This week on Twitter Drama,
a writer claimed that parent writers shouldn’t write about their children, sending parent-literary Twitter abuzz with opinions on the topic of parenthood, writing, and women, getting me thinking about my own career, writing topics, and taboos.
What struck me was one of the comments on this tweet, about the voices of mostly women being silenced. It is a topic that surfaces repeatedly, this issue of invisible women, not by the sheer fact that we are women, per se, but because we are stay-at-home parenting women. I’ve felt this invisibility, especially as a mother who worked for two decades prior to having children. When I decided to retire teaching, I suddenly became an expert at nothing, save knowing the best laundry detergent to remove grass stains and the schedules of my own children. When mothers voice opinions about their children as beings, they are often not taken seriously, by pediatricians, other parents, or society-at-large. It is suggested that mothers have no objectivity, and thus our opinions are skewed, warped, obsessive. And then, one day on Twitter, we are told we shouldn’t write about our children—these people who define our daily lives—because they are not us. Their experiences are not ours to share.
Maybe, to a certain extent. We don’t mean to exploit them. But, when mothers spend their entire day focused on their children, who knows which experiences remain the children’s and which become theirs?
This week alone, I spent approximately 2.5 times more hours on my children and home than I did on me and my work, and that is only because I try to dedicate eight daily hours (interrupted, often, by scared children who can’t sleep) to alone time in the dark. I packed lunches and costumes for a Halloween party, charged iPads, chaperoned a field trip, washed and stowed clothes for the entire family, ran the dishwasher three times and unpacked it, shopped for and cooked dinners for seven people because my in-laws are in town, making sure no gluten contaminated my separate meal each night. I spent one-point-two hours on hold with Royal Caribbean, trying to salvage our cruise credits from 2019. I took my dog in for his annual vet appointment and my kids in for flu shots. I cleaned the house from top floor to basement for my in-laws’ anticipated arrival, organized already owned hockey pads and bought new ones for the imminent season, bought and organized candy for beggar’s night, walked my kids through the rain door-to-door, drove my children and a few others to and from swim practice, dance, and soccer...all after my husband did many other house responsibilities, and all while trying to hold together a writing career.
Which is struggling, at best. This week, I also made the difficult decision to quit one of my writing commitments, because I cannot keep up with life. Because I am a tired primary caregiver, trying to hustle my words on the side, when all of my thoughts and energy and time are consumed by three small children with endless needs.
How could I possibly write about anything other than my children? How could I possibly be taken seriously if I tried?
Even my fictional thrillers are ABOUT MY CHILDREN. One psychological thriller, about a woman who steals another woman’s baby, explores my fears about having either too much or not enough control over my children’s wellbeing. A second, about a social worker with post-partum depression accused of murdering one of her clients (another mother struggling to provide for her children), reveals my concern with how my own PPD and exhaustion may have affected my family. Even when I write childless characters or plots, every story is born from my fears, threats, and direct experiences as a mother. Even when I’m not writing about my children, I’m writing about my children.
Much discussion about censoring writers has arisen in the last few years, mostly out of concern that we are giving platforms to abusive, narcissistic predators, publishing their poetry or fiction and therefore promoting their skewed perspectives of the world and lauding their voices. Literary magazines have faced scandal for publishing them. Some have gone under for not recognizing that artists’ work is no different than the artists themselves.
I wonder, if we believe predators can’t remove their crimes from the art they produce, why do we expect parents to separate their parenting? Why do we create different standards for different writers and their work?
If I must compartmentalize myself—becoming only writer me and then only parent me, not mixing the two—I probably shouldn’t be writing at all. But (what the Twitter poster might not have considered in their draw-the-line tweet), if I am going to be a good mother—a happy, attentive, emotionally balanced mother—I must write. It is in my bones. It is, like my children are, who I am.
—P.S. Typehouse Magazine, where I work as a feedback editor, is looking for another feedback editor. If you’re interested, contact our EIC with a CV. Be prepared to give sample feedback. Also, check out our most recent issues, which hit stands the other day.