Reading the comments on The Cut’s Instagram page is not for the faint of heart. Things tend to get weird and heated and even more weird, but sometimes they also get interesting, like they did after writer Shannon Keating wrote an essay about her confused ambivalence about having children.

The piece ran with the eye-catching headline “Should I Be A Mom, or Should I Stay A ‘Brat’”? (‘Brat’ is a reference to Charli XCX’s latest album, on which she has a song that contemplates motherhood.) After The Cut promoted this essay Instagram, people began to pop off almost immediately. The rather innocuous essay spawned a whole lot of diametrically opposed anger. Women with children expressed anger at the idea that women couldn’t be moms and brats (they can!), while women without children expressed anger at the idea that not being a mom means you’re inevitably a brat (you aren’t!). One commenter railed against the idea that “having kids is the only way to feel like you have a purpose in life, while another disputed the idea that “you have a baby and suddenly morph into an ultra conservative MOM with no other personality but MOM.” (Others just wanted everyone to stop talking about moms and brats and parenting and ambivalence altogether. Lol.)

A quick perusal of these comments made one thing clear: Women of child-bearing age are feeling a whole lot of defensiveness about their choices surrounding having children — regardless of what those choices are. What was behind this?

And then we read “What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice” by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, a new book that examines just that. Berg and Wiseman examine the rising sense of child-having ambivalence many middle and upper-class Gen X, millennial and Gen Z women report feeling. They come at these questions from a philosophical and literary point of view, positioning this widespread ambivalence within the dual rise of the anti-abortion/pro-forced birth tradwife contingent on the right and nihilistic, anti-natalist attitudes on the left. (As pro-choice feminists, Berg and Wiseman are most interested in interrogating how we discuss these topics on the left, rather than lingering on the well-worn and obvious critiques of how motherhood is weaponized on the right.)

This idea made the chaotic comments section make sense; the way that women seemed to be responding both to the pressure to have children in order to justify their worth as women and the idea that being a mother is an inherently selfish and irresponsible decision that does not deserve collective support. Both feelings, in short, are awful, and neither serve us. And, of course, we are all more than one thing; our identities should not have to hinge on Mother or Not. Maybe we can all be party-loving brats sometimes.

In this Rich Text episode, we get into our own knee-jerk defensiveness on these topics, our reactions to the book, whether the left has been talking about parenthood in the wrong ways, and the enduring power of FOMO. Hope you enjoy! Xo

Further Reading:

“What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice” by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman

“How Liberals Talk About Children,” Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker

“Should I Be a Mom, or Should I Stay a ‘Brat’?,” Shannon Keating, The Cut

Ann Friedman’s return from maternity leave, The Ann Friedman Weekly

Time to Say Goodbye podcast interview with Anastasia Berg, Rachel Wiseman, Jay Kang and Tyler Austin Harper

“How to Choose, or Not Choose, Motherhood,” Claire’s HuffPost essay, which we reference in the episode!

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