Reply to Touched Out: Is Motherhood a Scam?

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[quote=Anonymous]There is a new book out called Touched Out by Amanda Montei. I haven't read it yet but just read this interview with Montei in Anne Helen Petersen's substack newsletter and I am very interested: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/american-motherhood-felt-like-that

Some things that resonated:

- I only very rarely get touched out to the point where I don't want my child to touch me anymore. But sometimes I hit a point where the kids of comfort she wants is annoying to me. However where I really identify is when Montei talks about that feeling of just wanting SPACE to think or be alone. I sometimes feel like between my child and my husband, I very rarely have the opportunity to complete entire thoughts. I feel like my thinking gets disrupted and redirected constantly, by people who need me to think about their needs. I'm a really cerebral person who lives in my head, so this has been pretty upsetting for me. I used to read books a lot and I've found it very hard to sustain interest in them now, and it takes me forever to finish them, because it's just hard for me to sustain focus on something other than my family for that long.

- I really related to the idea of self-blaming when you are struggling with aspects of motherhood, and feeling like "well I wanted this." And also the explicit response of people when women speak up and say some aspect of motherhood is unfairly burdensome or could be made better, like "well it's a choice." I absolutely did ask for motherhood but like a lot of moms, I didn't realize I was signing up for a lot of other stuff that absolutely sucks, and I was really not ready for the degree to which I would not be able to fight certain forces of motherhood to "do it my way" which I think is something a lot of us convinced ourselves when we chose to have kids -- oh I won't give in to that BS that drives all the women I know crazy, I'll do it my way. Motherhood is cultural and sometimes the consequences for deviating from the script are too steep, especially for our kids.

Anyway, curious what others think of this interview, or if anyone has read the book, if they have anything to add. More broadly, do you think motherhood [in the US, in 2023, specifically] is a scam?[/quote]

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