What It Means to Write About Motherhood, parts I and II

‘I felt a lot of guilt about the question of whether I should be writing straight reportage instead of filtering it through the lens of my own subjectivity. But on the other hand, I almost died! I am the best-case scenario and I nearly slipped through the cracks, because parenting a newborn child while grappling with suicidal ideation is severely, severely bruising. When I started to do the research, it came up that in Australia the leading cause of death for pregnant women and women in the first year of a child’s life was suicide. It’s somehow both shocking and completely unsurprising.

When I gripe about being consigned to the Parenting section, that’s what I really mean. I had cherished dreams about precipitating a major conversation about maternal mental health that has just never happened. Some days I feel like beating men around the head with the book and screaming, “This is happening to a lot of women you know! At least pretend to give a shit about us!” But the conversation is still being had between women and it’s not getting to the level of funding and policy and I just don’t know what to do about that.’

A conversation with Kim Brooks, Rumaan Alam, Sheila Heti and Meaghan O’Connell for Lithub. Read Part I here and Part II here.