Mother as Wild Animal — Interruption #3

Motherhood connected me to my animal self, even as society tried to "civilize" me

I hope you enjoy this third reflection in my new weekly series about interrupting social norms. If you aren’t yet a paying subscriber and would like full access to this series, please consider upgrading your subscription. My paying subscribers help to subsidize the long-form, research-informed personal essays that I make available to all my readers.

I like to think of myself as a forest animal because I live in the Pacific Northwest and I’m partial to forests. But this is really about mother as animal, no matter the habitat. And the truth is, the habitat that most Western human mothers find themselves in when we are most animal is completely antithetical to our animal selves. It’s a gleaming white hospital room, humming with machines, entirely devoid of nature.

In fact, society has been toiling for years to sanitize and civilize the experience of early motherhood. Dull the pain, hide the breasts, contain the fluids.