The 'Apple Pie and Motherhood' Problem

Speculative fiction, by its very nature, challenges our ideas about how the world works. These fictional universes which don't play by our real-life rules can be fundamentally uncomfortable places. Perhaps because of this, there can be a tendency-- particularly in fantasy-- to revert to socially conservative messages. Author Greg Egan called this the 'Motherhood Statement', a scenario in which a story:

'posits some profoundly unsettling threat to the human condition, explores the implications briefly, then hastily retreats to affirm the conventional social and humanistic pieties, ie apple pie and motherhood.'

Part of this may be driven by a commercial viability issue. People simply fear that introducing an unusual theme or perspective they will scupper the marketability of their story. However, I think that's a risk well worth taking, especially in the speculative fiction genres. Furthermore, as I've pointed out before, if it exists, someone will be horribly offended by it. No exceptions.

Another part may be the author themselves losing their nerve. Having written a story requires posits unconventional ethics or an uncomfortable resolution, they panic and force a more 'acceptable' conclusion on  the narrative, even if it doesn't jive with the story's universe.


And there we go: the problem with the Motherhood Statement is that it undermines the defining feature of speculative fiction-- that these stories confront us with a world where the assumptions we make in our everyday life are no longer valid. You need to let your 'what-if' world stand on its own, and that means letting the characters resolve their problems in a way that makes sense in that universe, not what makes sense in ours.