During the early months of maternity leave, I got into a routine: I breastfed my daughter on the couch with the TV perpetually tuned into cable news (Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefings were my favourite). When I wasn’t expressing milk, I picked fights with my husband, and cried tears of despair because my baby wouldn’t nap. If I had a free moment, I checked my workplace’s social media page, hungry to feel connected to the outside world. At night, I’d fall asleep fantasizing about checking emails and taking streetcars to the office the way my husband did. After twelve weeks of misery, I admitted the truth, I regretted my maternity leave.
Maternity leave conjures up images of earth goddesses wearing flower crowns. They frolic in fields with their cherubic (and perfectly sleep trained) babies. Their breasts overflow with gorgeous milk, and they never get mastitis. I’m genuinely happy for anyone who relates to this picture of postpartum bliss, but I’d rather be at work.
It’s hard to admit my twelve-month parental leave is a mistake. I’m worried you’ll judge me. I fear readers will assume regretting mat leave means I regret having a baby (which I don’t, not for a second). I also worry you’ll think I’m whiney (I sometimes think that myself). After all, staying home with an infant is a privilege many working women don’t get. I’m lucky to have a supportive workplace that stood by me throughout pregnancy and early parenthood. Taking a year off from my role as a non-profit executive is a choice I’m grateful was available to me. But at the same time, I wish I’d felt comfortable making a different choice—one that involved returning to work the moment my perineum healed.
The day I notified my employer I was planning to take an entire year off, part of me knew it wasn’t in my interests. I foresaw how the isolation and lack of adult interaction would exacerbate my mental health problems. I suspected the monotony of being at home, alone, with only one tiny person for company, might make my depression spiral out of control; I took maternity leave anyway.
You’re probably wondering, “So, how did you end up staying home with an infant?” Perhaps you assume my husband is an old-school bloke who refused to take pat leave. Not so! My partner loves looking after our daughter. He’s the sort of person who genuinely enjoys babycare, and since we only plan on having one kid, he’d have happily spent a year reading board books and making butternut squash purees. To be honest, he’s better at baby care, too. I, however, have anxiety attacks at the thought of giving our baby a bath and I’m perpetually putting her diapers on backwards. There was almost no reason for me to take a year off to devote to motherhood, except of course, the one big one, mother shaming, and my wish to avoid it.
I wanted people to think I was a good mom. Or more accurately, I didn’t want people to think I was a bad mom. On the surface, I’m the last person you’d expect would succumb to the pressure to be a socially acceptable mother (read: The kind of mother who takes on the majority of the housework and parenting duties). I was critical of mommy shaming well before I got pregnant. I abhorred the insidious custom of calling out any woman with the audacity not to mother exactly the way Kate Middelton would. The media is full of stories that shame celebrity moms for a range of decisions, from feeding their babies formula to breastfeeding in public. For a particularly egregious example, you can read about the social media users who excoriated Chrissy Teigen for sharing her stillbirth on social media.
Heteronormative conceptions of women as natural carers for children remain in Canada, Case in point: In heterosexual couples outside of Quebec (where fathers take more leave), only 26% of men opt into parental leave. That means the bulk of babycare is done by mothers who, on average, take 44 weeks of leave. Admittedly, there are multiple reasons for this. The social pressure to breastfeed is well documented, and many workplaces fail to provide adequate opportunity for nursing mothers to pump. But I’m confident the root cause is outdated gender roles, and a social script that requires women to play primary caregivers to their children, regardless of what’s right for their families.
Before I began my ill-fated attempts to be June Cleaver, I spent my twenties studying feminist perspectives on parenthood. I’ve read countless books by famed philosophers of motherhood, like Andrea O’Reilly and Sara Ruddick. One book that stood out to me was Adrienne Rich’s 1976 classic, Of Woman Born. Rich is a controversial figure who was known to use her platform to marginalize trans women. And while I categorically reject transphobia, I acknowledge Of Woman Born changed my life. In its pages, Rich argues the expectation all women should be mothers—and that we must devote the lion’s share of our lives to doing so—is a tool of patriarchal subjugation. It is a method of eroding women’s potential, our agency, and ourselves. Instead of individuals with our own wants and needs, mothers are expected to devote themselves to their families, whatever the personal consequences. However, Rich’s treatise also reminds readers, “Before we were mothers, we have been, first of all, women, with actual bodies and actual minds.”
The traditional construction of women as wives and mothers first and foremost has historically been used to justify everything from making women do the housework to outlawing abortion and slutshaming single moms. I’m thrilled to support friends and family when they rebel against outdated mothering norms. But perhaps because I’ve spent so much time studying the ways our world is unfair to moms, I fear the side-eye I’d receive for doing motherhood the way that would make me happy. There’s a tiny misogynist inside my head who demands, “If you love your daughter, shouldn’t she be enough for you?”
Sometimes, while waiting for my husband to return home at the end of a long day, I picture an alternate universe where he took the lion’s share of parental leave: I’d wake up at 6:00 am to cuddle with my eight month-old each morning. After kissing my daughter goodbye a couple hours later, I’d leave her in the capable hands of my husband. I’d spend eight hours on Slack with my colleagues, discussing problems and brainstorming solutions. I’d pump breast milk while checking email. Some days, I’d take a short break mid-afternoon to fetch a latte from Starbucks. Most days, I’d clock off around five or six. When I reunited with my family in the evenings, I’d be content, ready to give the best of myself to my baby.
This fantasy shouldn’t feel illicit. After all, it’s the kind of parenting arrangement enjoyed by most straight men. When a new father arrives at a business meeting, no one asks who’s looking after the baby or wonders aloud why he returned to work so soon. We don’t assume men who love doing their jobs can’t love their children, too. We don’t give it a second thought when a man provides for his family financially while his female partner takes time off work.
As I write this article, my parental leave is nearing its end. And lately, I’ve begun to have a new fantasy. I envision a world where parenting is free from gendered expectations. A place where we embrace the radical notion that parenting arrangements aren’t one-size-fits-all. And that what’s best for mothers might actually be what’s best for their families.
If my beloved daughter ever becomes a mother, I hope parental leave feels like an actual choice for her, not an expectation.
