The Whispers

In interviews, Ashley Audrain alludes to society’s rigid expectations of mothers and what motherhood should look like, as well as how often mothers are discouraged from discussing experiences that are not in line with these expectations. In this, she echoes much contemporary commentary on parenthood, including Christina Crook’s work for Today’s Parent. Crook discusses:

‘When you lose the complete luxury of doing something purely selfish, the inability to think for just yourself, that’s suffocation […].’ Compound that with the feelings society imposes on you as a mother, telling you how you should act and feel. That’s the mommy trap (Crook, Christina. “Are You in the Mommy Trap?” Today’s Parent, 18 June 2013).

There are countless books about this phenomenon, like Susan Maushart’s The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Our Lives and Why We Never Talk About It or Iris Krasnow’s Surrendering to Motherhood: Losing Your Mind, Finding Your Soul. The titles alone point both to the pressure to keep silent when motherhood is not what one expects it to be and to the normalization of the Sacrifices of Motherhood.

There are myriad competing and conflict demands on women in the 21st century.