I Was Afraid of Losing Myself to Motherhood. I Found Myself Instead.

Death, Sex & Money

Slate Podcasts

Business, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Careers, Relationships, Sexuality

4.6 • 7.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elissa Strauss always knew she wanted to be a mother, but she also knew she didn’t want motherhood to take over her personality. After all, she had spent years as a blogger making fun of anyone who took motherhood too seriously. She bemoaned the natural birth movement and people who made “mom friends.” Then Elissa had a son, and her view of caretaking started to shift. “I had put so much energy into figuring out how not to lose myself to caregiving,” Elissa writes in her new book, “that I completely ignored the possibility that I might, in fact, find some of myself there.” In this episode, Anna and Elissa talk about why it feels uncool to talk about liking motherhood, the ways caretaking can take from us, but also how it can fill us up and engender “moral transformation.” Plus, the economics of care, and what really valuing care in society would look like. Elissa’s book is called When You Care: the Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others. She also wrote a piece last month in Slate called “It’s Weird Times to Be a Happy Mother.” Are you a paid caregiver? We want to hear from you for a future listener episode. Tell us some things you’ve taken away from the experience – wild stories, observations about class, lessons about the way you want your own loved ones to be cared for. Send us your thoughts and stories at [email protected]. Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus! Members get ad-free podcasts, bonus content on lots of Slate shows, and full access to all the articles on Slate.com. Sign up today at slate.com/dsmplus. And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So often, caregiving in 2024 is presented as this binary, especially the work of mothering.
0:09.4	It's either the most important and life-giving thing or it's tedious and relentless and a
0:16.4	fast-track to irrelevance from the public sphere. In other words, it is
0:21.1	hard to be cool and a mom.
0:25.0	Or at least that's how it sometimes can feel to me.
0:28.2	Like being really enthusiastic about caregiving is this political identifier that can flatten how complicated and yes
0:36.5	relentless this work can be and it's hard to talk about it in detail because
0:41.7	caregiving is this thing that happens mostly in private
0:45.8	as we tend to our loved ones who need help, our babies, our kids, disabled and or aging adults.
0:53.8	This work has historically been led and managed by women with little fanfare and with lots
0:59.3	of integration.
1:01.3	And while there's lots of conversations about time management for parents and caregivers or
1:05.8	hot takes on the best way to do it all, I haven't really come across a close look at how
1:11.3	caregiving doesn't just take from us but also how it
1:15.8	transforms us and I saw this new book by Alyssa Strauss called When You Care, The Unnexpected Magic of Caring for Others.
1:26.0	For today's episode, Alyssa and I dig in about how she noticed herself changing through
1:32.0	caregiving in profound and exciting ways.
1:36.4	And this is just the start of an extended look at caregiving, unpaid and paid on our show.
1:43.0	In fact, for an upcoming episode with your stories,
1:45.7	we want to hear from those of you who have been paid caregivers.
1:50.3	I've depended on paid caregivers for people I've loved, most intimately my infants when I return to work after maternity leave,
1:58.0	and I've had that complex relationship of watching a kind of love take root between my kids and their
	...

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