Subscribe
My mother has never made much of Mother’s Day. She believes it is a faux holiday invented by Hallmark. And since she and I have lived in different time zones most of my adult life, Mother’s Day never featured prominently on my May calendar. Only when I became a mother, did I begin to appreciate this day. More than simply a day off from cooking, Mother’s Day became for me a day to pause and reflect on family, on the privilege of both having a mother and being one. Being a mother is increasingly rare in our time, difficult to achieve, and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Americans are ambivalent about motherhood today. We are of two minds about this most central female experience. Many women choose to forgo motherhood because they believe the costs outweigh the benefits. Others go to extreme lengths to preserve the hope of someday being a mother, though they can’t find marriageable men with whom to form a family.
On one hand, we find the growing Childfree Me movement. Women in this movement view themselves as childfree by choice and are passing on parenthood. Increasingly vocal, they defend their decision not to have children in blogs, podcasts, articles, and books. Although their motivations vary, many of them emphasize autonomy and self-actualization. These women seem to prefer the freedom and financial flexibility afforded by the childfree lifestyle, and have come to associate kids with stretch marks, sleepless nights, lost career opportunities, and reduced time for travel and leisure.
This view was recently summed up by singer-songwriter Chappell Roan when she described her female friends with kids as being “in hell.” This American icon characterized her many friends with young children as unhappy, sleepless, and without “light in their eyes.”
In contrast to these childfree women who feel they cannot live their best life with kids, another growing group of childless women believe they cannot have a fulfilling life without kids. They are represented by the increasing number of women who long to be mothers and are going through the arduous process of freezing their eggs to increase their chances of becoming one. But these women can’t satisfy what they deem a necessary precondition for children – a man. Even if these days women don’t need a man to conceive a child, they want a man to help raise a child. And they can’t find one.
In her 2023 book Motherhood on Ice, Marcia Inhorn of Yale notes this growing number of women “is increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap ― a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood.” Many long thought that women were delaying childbearing because they were prioritizing career and professional achievements. But Inhorn’s research reveals that many of these women are longing for a child but unwilling to go it alone to get one.
These women are not unique. They are part of the majority of Americans today who are unmarried and childless. 2019 was the first time in U.S. history that the number of adults without a spouse or child exceeded the share of Americans who are married with children. Demographer Lyman Stone’s research indicates that the drop in fertility in the United States is not due to women wanting fewer children. Instead, he finds that it's due to women not getting married.
What does this tell us about motherhood in America? Many women still believe that motherhood is valuable and worth pursuing. Though the Childless Me crowd has a loud voice and large platforms, many women quietly experience childlessness as a double loss: the unrealized expectation of marriage, followed by the unrealized hope for children.
So let us pay attention to our childless friends and family members, especially those who long for marriage and motherhood. And for those of us who both wanted kids and are lucky enough to have found husbands with whom to have them and raise them, let us give double thanks this Mother’s Day. Both for the children we are privileged to have borne and for the spouses who help make it possible.
Katie MacLeod is the mother of five daughters and lives in Texas. She grew up in Massachusetts.