Chappell Roan and the single story of motherhood
Discussion: Can we talk about how to create solidarity among women, beyond the hot takes?
Happy Friday, friends. Here’s what’s on my mind this week: As you may know, pop star Chappell Roan broke the internet in recent days by making comments about parenting and how her friends that have kids “are in hell.” There has been a LOT of chatter about it, but I (for once?) have more questions than hot takes.
For context: on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, when host Alex Cooper asked Roan, who is 27, about the possibility of having kids, she responded by saying candidly: “All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who’s happy and has children at this age…like, a 1-year-old, 3-year-old, 4 and under, 5 and under… I’ve literally not met anyone who’s happy, anyone who has light in their eyes, who has slept.”
This resulted in all hell breaking loose on the internet, when moms in particular took offense at these comments, rebutting that it was a diss to moms, and that people without kids should not comment on parenting and stay in their lane, etc. (It will also result in A LOT of media training in the coming days for Chappell Roan, I’m sure!).
I read about this kerfluffle on the train on the way to teach class at the university where I work. It so happened that in class that day we were watching Chimamanda Adichie’s now-classic TED Talk “The Danger of the Single Story.”
In her viral speech (it has been viewed 14 million times—maybe mostly by college profs and their students?) Adichie points out that media and literature available to the public often only tell just one story about a group of people or a place, which causes people to generalize and make assumptions about groups of people.
For example, she talks about the “single story” of Africa, where she grew up middle class as the child of professors, is that it’s a place full of poor and backwards people. This confused her American college roommates who were shocked that she spoke English (the official language of her home nation Nigeria), and who wanted to hear her “tribal music” (she preferred Mariah Carey).
She talks about how she also falls prey to the “single story”: she had heard only the “wretched immigrant” story about Mexicans in the U.S. media, and then was ashamed when she visited Guadalajara to see vibrant communities of people not unlike her. The danger of the single story (that we all fall prey to!) is that it creates stereotypes and othering, but also that it impedes true knowledge and understanding.
ANYWAY. This led to a discussion about the “single story” of motherhood in the U.S., and how that single story is what is underpinning the Chappell Roan kerfluffle (I am a very cool professor who talks about Chappell Roan in class and definitely didn’t have to look up who Alex Cooper is, exactly, and also uses the word “kerfluffle”).
The story of American Motherhood is so embattled right now that we almost can’t talk about it at all without everyone losing their minds a little, it seems. In class we talked about it, and agreed that there are competing “single stories” about many categories of women that are underpinning this particular firestorm.
One story of American Motherhood is the sentimental Hallmark Card version, that motherhood is the best thing that can happen to a woman, that it brings endless fulfillment and wisdom (and value/virtue) to women. It is the Most Important Job™ that a woman can do, and anyone who doesn’t get it just doesn’t understand or love children. This is often embodied by the smiling tradwife stereotype.
Another story of American Motherhood is that it’s the worst, and women should avoid it at all costs. It’s a trap for suckers—maybe created by patriarchy and capitalism and idk, Harrison Butker. This is embodied by the haggard wine-drinking mom on Instagram maybe.
(This is a false binary, obviously! Which we will get to in a minute).
But there’s also a third story at play here that’s worth considering:
Another story of American Motherhood/Non Motherhood is the single/child-free woman who is a Childless Cat Lady, is selfish, self-centered, doesn’t get it, and is wasting her life and potential. This is embodied in this case by Chappell Roan herself.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually do think it’s worth listening to what young women who don’t have children have to say about their perceptions of American Motherhood and the discourse thereof. Young women are trying to decide if they should have kids! In this economy! In this political climate! That is…not kind to young women!
Granted, Chappell Roan is a celeb with plenty of privilege, but given what I hear from my own college students, I think she’s voicing a common concern/observation for young people. In all the pronatalist talk that we are bombarded by right now, one thing that we don’t hear is what do the young women considering having children want/need right now? Do they want kids? If they do, what is preventing them from having them—what structural barriers and concerns do they have?
In the project that my students are working on right now, they have to identify a “single story” or dominant narrative or myth, and then find some evidence that complicates or destabilizes that myth.
To me, the evidence that is relevant to all of these oversimplified “stories” of American Womanhood/Motherhood is that we are living in a time and in a country that just makes parenting SO MUCH HARDER than it should be—and harder than it is in any of our peer countries. In fact, I would argue that in a country as rich as ours, we are choosing to withhold the basic things that would make American Womanhood/Motherhood do-able without suffering and Herculean effort that drains everyone involved—parents and children alike, and especially moms. (Things like healthcare, childcare, family leave, affordable or free college are just the NORM in all of our peer countries!).
Add in the expense and pace of modern life and the fact that almost 70% of families need to incomes to get by, and it’s a struggle. Not because it has to be, but because we have chosen to structurally make it that way.
I’m reading “Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall right now (our read for MR book club this month!), and she puts it perfectly, and she doesn’t leave progressive/feminist women out of the problem, either:
So, this is my question, too: How do we transcend these dangerous and reductive “single stories” about American Womanhood and Motherhood, and create solidarity between women right now?
(And like-minded men! Thanks for being here, guys!)
This is a serious question. Because I think as much as it’s easy to feel resentment and hurt over people who voted to get us into this hot mess that is this administration, we now have to figure out how to create some solidarity to get out and make things better. And women are half the population! If we combined powers, we could get the nice things that we want and deserve!
And I sense that what I write, and the way that I go about my life, is mostly only reaching people very much like myself. (I was recently told by a SAHM that she wasn’t sure that my writing “was for her,” and I have to kind of reflect on that!)
And in many ways this is, like, the whole project of MR. How do we make things better for everyone? How do we move toward the things that would give women and impregnable people all the choices that they deserve—the ability to choose to have kids, or to choose not to have kids, to be able to afford more kids? To be reasonably assured that if we do have kids they will be assured a, you know, reasonably positive future??
If you’re a stay at home parent, do you feel attacked, and what would build solidarity for you? If you’re a child-free/single person, what do you feel like you wish people knew, and what would make you feel included? And hi, haggard working parents like me—what are your thoughts?
My sense is that part of what’s keeping us from moving forward as much as we want right now is the “single stories” that we have about each other (and that get weaponized against us). How we can move through and past those seems like the answer to all the things that we want.
No one wins when women are pitted against each other. We are all responsible for each other, kids/no kids, young/old, women, queer, men -- all of us are going down if we don't help hold each other up. Love that you brought this conversation into this space, Lane!
The lack of structural support for parents is the problem. I actually do think we all bear the responsibility for raising the children of our society, whether they came from our bodies or not. You don't get to opt out, because when you were a child, people raised you, and now you have to participate in raising the children, and that's just what it means to live in a society. Those children will grow up to be the labor supporting society when you're old, whether you're biologically responsible for their existence or not.
But we've broken the community, hands-on aspect of that societal activity (the raising of children), and in the U.S., we haven't replaced it with anything.
So "you have to participate in raising the children" is now meaningless or worse, because we're not raising the children through a social safety net funded by taxes, so when I say what I said (I said what I said) I'm saying that childfree people do owe parents their labor. Because there's nothing else.
This all ties in to "what do we actually owe each other" discussions I've seen a lot of floating around the internet right now, because for a long time the approved liberal I-go-to-therapy answer is "nothing, you don't owe anyone anything" EXCEPT WE DO because that's what being human is. We live in a society. We do owe each other things. Adults owe children care. As a collective, the adults of a society owe their children care. You can't opt out of it. You can't just be like "well I chose not to have children because I knew I couldn't afford it so anyone who has children and can't afford it deserves for their children to starve". Those children still belong to you.
And the more people who opt out of it, the harder it becomes for the people who don't, and then we're pointing fingers at each other over who has the harder life, and ragging on each other for our individual choices, because isolation and individualism are all we know, and all the while the ruling class is laughing at us as they take a Scrooge McDuck dive into their swimming pools full of money.