Before my matrescence, I had thought that I could be a woman who “had it all.” I thought that my husband and I were pretty much the same: that we could both work and care for our children. I was suspicious of maternalism and biological essentialism, having grown up in an all-boys boarding school where I became aware of the limiting and distorting effects of patriarchy and gender stereotypes for both boys and girls. Reading Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone and Simone de Beauvoir as a young teen reinforced this view. Though I’d always dreamed of having children, motherhood itself didn’t
...more
