Near the end of the third trimester, many women start to envision what it might be like to snuggle their newborn and step into motherhood for the first time. They know they’ll be exhausted and overwhelmed, but they also know that it’ll be worth it for all of the rewarding new-mom bliss around the corner. But that anticipated bliss isn’t always immediately apparent. Sometimes it takes a while to show up. Sometimes it never does.
There are many reasons why the postpartum reality isn’t quite as shiny as the ideal image of it we are sold. For one thing, postpartum mental health can be precarious: postpartum depression (PPD), postpartum PTSD, and other conditions are more common than people realize. On top of all of that, new mothers need so much more help than we are getting. We need to normalize asking for help. And when polite requests don’t shift the workload much, we need to start demanding help.
Partners, particularly fathers, are still performing abysmally when going head-to-head with mothers on parenting-related labor. In the recent New York Times piece “What Good Dads Get Away With,” the author cites studies demonstrating that while fathers did pick up some slack in the ’80s and ’90s, this leveled off in the aughts. Fathers, collectively, have yet to gain any new ground in equitable parenting since. Mothers still take on 65 percent of the childcare labor on average, and there are still plenty of households wherein that percentage is much higher.
In “You Should’ve Asked,” French cartoonist Emma makes the case that men shouldn’t be waiting around to be asked to help by their partners. They should know how to take initiative. But let’s face it: when we don’t ask, we do more. And when we do ask, there’s still no guarantee the thing will get done. So what can we do?
I suggest that instead of asking, we start demanding. We need to make our boundaries unmovable. We need partners in particular to step up and do as much work as we are doing. We need partners to understand that this work is not just the physical stuff that they see—the physical stuff is just the tip of the iceberg to the mental and emotional stuff. We need them to get on the same page and to have them truly copiloting parenting with us. We need partners who are also thinking ahead to the next well baby appointment and scheduling it on their own. We need partners who notice when diapers are running low and who think to grab some at the store.
Our demands need to be direct and omnipresent shapeshifters, and we’re going to have to work just as doggedly on getting men to hear as on getting women to speak up. But we also need to talk about toxic masculinity—and often—with our partners, friends, and children. We need to implore men who get it to speak up to other men. And, as women, we might have to step back and see what happens when the men who truly want to be more accountable make attempts to change.
The days that turned into the months that followed my daughter’s birth via emergency C-section were tinted an unfamiliar and unlikable color. I experienced plenty of blissful moments with my daughter back then. I’ll say I even experienced pretty regular bursts of love and gratitude and awe, but everything about my reality there for a while was slightly distorted, and not in a euphoric way. I adjusted to the presence of something dark.
I had postpartum PTSD. And I was sleep-deprived to the point of hallucinating sometimes. I didn’t have the ability to take any maternity leave whatsoever, and the stressors of needing to earn money while my C-section stitches were still fresh were real. But perhaps more than anything else: I just wasn’t getting the help I’d expected. The help I needed.
I still managed to be a pretty good mom, I think. But I felt like I’d been transplanted into a new universe, and what was worse, I felt like I was the only one who could see that everything had changed.
But I always felt like I was asking for too much. My partner wanted to help but had just started a new job that had early morning meetings, and therefore, he wouldn’t do the middle-of-the-night wake-ups. When he was done working and I badly wanted to do some work myself, he often stressed out about how he needed to walk the dogs or do some kind of house work or go biking instead.
Loved ones came to visit during the months that followed my daughter’s birth and I, maybe kind of foolishly, hoped those visits would be a boon for me. I daydreamed about relatives and/or close friends truly helping me pick up the slack for a minute. Maybe they would cook the meals or insist I take a bath or something. But when the visits came and went, it became clearer to me with each one that the trip to see me and the new baby was largely framed as a vacation in their minds. I definitely got some help here and there, but it was nothing like what I’d envisioned. I dreamed every member of my village would swoop in to lessen my load and show me the motherhood ropes, but it just didn’t happen that way.
But some of my village did come through and new members to it surprised me along the way. A mom friend I made just before I gave birth helped to keep me sane, focused, and validated. Her baby was just a few months older than mine, and she was also struggling with getting the kind of help she needed. While we didn’t go clean the other’s house or even exchange babysitting favors, her reassurance that my overwhelming experience was normal kept me afloat. Her advice at each milestone was welcome and readily available. She always brought a little extra food or wine over and it helped me to feel seen.
If I could do it all again, I’d demand. I’d demand help, plain and simple. I wouldn’t back down so easily. I wouldn’t take on so much. My partner and I would outline which aspects of parenting we each were best suited to captain. I would dive into learning about domestic inequalities and how they relate to feminism, and I would speak up more loudly and frequently to anyone who would listen. I would insist on getting the help I needed, not just for my own sake, but for the sake of every mother. And if I ever wanted to give in and give up, I’d think of my daughter and what I would like for her mothering experience to be like one day, should she choose that path. And I’d get back to demanding.
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