Eventually, I encountered the concept of the “institution of motherhood,” developed by the feminist poet and essayist Adrienne Rich in her book Of Woman Born.[1] Writing in 1976, she showed how wider societal conditions—in a word, patriarchy—had turned motherhood into a “modern institution,” with its own rules, strictures and social expectations, all of which were designed to control women’s behavior and thought. Rich made clear that it was the sociocultural institution of motherhood, not the children themselves, that oppressed women and could even mutilate the relationship between mother and
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