It was strange, then, when I fell through the portal of motherhood, to feel that these central drives—to work, to earn, to self-actualize—were now, as soon as the baby left my womb, out of place and even immoral. Why, then, was I sent to school and university? Why was I told “You Can Do Anything”? For a game of dress-up? Why the pretense that I could live my life like a man? Or that being a woman counted for something other than maternal duties once you had a baby? Something snapped shut. I was trapped and bound, suddenly, by new bars of restrictive and prescriptive gender norms.
