Why do some women detest motherhood after becoming mothers?

Many Indian women have a complicated relationship with motherhood, going through all the shades of hatred, repulsion and even disgust

The earliest feeling Shreya Mitra remembers about motherhood was a distinct inability to bond with her own child. She did not necessarily have an idealistic, utopian view of motherhood. Only, she had prepared herself for sleepless nights and changing diapers. The reality, as it were, was far more complicated–disturbing even. 

“For the longest time, I had a severe identity crisis,” says the 31-year-old former lawyer and blogger based in Jamshedpur. “I’d ask myself, why have I signed up for motherhood without fully knowing what it is? It was all very bizarre and overwhelming.”

For the study published in 2015 titled Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis, in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 Israeli mothers. The overarching conclusion was that while motherhood may be a source of “great compassion, fulfilment, pleasure and love,” it also brings with it a great deal of “helplessness, frustration, hostility and disappointment, as well as an arena of oppression and subordination.” 

The Olivia Colman-starrer film The Lost Daughter (2021), adapted from the eponymous novel by Elena Ferrante, shocks us with the story of a mother who leaves her children and husband to pursue not just a career in academics but also a love affair. “I’m an unnatural mother,” she later concludes. The Atlantic headlined their review of the film as ‘The Movie That Understands the Secret Shame of Motherhood.’ 

In what ways does motherhood define itself beyond the romanticised, overly optimistic cliches associated with it? It’s certainly not all flowers and games, so why is the dark heart beneath it all not properly understood?

Beyond idealism 

According to psychiatrist Dr Era Dutta, most mothers decide to be “perfect and ideal mothers” when their little ones come along. However, when life happens and reality catches up, the chasm between what was imagined and what truly is becomes unbearably real. 

“A British pediatrician, DW Winnicott gave a beautiful concept called the ‘good enough mother’. This encompasses that all mothers begin with wanting to be perfect and being a certain way but over time mothers change and allow their ideas to evolve from illusion to reality and they begin to allow small mistakes and not constantly hold themselves responsible for them,” Dutta tells The Established. 

In such cases, they begin to identify that they have an identity other than being a mother, and this is deeply liberating and important for all of them. In popular literature and discourse, texts such as The Lost Daughter that showed the possibility of women having lives beyond being mothers were referred to as “demon texts”—popularised by American feminist writer Ann Snitow in an essay from 1993. The first such demon text was Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique from 1963. In another such demon text–Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution–published in 1970, the writer argues that the mother-child tie was a “chain-gang shackle” and that “maternal fury is inevitable”. 

“Mom rage is what new mothers, or even some of the seasoned ones, go through and it involves displacing anger and wrath on those around them,” she says. “Displaced anger, misplaced irritation and big reactions and the term “monster” are popularly used to derogatorily refer to mothers who may behave like monsters at times.”

Sea of helplessness 

In the case of Stuti Agarwal, a 34-year-old former journalist, motherhood presented a world that she endlessly grappled with. Even breastfeeding seemed like a task that she had to learn, something that wouldn’t come naturally. Then, the doubt and anxiety set in. 

“You are supposed to know why your baby is crying and what you must do about it,” she says. “I’d just sit there and tell myself that I don’t know why. What is the point of entrusting me with this baby? Everyone has books and lessons on safe pregnancy but no one prepares you for the horrors of what happens after childbirth, the fourth trimester.”

Agarwal says that the moment the sun would set in, so would her anxiety. As a lifestyle journalist, she was used to being out and about and now found herself marooned with a baby and helpless, lacking any substantive support system. It certainly didn’t help that she comes from a close-knit, conservative Marwari family where the moral codes were simply too overwhelming. 

“From what I should wear to what I should eat, there were rules laid out for everything and everything made my postpartum blues worse,” shares Agarwal. “They would ask me why the milk was insufficient for my child, even feeding my baby formula powder in my absence. Fortunately, my husband stood by me in his own ways and insisted that the family let me parent in a way that I was comfortable with.”

Agarwal knew that she had to take the reins of her life into her own hands–there was no other way. As long as she let motherhood be dictated by the forces of those around her, it would always seem like a massive wall to hate. The trigger was when she was being photographed with her baby and everyone around her had their own ideas on how something as basic as a photoshoot should be. 

“In terms of the larger family and society, the support system was either missing or untrusting,” she says. “I joined mum support groups on Facebook and found solace there. There were stories that made me feel less alone, stories that made me feel seen. Since then, I started my own blog and made it my life’s mission to ensure that motherhood doesn’t ruin any woman’s life. Now, motherhood has given wings to my dreams as opposed to being the death of them.”

Fighting circumstances 

For mothers to even begin the healing, acceptance remains a challenge. Considering the dramatic and romantic ideals that most Indians have been raised with, as far as motherhood is concerned, there is simply no space for a mother to just truly be. Dutta explains that circumstances that lead to a mother’s rage are often an interplay of many things. 

“It ranges from changing hormones to difficult social situations and poor support,” she says. “For instance, with unplanned children, or children born in marriages where the partner is deeply unsupportive, or unfortunately if a child has birth defects, can all cause a mother to almost detest motherhood. Postpartum depression can lead her to hate motherhood, and in postpartum psychosis, mothers can even have thoughts of hurting the child and act on them.”

In the case of Mitra, when she realised during her pregnancy that her son would be born with a clubfoot condition–a rare condition whose reason is unknown where the foot is twisted out of shape–it at least gave her time to do enough research, and prepare her both mentally and logistically for her child. 

“My pregnancy was terrible and the same naturally translated into motherhood, too,” she explains. “Within just a few months of my pregnancy, I found out about my son having clubfoot, my mother got diagnosed with cancer, grandmother passed away, I had a brain haemorrhage and my husband got a bad case of dengue.”

And yet, Agarwal says that she is willing to live through all those situations again, except for the soul-crushing realities of postpartum depression. “It destroyed me. People kept asking, howI felt being a new mother? It was almost as if they wanted me to feel a certain way and I was clearly not feeling it. Now that I look back to that phase, it feels like I was possessed. That is not me.”

The way Dutta sees it, isolation, feeling disconnected, poor self-care and detachment toward children eventually culminate into depressive disorder for mothers in such cases. “Indian mothers are often made to feel far more guilt and embarrassment when it comes to splitting the role between motherhood and work. It’s usually a ‘choice’ and not the balance of the two that is encouraged,” she concludes. 

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