Stop Whining, Ladies. Motherhood is Easy

Breastfeeding is one of the many easy things about motherhood.

A few times a day, I take a break from my relaxing, perfect, new-mother life to peruse the Internet. I inevitably find a bunch of whiners. Women posting to message boards wondering why their husbands won't do their fair share. Moms complaining about the challenges of breastfeeding, the agony of postpartum recovery, the fact that no one takes their pelvic floor issues seriously, the boss who won't pay them for maternity leave, the other boss who fired them for getting pregnant, and the family members who keep showing up, demanding to be entertained, and criticizing their parenting.

I Made a Person. I Also Do Everything Else Men Can Do. Tell Me How That Makes Women Inferior.

*Note: I originally published this piece on Daily Kos at the urging of a client. 

I had a baby 11 months ago. There’s nothing terribly impressive about that. After all, women have babies every day. And we live in a society in which, if women do something men can’t, we treat it as unremarkable. Birth is unimpressive, but scoring two points higher on a spatial reasoning test? Now that is amazing! 

It’s this sort of ridiculous reasoning that enables us to accept, with a straight face, that men are in some way superior to, stronger than, or smarter than women. I’m tired of it. So I have a question for the men who continue to argue that women aren’t destined for careers or are too emotional or whatever the sexist argument is this week: I made a person. I did it while doing everything men do. How does that make me inferior?

Why 'Are You Going to Work After the Baby Comes?' is Always Offensive and Sexist

Want a simple way to degrade the work all women do, whether paid and outside the home or unpaid and within the home? Ask a pregnant woman if she's going to keep working after the baby arrives.

I know, I know. You're just making conversation. You're curious. You're trying to be nice. The problem is that your "niceness" and "idle conversation" are premised on the notion that women who can quit working outside the home will, and that women who stay home with their children don't work. People don't ask men this question. That's what makes it sexist.

The Terror of Life as a Freelancer: Or, Why All Women Deserve Paid Maternity Leave

I love my job. I love that I get to set my own schedule, make my own rules, and answer to no one. I love it even more that I've found a way to succeed in a highly competitive profession. Others put "writer" down as their profession because it sounds romantic and mysterious. I claim it because it's mine. It feels wrong to complain when you are as lucky as I have been, but there's one glaring hole in my otherwise awesome professional existence: I have no maternity leave.

I'm lucky enough to earn a good living at my job, but I've been crunching a lot of numbers lately. It's made me realize that, even when you have savings and work hard and do the right thing, continuing to pay your bills is extraordinarily difficult when you have to take extended time off work.

I'm in good company. Only 13% of American workers have paid family leave, and most of them are upper middle class folks like me--the people who need it the least. If we as a society are collectively unwilling to do something to fix this, it's simply unreasonable to expect that women will be able to be healthy after giving birth, form solid attachments to their babies, and continue paying their bills.