This despite having published my first novel at 30 and having worked as a writer ever since-work which involves me, stimulates me and drives me no small amount of crazy. The prefeminist culture in which I was raised taught us that our earthly significance lay with our children. Feminist thinking changed that and emphasized our own right to economic success as well as worldly challenges of all kinds. Mothers experience guilt when things go wrong. Mothers experience great pain when a child is sick or not doing well.
Mothers lose their freedom to go where they please and when they please for many years.
Mothers fear their own death because it would harm their children. Mothers worry about threats from the outside world, cars, drugs, predators. They spend sleepless nights over bad teachers, bad friends, a child's stutter, a broken arm, a lost friend. I think that the emotional toll is not less but at least spread and shared. It is impossible to imagine what my inner landscape, nightmares and dreams, pleasures and anxieties would be like if I were not a mother.