When Women Attack Each Other, the Patriarchy Wins

This isn’t about all of us “getting along.” It’s about redirecting the anger and blame.

A few years ago, I decided to take it upon myself to “solve” the growing rift between mothers and childfree women. With a few strokes of my keyboard, I believed that I could help childfree women feel properly empathized with, and then make a heartfelt case for why I, as a mother, deserved their empathy (and support). I believed that my measured tone and earnest pleas might help women without children genuinely understand my plight.

Perhaps needless to say, my story, As a Mother, I Celebrate Childfree Women, didn’t go over too well. I bridged no rifts, healed no divides.

Where did I go wrong? Though I tried very hard to conceal my rage, the truth was that I was pretty pissed. The country was still reeling from Covid, and I was furious that mothers continued to be overworked and overburdened, that our labor both inside and outside the home was constantly devalued, that we so often felt condemned for making others pick up our “slack” at work while we picked up the slack for a broken childcare system, that no one else had much interest in speaking up for us, and that as a society, we had entirely lost sight of childrearing as a collective responsibility.