In Defense of Motherhood

“The terrain of mothering is not limited to the people who give birth to children,” Angela Garbes writes in her new book, “Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change.” Raising kids is “not a private hobby, not an individual duty,” she goes on. “It is a social responsibility, one that requires robust community support. The pandemic revealed that mo... See more

What I soon realized is that maintaining a firewall between my “mom” self and the rest of my self was making motherhood much less interesting. The rest of myself was being so challenged — psychologically, spiritually, philosophically, creatively and intellectually — by caring for my son. But I resisted it, and tried to keep care small because nobod... See more

Whatever initial appeal this argument has, it owes to the unpleasantness of corporate drudgery in general, not to the predicament of female corporate drudges in particular. Invariably, the job that features in articles like Andrews’s is soul-sucking, pointless and therefore presumed to have been chosen solely for the prestige it confers (although s... See more