Gossip Drop #13: A rant about what we f**king want from mothers.

Hmm?

There’s a debate going viral at the moment between three feminists. It’s worth noting that the debate took place on Diary of a CEO, hosted by Stephen Bartlett. I don’t think a woman could host this conversation. It would get too personal, too messy, our standards would be too ridiculously high for what we would expect that woman to acknowledge, to caveat, to represent. If you’re a woman who’s going to talk about feminism in any public way, you need to account for every possible kind of experience, lest you be shouted at so loudly that no one’s even listening to what’s being said. Holding every truth, simultaneously, all of the time, is impossible, of course. So the debates about feminism, apparently, are best moderated by men.

This isn’t a swipe at Bartlett - I think open, honest conversations about conflicting perspectives are productive, regardless of who hosts them or where they take place.

But there’s one specific element of this debate I want to delve into. I do want to focus on ideas, not people, but the fact is that TikTok seems to be taunting me with statements from psychoanalyst Erica Komisar, known for her very passionate criticism of daycare. In the debate, Komisar says we are doing “terrible damage” to our children by leaving them with strangers. (This language, of course, is very intentional. Early childhood educators must always be strangers. Never people that might develop an important emotional connection with our children. No. Strangers). She’s of the opinion that mothers are prioritising their own desires over their children, and because of that, we’re abandoning children. They have been. Abandoned. Oh, also, she likens daycare to ‘orphanages’ and uses the term ‘institutionalised care’. Just in case you had any doubt as to whether she thinks you’re a monster.

The vibe - not just from Komisar, but from many commentators like her - is this:

Just have your baby and stay home with them for the first three years, it’s not that hard. Perhaps five years, until they start school. And if you have subsequent children, yes, that turns into six years, nine years, maybe ten plus. If you don’t want to do that, why did you choose to have kids in the first place? You selfish cow?

It’s this broad concept, that working mothers are psychologically harming their kids, that I want to rant about. But first, while I take a breath, recommendations.

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Recommendations

It’s a great week for distractions! Lucky nothing of consequence is happening in the world! Lalalalalalalala I’m listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat so I can’t think about the possibility of World War Three.

I finished the haunting, captivating novel A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan, which you’ve probably been seeing everywhere. It’s told from the perspective of a 10-year-old girl, Alix, who goes on a family holiday to a New Zealand coastal town with her parents and her older sister. The genius of the story lies in this point-of-view, because somehow Trevelyan captures exactly what it’s like to be a child. It’s set in the eighties, but even as someone who grew up in the nineties, it felt compulsively familiar. The nostalgia. For a time where your only source of distraction was a walkman, your sister’s magazines, and maybe some sport on TV.

There are moments where the events happening around her are beyond Alix’s comprehension, but Trevelyan cleverly weaves this naivety into a world so vivid that a reader starts to unravel the mystery. Adored it.

I also watched Titan on Netflix, the new documentary about the OceanGate submersible disaster, and holy goodness it’s the best thing I’ve seen in a very long time. There was so much I didn’t know about the story. Like the fact OceanGate had a somewhat dodgy reputation, that employees had raised concerns and then been let go, that its founder - Stockton Rush, who died in the 2023 implosion - ignored expert safety advice. It’s a brilliant, nuanced exploration of what happens when arrogance meets innovation, and when a company’s culture doesn’t allow for open discourse.

Then, because I was on the documentary train, I watched American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden, a three-part docuseries about the search and capture of the world’s most-wanted terrorist. I was reminded of how all-consuming the media was about Bin-Laden in the 2000s, and how I literally went to bed sometimes convinced I would see him outside my window?? Because he was on the run? And no one knew where he was? So maybe he was at my house?

What’s particularly insightful in this precise moment is the commentary from CIA analysts, who are clearly like… we didn’t. Need to. Go to war. This was all handled… terribly. We need leaders who are skilled in diplomacy instead of wanting to respond with more violence. And I’m here like.

So, look. That documentary wasn’t the best distraction from current world events. But interesting for context.

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Thoughts

Back to mothers being the REAL villains here.

(No, seriously, it is worth considering that at a time where tens of thousands of innocent civilians are being killed at the hands of megalomaniac male dictators, we devote a great deal of time to discussing how mothers who work are psychologically damaging their kids).

Now, I want to acknowledge that a lot of mothers would love to spend more time with their kids, and less time working, if the world we live in allowed for that. If financial pressures weren’t so suffocating. If the labour force didn’t punish you for taking a career break. If your retirement wasn’t compromised. There are mothers who would love more flexibility, longer paid maternity leave - any number of social supports that might make the balance between parenthood and paid employment more manageable. Other mothers, still, would love to never work again. Or to not return to work until their kids are at school. I’m not saying for a moment that there aren’t serious structural issues that stop women from making the choices they’d instinctively like to make.

However. This isn’t what this new wave of conservative commentators are spotlighting. Their language, their arguments, their emotional appeal to women’s guilt and shame and deep sense of inadequacy, focuses on the gap between what children need and what mothers are giving them.

Which is, simply put, not enough. Not enough attention. Not enough love. Not enough affection, support, stability. And this is what I take issue with.

Because the thing none of these commentators ever acknowledge, when they’re shaming women for working/daring to have passions outside their children/not being at home, cuddling their baby, 24/7, is that not once in human history has motherhood looked the way they’re demanding it should.

They seem to be advocating for us to return to an unspecified golden age that never existed.

Let’s look at modern history, through the lens of my family line. My mother had two sets of twins within two and a half years. Four babies. All under that magic age of three, where they need the undivided attention and emotional regulation of their mother.

I’ll repeat. She had four kids. Under that age.

Erica Komisar says children shouldn’t really cry in the first year. Which is an odd comment to make, to the point where I’m certain she must have misspoken, because crying is a baby’s only form of communication before they can speak. But how are you meant to give undivided attention to four babies? Or two babies? Having multiples is nature’s challenge to this sacred ‘baby-and-mother’ bubble, because the mother has to - from the moment she gives birth - make pragmatic decisions that take into consideration the reality of her situation. One might have to cry while the other is fed, one might have to scream while the other is having a nappy change. When you’re a twin, your needs aren’t as simple. They need to be balanced with the needs of the other child beside you.

So my mum’s attention was split. She also worked. Because there’s this wild economic system the Western world is based on called capitalism. So, Erica Komisar would hate that.

Going back another generation, my grandmother had seven children. And… she worked. Her husband had health complications from the war (again, if we want to talk about ‘psychological damage,’ but I digress…), so she had several jobs and kids everywhere, and raised them in an era with technology that meant everything took a lot longer than it does now. Cooking. Cleaning. Admin. She didn’t have a washing machine or a dishwasher, so when she was at home, I highly doubt she was cooing at her baby. She was doing the work of running a household.

Going back another generation, and another - which I know about because a relative did a family history - those women had lots of babies, some who died. They were caring for multiple kids (through grief and anger, I imagine) and also, usually, other family members. Their mothers. Their fathers. Uncles and aunties who needed a roof to live under, someone to cook them meals, someone to manage their ailing health. Women have always been the caregivers, and that role has never been limited to just children. My great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother and my great-great-great grandmother had countless responsibilities, competing priorities, household labour, and the job of raising lots and lots of kids. Again, none of them were Erica Komisar’s ideal mother. They had sh*t to do.

Before that, before the industrial revolution, humans didn’t live in nuclear families. We lived in multi-generational groups and children were raised, as the saying goes, by the ‘village’. Again, this imaginary mother who does nothing but prioritise this one, imaginary child, to the exclusion of all else, didn’t exist.

So why are we asking mothers to do something in 2025 that they’ve never done before? Why is the standard so absurdly high, and why do we guilt and shame them for making reasonable, sensible decisions that take into account the reality of modern life?

The biggest irony of all of it is that Erica Komisar also says a healthy parent produces a healthy child, and a healthy parent, according to her:

• feels good about themselves

• has good self-esteem

• knows their strengths and their weaknesses

• has have the capacity to regulate their emotions

Ah, yes. Telling women they’re damaging their children because they’re actually just selfish is a huge self-esteem boost.

Don’t our passions, and in some cases - our paid employment - contribute to how we feel about ourselves? How we understand our strengths and weaknesses?

I think for a lot of women, once you go through pregnancy (imperfectly), then give birth (imperfectly), then navigate breastfeeding (imperfectly), you’ve already discovered: there is no such thing as the ‘ideal’ version of motherhood. Just like there’s no ideal version of… life. There are too many conflicting values, too many idiosyncrasies.

There’s only ever your circumstances, your baby, and you as a parent. Making the best decisions you can in this particular moment, with the resources you have.

Knowing that this idealised mother - who is being used as a tool of shame and oppression - is nothing but a strange figment of our cultural imagination.