A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother

by Rachel Cusk

At its worst moments parenthood does indeed resemble hell, in the sense that its torments are never-ending, that its obligations correspond inversely to the desires of the obliged, that its drama is conducted in full view of the heaven of freedom; a heaven that is often passionately yearned for, a heaven from which the parent has been cast out, usually of his or her own volition. The difference lies in the possibility of virtue, and for this reason I understand better those people who would have you believe that their babies don’t cry, that their children bring them only joy, that their families sit around together reading novels, quietly discussing the environment or engaged in constructive play: seeing the situation they have decided, out of pride or integrity or some obscure loyalty to themselves, to make the best of it. What is striking, in any case, is that these dissident voices are male. Their outrage is fresh, the protest of the novice or new arrival. There is something shaming in their objections, for they have arrived in the world of childcare full of revolutionary zeal, of disgust and despair at what they see, and their expostulations, their cries for reform, vibrate with unspoken criticism of those who have lived unprotesting under its regime for so long: the lifers, the long-term residents, women.