Why TV and books so rarely show us the real side of new parenthood
By: Sachi Ezura
Tags: TV Series, Parenthood, Motherhood, Culture, Babies Babies Babies

Why TV and books so rarely show us the real side of new parenthood Sachi Ezura Mar 26, 2020·6 min read

I just finished A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, by Rachel Cusk, which I highly recommend. You’d think that with all the drudgery of motherhood, who would want to spend their limited free time reading or watching things that leave you thinking about the experience more? But I’ve found an insane amount of comfort in finding other people who articulate the odd and unique experience of becoming a parent. My favorite thing so far has been The Letdown, an Australian series on Netflix about a support group for early moms (and one dad). There’s one scene where the mom yells at the dad for making stimulating eye contact with their infant before bed that I found particularly relatable. I tore through the first season in less than a week.

So much of the relatability of these projects depends on when you encounter them. When I first started reading A Life’s Work, I asked my friend Rachel about it and she said she’d heard from a friend that it sounded like Cusk didn’t really enjoy motherhood. There’s definitely an element of that in it. Here, she talks about a friend date she went on with another mother shortly after giving birth:

I talked about how difficult it all was, about the anarchy of nights, the fog of days, about friendlessness and exile from the past and exclusion, about the wordless tyranny of babies and the strange, obsessive task of being alone with them all day, about my feelings of claustrophobia, my feeling that I was shut in a box, that I couldn’t breathe. That’s right, that’s right, Miranda would say, nodding her head distantly. It got to the point where I thought she wasn’t listening, until just then she spoke. But it’s great as well, she said. You mustn’t forget all the good things. She said it quite firmly, but just for a minute I really didn’t know what she was talking about. It was as if I were reading one of those books again. I almost said, there aren’t any good things. She had Alexander back by this time and he was quiet because she was feeding him again. I wondered if she had said it because she thought she ought to. I wanted to ask her what the good things were.

It’s impossible to accurately describe the experience of early motherhood without at times seeming like you absolutely hate motherhood, that you even hate your baby or wonder why you ever wanted this in the first place. Anyone who writes about it as if it’s all cuddles and rainbows is either full of shit or has a miracle baby. And if you haven’t had a baby or if you had a baby too long ago, you might read these things and think, “Wow, what a monster. She seems miserable.” But I think it’s about capturing yourself in that moment, in the darkest, most hellish times and being able to reconcile those with the joys you experience later.

A couple nights after Ellie was born, in the middle of one of those sleepless hazy nights, I watched Mike Birbiglia’s The New One on Netflix and had the same exact thought. He doesn’t really seem to like this baby. He doesn’t seem to really want to be a dad. I wonder if I watched it again now whether I’d have the same thought. I watched it too early. I was terrified and still filled with joy and relief that she had come out and she’d come out alive and I was alive and we were home. And in comparison to him and his ambivalence, Jake was a wonder dad, constantly offering me solace and staring at his baby with amazement and adoration.

Flash forward to weeks 6 through 11, and we wondered whether it would ever get better. I asked my parent friends desperately when the magical week was when everything felt doable or at least not torturous. We hadn’t slept in more than three hour chunks in weeks. We couldn’t watch a movie or have a conversation or meal without being interrupted by screams. We sat with our heads in our hands, staring at each other, wondering if there was something we had not yet tried to get her to sleep or stop crying or seem remotely human. Our moms would come over to take over for a couple hours, and we’d be terrified when they left, knowing we were on our own again with no idea how to get through the night.

And then miraculously it did get better. And then worse, and then better again, or so I hear from my parent friends who have gotten farther than me. “Oh, you’re out of it now, but wait until the four month sleep regression,” they say. “Wait until she can crawl and walk and pull herself up. It’s a nightmare.” Every stage feels like a new video game boss that appears right as you’re starting to get the hang of it.

I feel lucky to be parenting at a time when there is so much funny, honest writing about the experience. It felt revelatory to watch Ali Wong do stand-up seven months pregnant or hear her pumping on WTF w/ Marc Maron. Before this boom of stand-up comedy and personal essays and peak TV, there were far fewer depictions of what was actually going on in the minds of new moms. I remember vaguely hearing about Brooke Shields’ post-partum depression, but had no idea that 70% of women experience the adorably named “baby blues,” a one week hormone drop that makes you literally incapable of not crying. Nine times out of 10, if you watched a pregnancy or delivery or the weeks after on TV, it seemed hard but not brutal or ceaseless.

Even now, honest portraits of what happens to our bodies and minds are often pushed aside in favor of Johnson & Johnson’s commercials full of white sheets and smiley cheeks. Just a couple months ago, the Oscars rejected an ad for Frida Baby postpartum supplies for being too graphic. Too graphic? I have to sit through Paris Hilton rubbing Carl’s Jr. burgers on herself, but men can’t watch 30 seconds of a woman realistically getting up to use the bathroom after bringing life into the world. For shame!

I think we’re scared as a country to show what it’s really like to have a baby for fear that if people who hadn’t been through it saw the hardest parts, they might schedule mass vasectomies. We hide the scariest parts from potential parents, so that parenthood feels like a magical world that you can only see through experience. But this also allows us to connect with other parents once we’re in it. I’ve made new friends faster, and reconnected with old ones, just by virtue of having them know the secret code of having a baby. You feel as though you’ve been through something deep and incommunicable together, like veterans or survivors of the same tragedy.

On a separate note, it’s my friend Marisa’s birthday. She was my freshman year roommate at Harvard, which means I’ve known her for almost 16 years. She and my college bud Dan had their baby Benji a couple months before I popped out Ellie, so I got to lean on her for advice and knowledge on what to expect throughout the entire process. She checked on me every week of those first brutal 12 weeks, reassuring me that “yes, it does get better. Better is coming. You’re almost there.” She gave me app recommendations, reassured me that the strange noises coming out of Ellie were totally normal, and made me feel like so many of my crazy feelings were warranted and sane. Along with my doctor friend Stef, she’s been my sherpa through all things baby, and I feel so grateful to have her as a friend. Happy birthday, Marisa!