To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

by Molly Millwood

I believe it has something to do with the fact that our culture values a mother’s skill at parenting over her well-being as an individual.

We get tired of nurturing. We long for freedom and breathing room. We savor opportunities to become immersed in other kinds of tasks and experiences that are meaningful to us, yet we often feel guilt or shame for prioritizing our own needs and desires. What if we could be free of confusion about these seemingly incompatible sets of feelings?

Killingsworth and Gilbert found that people are the happiest while exercising, engaging in conversation, and making love. These activities seem to harness the most focused attention and, in turn, generate the greatest sense of well-being.

This is all the reason we need to give women both the permission and the resources required to attend to their bodies, their minds, and their hearts in order to recover from difficult births. “Permission” means allowing women to be distressed about their distressing birth experiences. It means we stop telling ourselves and one another that the outcome—a healthy baby—somehow negates or justifies the scary, disempowering, or otherwise upsetting birth experience that culminated in that healthy baby.

But it is through ongoing, consistent involvement in the care of their babies across time that fathers’ brains become wired for better attunement and caregiving.

Although it’s incredibly difficult to do in the moment, it’s important for new parents to make here-and-now choices with long-term ideals in mind. It might take Dad longer to soothe his crying baby, but it’s important that he has opportunities to do so.

The help women need must come largely from family.”20 The trouble is, for many women, the word “family” means “partner.” We often have no one else. There may not be a village.

We cannot undo the past, but in doing things differently with our own children—giving them what was not sufficiently given to us—we can change our relationship to the past.