet still, after all this, we speak with joy about our children. The pain fades and in its place comes a deep satisfaction. So now let's allow these moms to tell us the ways that motherhood surprised, delighted, and taught them. And here we go. We'll start with a little bald-faced mom-brag. Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing those thrilling moments when we realize that our kids have made it. Go for it, Kristi! Kristi Melani: My son is a musician and he has been playing drums, the guitar, bass since he was about six years old. And he's a quiet kid, but not, right? The music kind of brings out the, the personality in him. And during COVID, that's really what got him through it. And they did a virtual concert [00:29:00] and he's very good I'm, I know I sound like "that mom," but he is very naturally, very talented. Um, I played the piano and had to practice a hundred hours and I still couldn't memorize anything. He is very, very good. And, um, he was doing a virtual concert, you know, where hundreds of us watching. And, he leaned into the microphone because he doesn't sing. He's, he's guitar. He leaned, leaned to the microphone and you know, I love you, mom. You want to talk about like, he found his passion. He found his courage. Screw all those kids who bullied him and whatnot. It's like if you could see him and the talent that he has. And I did, I pushed him a little bit, you know, we tried football, baseball, everything, but when I see him with that [00:30:00] instrument and him recognizing himself that he knows he's pretty darn good at this, that was a super proud moment that just went, I think I did good. Bettina Aptheker: When he was very little, and he was three years old, I took him with me to Europe when I was touring for Angela Davis. And, um, he was a marvelous little traveler. And he was very cute. He would stand up on, you know, on the airplanes, he would stand up on the seat and talk to the people behind him. And he would say, I speak English. What do you speak? Having figured out at the age of three or four that people spoke something different than he did. And we were joking about it just very recently, because his career is, he teaches English as a second language. LAUGHS Suki Wessling: A commonality for many of the [00:31:00] moms was speaking about how their children brought them more deeply into their communities. As childless adults, we often move through the community forming connections only when we make them intentionally. But with children, those connections are forged organically as we perform the necessities of parenting. Shannon Murray: I became like the the team mom for all of her friends that didn't have parents that were supportive of them discovering who they were on that whole spectrum of the lgbtq plus community. So I have kids in Australia and in Europe that my daughter gets in Discord with, friends all over the United States. I have my own nickname, you know, um, her nickname is Humble. And since I'm the mom of Humble, I'm Mumble and I get in and, and like poke my head around and say, Hey, how are you kids doing? You know, kind of a thing every once in a while. So, you know, um, I have my physical, you know, daughter that I made, but I also have this broader community that I'm mom to. So I never saw myself as a mother when I was in my younger years. And [00:32:00] now, you know, like, when I go out and do theater, I call all the kids that I do shows with, you know, they're my daughter's age or older. It's like, if you're not exactly my age or obviously older, I'm calling you one of my kids. You know, and I'm like, you know, I just treat them like I would my daughter. So I have this huge community of people that I call my children. I love it. Felicia Rice: It brought me into, same with a stepchild as well, into the community of parents and children, which I would not have been as a prof I wasn't as a professional young woman, artist doing my thing thing. I was just not a part of that world, and it unifies us across all classes, races, ages, you know, so I go to my 14 year old grandson's, graduation from the 8th grade and I'm thrown in with another set of grandparents and the woman and I just proceed to sit down and have like hours of conversation, you know, and she's from Wyoming and I'm from California and we, there, this is the, this is the common [00:33:00] denominator. Bettina Aptheker: We were living in Pacific Grove when the kids were growing up, Kate and I. And the Pacific Grove had, a very strong women's movement, and it had a very strong lesbian community. So, our kids grew up in that milieu when Jenny, our youngest, would come home from school, she could stop at, you know, uh, various places along the way, for example, at KAZU Radio at that time, where J. J. T. Mason was doing her radio program, who's a prominent, you know, feminist and, and, and well known and somebody else had a print shop and they could stop there so she had her little routes if she wanted to have a cookie or visit with somebody or things like that. Suki Wessling: In this age of blended families, a lot of the moms helped to raise children brought in from another relationship. And you heard some of the problems earlier. As a friend once complained to me, you really don't have a chance if your stepkids have ever listened to fairy tales. But work and patience do pay off, and these moms don't [00:34:00] regret their years of stepmothering. Let's start with Kimberly Blake Nixon. When we last left her, she was devouring books about dating men with children. Here Kimberly relates a small success she had when the kids were young, which became a huge life success for one of the kids as an adult. Stepkids --- Kimberly Blake Nixon: And so, you know, you're cooking dinner, trying to impress the guy you're dating, and the kids are on the other side making faces like they're about to throw up because of what you tried to feed them. I was sitting in the kitchen one day, pouring over this cookbook, thinking like, What am I going to make that this kid is going to eat? Because I don't want to do this fighting thing through dinner. It's just awful. And so, looking through the pages, he comes downstairs for a glass of water, and he says, What are you doing? And I said, Well, I'm trying to figure out what we're going to have for dinner. But I'm out of ideas. So I'll tell you what. Take this book, take it upstairs with your sister, and in 30 minutes, I want you guys to pick something you want for dinner, that you want to eat. Come back down, show it to me, and that's what I'll make. And he was like, okay, [00:35:00] and he grabbed the book and he left, and at first I was like, well that was easy, and then I thought, what if they pick something, like, really hard to make? What am I gonna do, right? And so, they come back down, And because they're kids, they chose something with a photo, which was really helpful for me. And I thought, well, that's simple enough. I can totally pull that off. Would you know, both of them, every bite, they couldn't get enough of it. They loved it all and so we started this whole thing where when they would come and stay with me, they would pick out what we ate. And then one day my son was like you know what are you doing and I'm like peeling potatoes for the mashed potatoes and he was like can I help and I was like, Sure. I gave him a potato and a peeler and I had, it cooked the whole rest of the meal and it was on the table and he was still peeling the first potato, but it kept him busy and he was involved. And anyway, long story short, when he graduated from high school, he decided to go to culinary school. And, you know, four [00:36:00] years later, came back with a degree in culinary art and came home and got a job at a local deli, it's his first job, and the owner of that deli was a local chef, and that local chef introduced him to somebody else, and now he works as the pastry chef at a Michelin star restaurant in Carmel by the Sea. It's this kid that wouldn't eat anything. He's 24 years old. He's the pastry chef at a Michelin star restaurant, and I am in awe of him, and it's all because of our relationship led him to a path that he discovered joy in his life over something that was such a challenge, that this kid wouldn't eat anything. Jacqueline Morgan: I found my my daughter and my son, incredibly easy to love, and I believed with my heart that if I just showed up and loved them through it, it would be okay, and that was not the [00:37:00] case. So long term, right, you, you learn to shift what love looks like. It's different with a biological child than it is with a step for me. It's different with my biological child than it is with my two stepchildren. No, it doesn't look and feel the same and that's okay. And if you can get over yourself and get over your own expectations and make a space for whatever that's going to look and feel like for you and these other two humans, there's a lot of grace in that. Felicia Rice: So that's, really gratifying to have something work out through time that started, with so much difficulty. And I think that's a really important message. That sticking with something can take you somewhere else. That what seems imminently important does not remain imminently important in the same way through time. I learned that from being a step parent. Suki Wessling: That was artist Felicia Rice, who is [00:38:00] now a grandmother. Her mothering experiences led to a fundamental understanding. Sticking with something hard can lead you to somewhere else, somewhere you didn't plan to go, somewhere that becomes more special to you than you could ever imagine. Kristi Melani: It all comes full circle to where he just, he makes me so, so proud that I just, I can't imagine not having a child. And I work hard. I work, my career is a very, very heavy hours, lots of demand, but I will stop the minute he needs me. [00:39:00] Part 3 --- Suki Wessling: I'm your host, Suki Wessling. Over the past year and a half, I've asked all my guests about their mothering experiences. I had this bug in my brain about hearing young women talk in a way that seemed different from when I was young. I do remember my friends and I talking about 'not yet.' We thought we had to wait until we felt successful before we were ready to have kids, and though I now view that as somewhat silly, since I basically had to give up on being successful enough, it seems like young women of today are saying something quite different. They seem to be shying away from motherhood, not for their own reasons, but because of the message they are hearing. I am no Luddite, and I actually love some aspects of social media. I also know that a culture is healthier when we talk about our problems instead of hiding them. [00:40:00] Problems hidden in the dark thrive in the dark. But I do blame our modern habit of over- discussing everything, at least a bit, for the phenomenon of young women shying away from motherhood. What would my young self think if I could read every pregnancy, birth, and motherhood horror story in existence with just a few clicks? And what would my young self think if I saw every bad thing that might happen to my child? Candice Price: Hi, my name is Candice Price. Uh, I'm an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Smith College in Massachusetts. I have, uh, all of my degrees in mathematics and I am wrestling with a five month old today, just trying to get him to nap. Um, so we'll see how that goes. Suki Wessling: Recently I interviewed Candice for a forthcoming episode on gifted girls, for which she has a particular perspective. Candice is a Black woman mathematician in a world where such a designation [00:41:00] is scarce. She is also mom to a new baby boy, born into an era when our society is rightfully highlighting the mistreatment of young Black men. But the age of live streaming not only leads to greater awareness, it also leads to hyper awareness, a state where all the possible negative things that could happen live in our immediate consciousness. It makes being hopeful and happy all that much harder to achieve, and all the more necessary to focus on. Candice Price: It's incredible to learn every single day from someone. And I learn so many things from him every day, especially patience, um, and how to advocate for myself. You know, I think I, I was very worried about doing this with him because, um, my mom had to go to the doctor for her doctor's appointment. And I was like, okay, I guess I will have the baby during my interview. Okay. I can do this. [00:42:00] And I just realized that people are a bit more understanding than I would have thought. And he's just, he's so, he has so much life and love and every look and it's amazing to just feel that. Um, I think, I think we often have all these big thoughts, but I was going through life um, and I had never had this kind of love before. Of course, right. I'm, I'm raising a young Black boy in America, and that is kind of scary for me to think about the things that I've seen in society and the ways that we treat, um, Black children in general, but especially Black boys. I worry about how to support him in the society as he grows up as a Black [00:43:00] male, because, everyone is very fascinated with him. He's so cute. Look how sweet he is. But at some point there's a change and folks start to fear him, which is very scary to me because he will always be this adorable, cute person for me. Suki Wessling: Similarly, as a feminist and civil rights scholar, Bettina Aptheker understood the world her daughters would face as young women, but she speaks of their growth as an achievement on par with all her academic accolades. Bettina Aptheker: Lisa, for example, Kate is her biological mother. Lisa, from a very early age, knew that she wanted to be a, a, a scientist. She went straight through and I will just say with great pride now, um, she is one of the leading climate scientists in the world and she lives in Canada, uh, in British Columbia and was one of the speakers, for example, at the most recent UN Climate conference in Dubai. I [00:44:00] think it was held. They did it on zoom, but I'm just she's an amazing, amazing scientist has done amazing work. Our youngest daughter, Jenny, she's been very active in our community for many years. And again, um, a very, independent minded, as, as is Lisa, very, um, I think a certain kind of sure, both of them, a certain kind of sure, sure footedness, you know, I think neither of them thought they couldn't do something because they were female. Suki Wessling: How is it that women embark on this incredible experiment with so little idea of how it will come out? At the beginning of this episode, I talked about the different kinds of pain that we might experience. Well, we also experience different kinds of satisfaction. Launching a child into the world cannot be compared to a promotion at work or publishing your first book or starting a successful company. Nurturing a human to adulthood leads to an almost inexplicable satisfaction, a sense of completeness and continuity that is more important [00:45:00] to humans now than it ever was. Young women today are looking forward to the first time in recent memory that humanity doesn't necessarily seem to be moving on a positive trajectory. All of our achievements, everything we've discovered and built, it all seems dwarfed by the question of whether we'll survive at all. Let's repeat Jess Hua's negative experience, nearly dying in childbirth, because her reaction to it illustrates why raising children is so deeply satisfying. Jess Hua: I started hemorrhaging and I could feel the blood leaving my body. And it was fundamentally a life changing experience because it made me realize how fleeting life can be. That was something that was very hard. But something that came out of that is this intense appreciation for life, for every moment, for time that I have, time with my children, time that I get to [00:46:00] spend on a job that I love so much, time that I get to spend with my friends, things that I love to do like sports, and so it is an enhanced sense that I have now that I gained from that really negative experience. Long term rewards --- Shannon Murray: I used to say like, God, it's such a time suck to be a parent. It's like you're throwing away your life, you know, and I want to, like I said, I want to go travel. I want to go do shows. I want to be in shows. I want to see shows. I want to, you know, if I want to go halfway across the world on a moment's notice and hop on a plane, you can't do that if you're a mom. You know, who are you? Crazy people reproducing in this world, you know, but once I made the decision, it is hard. It is a god awful hard job, and unless you are willing to invest a solid chunk of your life in doing it, don't do it. You just have to be at a point in your life where like this is an investment you want to make. My biological clock wasn't ticking. I didn't have some like agenda that I needed to fulfill. I just felt like I [00:47:00] really wanted to share my life and, you know, bring another person into the world. Rickey Gard Diamond: When I saw my baby, Christine, I fell in love and it was just the best feeling. I, I was just, it was like, a whole world opened up for me and then as she grew older and it became clear she liked me too. She loved me. I, I thought it was marvelous. Suki Wessling: And it's a good thing we fall in love with those babies, because, well, let's hear a couple more moms before we get into the long term picture. Deborah Ruf: If you really bond with each child you have, if you bond with that child, you will never experience anything so reciprocal and loving as your child who is adoring you and counting on you. Felicia Rice: My son was just a real pleasure. He was he was just so interesting and funny and responsive and smart and [00:48:00] curious and so social. I was just his social manager. Uh, every morning it was like, who is he gonna play with today? I don't regret a second of doing that. Motherhood, the job that never ends --- Gail Borkowski: The amazing thing about that and what I think is just incredible about that is when they really find those successes in their own lives and, um, those, um, those, um, those, um, joyful places and accomplishments that they have been able to reach their own goals, however minute or big, it just makes my heart swell because I love them so much and want them to be successful in their own lives. It just gives me such a, it gives me hope. That as people in this world, they are good people with hearts and consciences and, and desires and their own joys. And that just makes [00:49:00] it really special. Jacqueline Morgan: It's hard at the, really hard at the beginning, and if you can hang in there, you reap the rewards longer term. Suki Wessling: Motherhood is the job that never ends. Luckily, it's a job that never stops changing also. And it's a job that rewards us in ways we'd never expect. Shannon Murray: Do I want to keep her home and hug her and kiss her and squeeze her and love her forever? Of course I do, but that is not natural and doesn't allow growth for either of us. You know, she should be learning how to move on out of the nest and she should be wanting to leave and go evolve into the person she needs to be and we call it, you know, full tilt boogie adulting. My own mother, Mimi --- Suki Wessling: Before we wrap up this episode on mothering, I decided to call up my own mother, Mimi Wessling, who is 86 and has five living adult children. I remembered some stories that she'd told me about birthing babies in the 60s, especially her first child. Mimi Wessling: Our first [00:50:00] child, Maria, was born when we were in graduate school . She was hanging around in there as I did my last research to be able to write my master's dissertation. It was kind of exciting because she was the first baby that had been born without anesthesia in the hospital where she was born in Philadelphia. And so I was kind of a heroine. Uh, they visited me all the time to see, you know, what was it that motivated me to do this? Well, I am being a scientist and I had read the stories about the, uh, possible negative effects of, uh, on the baby if things didn't work quickly when you had an anesthetic in there. I thought that was the way to go. Well, that was the easy part. She was born. That was easy enough. But on the way back, we looked at each other and said, [00:51:00] okay, what next? Because we really, you know, there's, there's no manual for being a parent. I mean, there are now, but I didn't know of any, and I never looked for any. And so it was kind of funny, but in a certain sense, it was where, where we started with our family. Suki Wessling: She had a little story for each of us, including my older brother. Mimi Wessling: I was all dressed and ready to go to Mass on, on this day. It was Mother's Day actually. And I started to have indications that maybe I wasn't going to make it to Mass. So we, uh, drove to the hospital and he was born. And I remember the young doctor that was there with the doctor that delivered Tony. He looked at me and he says, Well, I haven't seen many women come in with eye makeup and have a baby. It's funny how these little things are popping up in my mind now. Suki Wessling: Her [00:52:00] pregnancies weren't all happy. After I was born, she carried twins to full term and they died at birth. Mimi Wessling: I went in on a Wednesday with what I thought was labor pains and the doctor poo pooed me. it makes me so angry. It just tells you something about the, the way medical professionals could get away with things at that point. Suki Wessling: But despite the struggles and the fact that the five of us delayed her career, my mother expressed no regrets. Mimi Wessling: You have a choice in letting it ruin the rest of your life or coming to terms with it. Then we had Joe and he was kind of, you know, my reward. Suki Wessling: And that about sums it up. All these mothers considered each child, however much difficulty they brought into our lives, a reward. The many rewards of mothering --- Kristi Melani: Somebody had asked me, what is on my bucket list, um, that I've checked off. And I said, the top of my bucket list was to be a mom. I check it off as in the, I have delivered a child. [00:53:00] My job is never over. It's the best job. Felicia Rice: It's good to look at yourself and learn about yourself and be aware of your needs and stuff. But that stops at a certain point. You stop and the other person begins and in that margin between the two of you, that's where you need to live. You need to live there with an awareness of what the needs are of your own and the needs of others. Shannon Murray: I wouldn't say we're best friends, but we understand each other at a core soul level, where sometimes we just don't even have to have conversations and we totally get the vibe. She is, a passionate person who loves life and has, lots of thoughts and feelings about lots of things. Kristi Melani: It's why people forget about tough pregnancies, I think, because you look at. the joy that you have and get to kind of live vicariously through them as they get older. He's a straight A student. He's a sweetheart. I mean, he has his moments. We [00:54:00] all do. Felicia Rice: About young women being afraid of, birth and, and child rearing. I really wanted them to be fiercer. I want them to recognize their strength and be stronger. I want them to know that women have had children and, endured childbearing since the very beginning, for millennia. Suki Wessling: Young people today are afraid that humans won't survive the challenges that we've created for ourselves. But there's one thing that's clear. Without all these thoughtful young people that we've nurtured, there would be no future for them to save. My own children are young [00:55:00] adults, and I'm not going to tell them that they must raise children. But I am going to tell them that if they do, they will find a deep connection to their humanity that they never expected they'd feel. I don't regret one bit of the pain, sadness, and fear I experienced in pregnancy, birth, and child rearing. But don't just listen to me. For the many women who spoke in the last hour, motherhood is Jess Hua: Exciting and fresh Rickey Gard Diamond: marvelous Wendy: great Rickey Gard Diamond: wonderful Jacqueline Morgan: evolving Bettina Aptheker: marvelous Shannon Murray: an investment Kimberly Blake Nixon: it worked out incredibly well Shannon Murray: mystical Rickey Gard Diamond: rewarding Rebecca: so happy Felicia Rice: gratifying Kristi Melani: very, very fun Deborah Ruf: absolutely an amazing time. Gail Borkowski: amazing Shannon Murray: full tilt boogie Kristi Melani: super proud Mimi Wessling: most welcomed Gail Borkowski: ultimate, expression of love and unconditional love Felicia Rice: a real pleasure Rickey Gard Diamond: it's inexplicable. I, I can't explain it even. I continue to be surprised by it. Suki Wessling: Thanks to all the birth moms, stepmoms, and adoptive [00:56:00] moms who shared their insights for this episode. You can learn more about them and the episodes they took part in on the Babblery website. The song Persopolis is by CyberSDF is courtesy of Bandcamp. The Song Mama by Quimorucru is from the free music archive.org. Thanks for listening. END ---