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The pram in the hall Writer and new mother Maxine Davies explores the results of our survey into how motherhood affects women’s writing ag enda Back in 1999, in Issue 1 of Mslexia, novelist and poet Julia Darling wrote about being a ‘bad mother’ for choosing to follow her writerly instincts over her maternal ones: ‘I found the chaos of being at home with two young children extremely disorientating. Writing saved me from the claustrophobia and mess of it all.’ It’s something that many of us wrestle with: how do our writing lives change when we are simultaneously living through the beautiful, complicated mayhem of mothering? Is the ‘pram in the hall’ the enemy of creativity? And what – if anything – has changed for mothers in the 25 years since the inaugural issue of Mslexia? Full disclosure: I have an almost-two-yearold daughter, so these questions are particularly pertinent to me right now. When I found out that I was pregnant I decided to let go of the notion that I’d finish any writing in the first year of my baby’s life. I wanted to give myself permission to dedicate myself completely and utterly to my daughter, to soak up her first year without feeling guilty about word counts or finished drafts. Here at Mslexia Towers there’s always at least two of us with new babies or young children at school, who are going through the emotional and physical upheavals of early motherhood, and trying to find a way to fit writing back into our lives. And we’re not alone: 85 per cent of the mothers who took part in our recent survey on motherhood and creativity felt that the experience had ‘partially’ or ‘wholly’ changed them as writers. Journalist and author Lucy Jones explored the profound changes in the maternal mind, brain and body in her 2023 book Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Childbirth, Pregnancy and Motherhood. Drawing on neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology, Jones reveals the profound physiological impact of the transition into motherhood. Brain changes Did you know that ‘zombie cells’ from the baby cross the placenta and have been discovered circulating in women’s bodies for up to 27 years post-birth? This process – foetal microchimerism – means that mothers are carrying genetic material from their babies for decades after pregnancy, altering their own genetic makeup. And researchers Elseline Hoekzema and Erika Barba-Müller of Leiden University in the Netherlands found evidence of pronounced, consistent changes in the brain structure of women who had been pregnant, including shrunken grey matter and a decrease in cortical thickness. The architecture of a new mother’s brain is dramatically altered by hormonal changes that lead to the selection of neural connections best suited to maternal behaviour. Perhaps it was the fear of such drastic psychological and physical consequences that led three per cent of our survey participants to take the decision to remain child-free in order to prioritise their writing. They are a tiny minority compared to those women in our survey who were forging ahead with their writing alongside their roles as mothers. Thirty-nine per cent of respondents had two children, and a further 21 per cent had one child. And 56 per cent of women with children were currently living with at least one child under the age of 18 and were writing regardless of these intensive years of parenting, continuing to work on their craft alongside tiny newborns and thorny teens. (See sidebar on facing page.) It’s not easy to combine what some consider to be competing roles. ‘People make art for exactly the opposite reason they make families,’ argues Kim Brooks, whose memoir Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear caused a sensation when it came out in 2018. In her 2020 article for The Cut, ‘Portrait of the artist as a young mom’, she suggests that the artist and the mother are fundamentally at odds with each other, and quotes bestselling novelist Gina Frangello, who argues that ‘The point of art is to unsettle, to question, to disturb what is comfortable and safe. And that shouldn’t be anyone’s goal as a parent’. Selfishness and guilt But a far bigger conflict between the role of the mother and that of the artist arises from the perceived selfishness of the woman artist. Compare the example of writer Julia Darling back in 1999, booking herself into a hotel for three months a year to further her writerly ambitions, with the selflessness of the ideal mother, who is expected to be available at all times, who must exist in a permanent state of being on call to perform her motherly duties. 8 AGENDA / Mslexia / Dec/Jan/Feb 2024/25
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That conflict is a potent source of guilt for many women writers. When asked how she balanced motherhood and writing, novelist Margaret Drabble said, ‘I’m always rushing from one to the other, never knowing where I ought to be, and feeling totally guilty about every part of my life – and yet there’s none of it that I could give up.’ This sense of guilt was also true for those who replied to our survey: 30 per cent said they felt more guilty spending time writing than they did before they had children. ‘There is a huge amount of guilt attached to something you do purely for yourself,’ one woman told us. ‘I carry with me a constant sense of guilt. I’m either not doing enough mothering, or I’m not doing enough work,’ said another. ‘I experienced a lot of mum-guilt associated with having a priority that wasn’t my child,’ said a third. And the pressures on women to be perfect mothers have become even stronger in recent years. Twenty-five years ago, when Mslexia launched, the internet was still in its infancy. The other mums you met were limited to in-person baby play groups, playgrounds and schools; advice was handed down or sought out in parenting manuals. In the age of social media, there is a proliferation of parenting advice available online, often proffered by people showing a carefully curated highlight reel of their parenting life. There’s something particularly insidious about having unfettered access to an array of seemingly perfect mothers in the palm of your hand – not to mention the increasing popularity of labour-intensive models of childcare such as attachment parenting and Montessori learning. For women of colour, this is compounded by the dominance of imagery showcasing a narrow white portrayal of motherhood. When author Candice Brathwaite was pregnant, she found herself asking, ‘Where are all the black mothers?’, a question which led to her writing I Am Not Your Baby Mother in which she investigates the Black British experience of motherhood and the shocking health outcomes caused by an inherently biased system. Career consequences Not surprisingly, these kinds of pressures have been shown to have an adverse effect on women’s career aspirations. In their 2018 research, reported in Frontiers in Psychology, Loes Meeussen and Colette van Laar of the University of Leuven in Belgium found that A MOTHER’S BRAIN IS ALTERED, WITH NEURAL CONNECTIONS BEST SUITED TO MATERNAL BEHAVIOUR ‘mothers with higher felt pressure toward perfect mothering experienced lower work–family balance, which in turn related to lower career ambitions’. Arguably, the image of the perfect mother has become even more pervasive in recent years, adding to the burden of guilt for our survey participants who dare challenge the perceived norm. ‘Fighting for “my space to write” didn’t always fit with how a mother should be,’ said one. ‘The parental-industrial complex bombards you with “solutions” and anxiety,’ commented another. ‘The expectations imposed on me relative to motherhood were so ridiculous I just couldn’t keep going,’ said a third. But not all online role models are oppressive. The internet can also be a source of support and community for women writers. A minority of our survey participants found that they were more in touch with other writers than before they had children. ‘Thankfully, the online world has provided me with a wonderful community of other mother writers,’ one woman told us. ‘Setting up my own online community has kept me consistent with writing every week regardless of what reasons exist to impact me. This accountability mixed in with support has been invaluable,’ said another. Another important finding from our survey was – as you might expect – that having children really does a number on the amount of free time STOCK / ADOBE IM : ZZZD PAGE IS ; TH STOCK / ADOBE FOOTAGE : 1ST ITE OPPOS PHOTO HOW MANY CHILDREN UNDER 18 DO YOU LIVE WITH? 47% 0 children 25% 1 child 24% 2 children 4% 3 children 1% 4 or more children (2,002 respondents) DID MOTHERHOOD CHANGE YOU AS A PERSON? 85% Ye s 11% Somewhat 4% No (1,525 respondents) DID MOTHERHOOD CHANGE YOU AS A WRITER? 58% Ye s 27% Somewhat 15% No (1,525 respondents) DID HAVING CHILDREN AFFECT THE TIME YOU SPENT WRITING? 39% Yes, I spent almost no time writing when they were little 25% Yes, I spent less time writing when they were little 12% I didn’t write before I had children 8% No, not really 6% Yes, I wrote for more time because I gave up my day job 6% Yes, I wrote for more time because I felt more organised 1% No, because I had help with childcare (1,525 respondents) 9 AGENDA / Mslexia / Dec/Jan/Feb 2024/25

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The pram in the hall

Writer and new mother Maxine Davies explores the results of our survey into how motherhood affects women’s writing ag enda

Back in 1999, in Issue 1 of Mslexia, novelist and poet Julia Darling wrote about being a ‘bad mother’ for choosing to follow her writerly instincts over her maternal ones: ‘I found the chaos of being at home with two young children extremely disorientating. Writing saved me from the claustrophobia and mess of it all.’

It’s something that many of us wrestle with: how do our writing lives change when we are simultaneously living through the beautiful, complicated mayhem of mothering? Is the ‘pram in the hall’ the enemy of creativity? And what – if anything – has changed for mothers in the 25 years since the inaugural issue of Mslexia?

Full disclosure: I have an almost-two-yearold daughter, so these questions are particularly pertinent to me right now. When I found out that I was pregnant I decided to let go of the notion that I’d finish any writing in the first year of my baby’s life. I wanted to give myself permission to dedicate myself completely and utterly to my daughter, to soak up her first year without feeling guilty about word counts or finished drafts.

Here at Mslexia Towers there’s always at least two of us with new babies or young children at school, who are going through the emotional and physical upheavals of early motherhood, and trying to find a way to fit writing back into our lives. And we’re not alone: 85 per cent of the mothers who took part in our recent survey on motherhood and creativity felt that the experience had ‘partially’ or ‘wholly’ changed them as writers.

Journalist and author Lucy Jones explored the profound changes in the maternal mind, brain and body in her 2023 book Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Childbirth, Pregnancy and Motherhood. Drawing on neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology, Jones reveals the profound physiological impact of the transition into motherhood.

Brain changes Did you know that ‘zombie cells’ from the baby cross the placenta and have been discovered circulating in women’s bodies for up to 27 years post-birth? This process – foetal microchimerism – means that mothers are carrying genetic material from their babies for decades after pregnancy, altering their own genetic makeup. And researchers Elseline Hoekzema and Erika Barba-Müller of Leiden University in the Netherlands found evidence of pronounced, consistent changes in the brain structure of women who had been pregnant, including shrunken grey matter and a decrease in cortical thickness. The architecture of a new mother’s brain is dramatically altered by hormonal changes that lead to the selection of neural connections best suited to maternal behaviour.

Perhaps it was the fear of such drastic psychological and physical consequences that led three per cent of our survey participants to take the decision to remain child-free in order to prioritise their writing. They are a tiny minority compared to those women in our survey who were forging ahead with their writing alongside their roles as mothers. Thirty-nine per cent of respondents had two children, and a further 21 per cent had one child. And 56 per cent of women with children were currently living with at least one child under the age of 18 and were writing regardless of these intensive years of parenting, continuing to work on their craft alongside tiny newborns and thorny teens. (See sidebar on facing page.)

It’s not easy to combine what some consider to be competing roles. ‘People make art for exactly the opposite reason they make families,’ argues Kim Brooks, whose memoir Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear caused a sensation when it came out in 2018. In her 2020 article for The Cut, ‘Portrait of the artist as a young mom’, she suggests that the artist and the mother are fundamentally at odds with each other, and quotes bestselling novelist Gina Frangello, who argues that ‘The point of art is to unsettle, to question, to disturb what is comfortable and safe. And that shouldn’t be anyone’s goal as a parent’.

Selfishness and guilt But a far bigger conflict between the role of the mother and that of the artist arises from the perceived selfishness of the woman artist. Compare the example of writer Julia Darling back in 1999, booking herself into a hotel for three months a year to further her writerly ambitions, with the selflessness of the ideal mother, who is expected to be available at all times, who must exist in a permanent state of being on call to perform her motherly duties.

8 AGENDA / Mslexia / Dec/Jan/Feb 2024/25

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