I Don’t Want to Become Jess Zimmerman’s “Good Wife”
I already feel, in some ways, that becoming my fiancé’s betrothed has meant agreeing to manage him, and I feel no little amount of dread when I consider multiplying this management duty by one or more further persons.
J. Nicole Jones’s Family Preservation
Is this, when it comes right down to it, the difference between creating a family and creating a piece of art? Does art rely upon individuality while family-making siphons from it?
Rivka Galchen’s Restful Worship
The problem isn’t and never has been motherhood itself. The problem has always been me—my fragile focus, so easily shattered; my delicate ambition, easily spooked but not as easily relinquished.
Miranda Popkey’s Sense of Surety
Motherhood would make of me someone I don’t know yet. What if she’s the opposite of the woman I’ve come to expect?
Rufi Thorpe & Making the Most of Myself
The irony of this entire inquiry is that I spent most of my twenties trying and failing to throw my self away.
Meghan Daum’s “Central Sadness”
If in the future I find myself sometimes lonely and aimless, empty in an undefinable way, will I be able to talk about it without the question of children coming up?
Vivian Gornick’s Mothers & Daughters
It’s not surprising, I suppose, that I should worry that being a full person is incompatible with being a mother: in the narrative I have of my own mother’s life, her tenure as a person appears to end with me.