I’ve been enjoying all the mothers day posts on social media today and feeling as lucky as ever for all the moms in my life, especially because quarantine would be a lot harder without the two I live with. Which is part of why I’m also especially sad today that it’s so much harder than it was when I was growing up both to become and to be a mother.
I often laugh with folks my age about our moms having given birth to us in their early twenties but we hardly talk about why it’s all so different now. No need to get too far into that today either other than to say that one need not have any particular politics to know there’s a problem when new generations in the U.S. are, for the first time in history, not expected to do better than their parents’ generation. Especially when what used to be a thriving middle class has turned into fewer and fewer extremely wealthy people on one side and more and more poor folks on the other.
Of course, it’s not just that it’s harder for younger people to find stable careers, which of course facilitate stable relationships and stable families. It’s that even those who are doing well enough materially or otherwise manage to have families are as cut off from their friends and extended family as ever, and it’s been this way since long before the coronavirus hit.
If you’re reading this post and wanting to disagree with it because you or your family is thriving, namaste 🙏, you are blessed and I couldn’t be happier for you. And I don’t mean to diminish the experience of those who are happily single or childless by choice either.
I mainly want to send mothers day love and hope to those who are sad today because they want to be a parent and can’t be—whether for lack of a stable career or relationship, or because of fertility issues that naturally arise from stress as our economy, and community and family bonds deteriorate, or for whatever reason—and those who are otherwise struggling with parenthood for the same reasons. You are far from alone and far from blame for at least a substantial part of your suffering. And better days are surely ahead for all of us if we can manage to find some solidarity in working to restore some of the basic common-sense policies that allowed our mothers’ and mother’s’ mothers’ generations to flourish as they did.
Finally, this post is endorsed by my mom, who thinks it’s great. She sends her love to everyone as well.
