On July 7th, 2022, Laura Martin, a reporter for BBC Culture, wrote an article about various TV shows, films, and books that focus on what a mother must go through.
Motherhood is tough. In a survey run by ForbesWoman and TheBump.com, 92% of working moms and 89% of stay-at-home moms said that they were overwhelmed by all their responsibilities. 30% of working moms said that they do most of the chores in the house and 31% even said that they were responsible for all the parenting. The pandemic made things worse as a survey from today.com found out. 83% of moms felt burnt out from parenting during the pandemic and 60% said that they rarely or never take time off for their well-being. 3-9% of moms also develop PTSD from giving birth.
Now films, shows, and books are sharing the not-so-beautiful experiences of motherhood with their viewers. Siân Robins-Grace, the co-creator of comedy-horror TV series The Baby, a series that wants to show the realities of becoming a mother, said that “we were excited about the possibility of exploding cultural ideals around motherhood, and revealing the darker, violent or oppressive forces at play in that kind of ideal account of what motherhood should be. The genre of horror obviously allows you to take that to a really extreme place, and set up some really taboo situations to explore why they might be taboo.”
Another example is Marianne Levy’s book, Don’t Forget to Scream, which discusses the psychological and emotional changes of becoming a mother. She commented on what led her to write the book, saying that “after my daughter was born eight years ago, when I tried to tell people what was happening to me, they told me I was wrong, or mistaken. It was as though, on becoming a mother, my language had lost its meaning…I found I could be truthful on the page in a way that I could not in conversation.”
The arts are now opening up more to the darker side of motherhood, which Levy describes as “only a good thing” as it leaves the stereotype that Robins-Grace describes as people depicting motherhood as “thin and uncritical, and reinforces the idea that ‘the mother’ is cis, female, straight, middle-class, white, caring and nurturing.”
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220706-the-painful-truths-about-motherhood-exposed
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-work-mothers-idUSTRE75E45K20110615
https://www.today.com/parents/today-survey-pandemic-parenting-finds-moms-are-burnt-out-t217123
Motherhood is tough. In a survey run by ForbesWoman and TheBump.com, 92% of working moms and 89% of stay-at-home moms said that they were overwhelmed by all their responsibilities. 30% of working moms said that they do most of the chores in the house and 31% even said that they were responsible for all the parenting. The pandemic made things worse as a survey from today.com found out. 83% of moms felt burnt out from parenting during the pandemic and 60% said that they rarely or never take time off for their well-being. 3-9% of moms also develop PTSD from giving birth.
Now films, shows, and books are sharing the not-so-beautiful experiences of motherhood with their viewers. Siân Robins-Grace, the co-creator of comedy-horror TV series The Baby, a series that wants to show the realities of becoming a mother, said that “we were excited about the possibility of exploding cultural ideals around motherhood, and revealing the darker, violent or oppressive forces at play in that kind of ideal account of what motherhood should be. The genre of horror obviously allows you to take that to a really extreme place, and set up some really taboo situations to explore why they might be taboo.”
Another example is Marianne Levy’s book, Don’t Forget to Scream, which discusses the psychological and emotional changes of becoming a mother. She commented on what led her to write the book, saying that “after my daughter was born eight years ago, when I tried to tell people what was happening to me, they told me I was wrong, or mistaken. It was as though, on becoming a mother, my language had lost its meaning…I found I could be truthful on the page in a way that I could not in conversation.”
The arts are now opening up more to the darker side of motherhood, which Levy describes as “only a good thing” as it leaves the stereotype that Robins-Grace describes as people depicting motherhood as “thin and uncritical, and reinforces the idea that ‘the mother’ is cis, female, straight, middle-class, white, caring and nurturing.”
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220706-the-painful-truths-about-motherhood-exposed
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-work-mothers-idUSTRE75E45K20110615
https://www.today.com/parents/today-survey-pandemic-parenting-finds-moms-are-burnt-out-t217123