Every Mother’s Day, several enterprising young thought-leaders try to include plant moms and dog moms in the celebration. Thankfully, they’re roundly ridiculed for comparing their pets to human children, or their caretaking experience to the challenges of motherhood.

The selfishness of many (although certainly not all) deliberately childless women flares up at the sight of any symptom that society esteems children and those who bear them above other individuals or achievements. The latest example of this popped up via a Reddit post making the rounds on social media recently.

I got a PhD which was met with lukewarm ‘likes’ on my Facebook post announcing that I had just passed my oral examination. I published my first book and none of my family came to the launch except my mom, partner, and my aunt. …

The year I finished my PhD (2022), my cousin decided to have her first baby at 20. It was planned. Let me tell you, it’s like she won a [N]obel [P]rize. My family starts sharing all her posts. There’s a huge gender reveal in a rented space. A lavish, catered baby shower. Plenty of gifts! … She then has her second and third child back-to-back. GUYS, IT’S THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD, OMG! …

Meanwhile, my new book is due to be released soon with an award-winning publisher. Crickets. Nobody. Gives. A. S***.

What this poster doesn’t realize, however, is that there’s actually a very good reason why new babies are generally met with more unencumbered joy than new jobs or degrees. There’s a reason we throw baby showers but don’t throw “law school showers.”

When we celebrate life events related to having and bearing children, we aren’t actually celebrating the mother or the father. We are celebrating the baby – a new life and the continuation of the family line.

And that’s the toughest pill for these women to swallow. It isn’t about them. Even to the extent that we are celebrating the mom-to-be, we are specifically celebrating her work in bearing and raising the child whose arrival causes such joy.

Single adults like this Redditor could easily say, “All the child’s mother did was get knocked up. I actually studied/worked/wrote and it was so hard.” But in saying this, they forget the following.

For starters, having a baby is hard, harder even for many women than getting a law degree.

Second, career achievements – as great and as hard-won as they are – were done for you. A baby, however, is not only a new soul and a new life, it is also a valuable part of a family tree that has been formed through generation upon generation of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers taking on their sacred duty to continue their line. The new mother contributed to that duty in bringing her baby into the world.

There’s nothing wrong with what the Reddit-poster above contributed as a law grad and new author. Publishing books, acquiring PhDs, and obtaining tenure are all great things – and perhaps this woman’s family should have been more supportive of her achievements. But in the long run, such deeds simply aren’t as important as birthing the new life of another human being.

Additionally, this Reddit-poster’s relative is extraordinarily lucky to be raising her child in a family that celebrates her child’s birth so well. A new mother or father needs more support entering parenthood than a woman does entering a new career field or publishing a book. For the new mother, the gifts and joyous check-ins aren’t just fun weekend celebrations, they are what will carry her through the tough and rewarding work of motherhood.

As unsupported as this career woman feels after all her achievements, she still powers through, and quite successfully. Yet a parent without support struggles to raise her child and make ends meet financially in the absence of familial childcare. She resolutely raises a child in a world where he is seen as unwanted or a nuisance, a far worse fate than the sadness one feels that only a few family members showed up for your book launch.

In sum, this is the kind of mentality that arises when you think that achievements are primarily personal rather than for others. Birthing a child does less for you in the social hierarchy than earning a PhD, no doubt. But bearing and birthing a child asks something of you for the sake of your family.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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