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The emphasis society places on cultivating a family unit as an inevitable next rung in the ladder of life is overwhelming. Okay, but how? Circling back to my theory, sustaining this culture relies on two factors: shame and a lack of questions.Įmotional manipulation is by far the most insidious and frightening aspect of this cult, the leaders of whom are all of us who buy into it and perpetuate it. Anyway, I’m interested in the terms, “to cultivate” and “adoration.” From religious reverence of Mary, the mother of Jesus (she has no other notable identity) to the unconscionable cost of designer onesies, ours is a culture that cultivates an adoration of motherhood. I don’t know this because I remember any Latin, by the way. This may sound obvious, but there’s a reason the word “culture” shares an origin with “cult.” As a writer/editor I like words, and as a former (middling) Latin nerd I am interested in derivations, so bear with me for a second.Īt the root of both terms are the Latin “cultus” (noun: care, adoration) and “colere” (transitive verb: to cultivate). I have a theory, but first I want to take a look at the dictionary definition of “cult.” One of the Merriam-Webster entries reads, “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work.” By this definition, almost anything can be a cult, and to be honest I think a lot of things about society are mind-blowingly cultlike. So why do we-the “lucky” ones, at least-do it? I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion, but think about it: what drove me, a woman who has only ever felt ambivalence toward child-rearing, to fork over an ungodly sum and submit to weeks of self-injected hormones-all leading up to the grand finale of general anesthesia and an aching uterus-for something as intangible as “options”? Only to know I’ll have to spend more money down the line to potentially (with luck) achieve the pie-in-the-sky status of “mother”?Īnd don’t get me started on the implications of the financials and how unfair it is that a lot of people don’t have this option at all. Beyond the problematic aspects of paying to forestall the inevitable, by opting into “fertility preservation” (a palatable term!), I am complicit in something bigger and more sinister: the cult of motherhood. Typing that sentence invites shame, because the knowledge that my eggs are safely ensconced a cooler, sporting miniature sweaters (erm, that’s how I picture it) over at a lab over on the Upper West Side is an absurd privilege. …and just before my 37 th birthday, my theoretical family went on ice. They were always there, hovering roughly 5-7 years out of sight, even as I turned 33, 34, 35, 36…. They merely existed as a fact of my distant future, and as time went on the gap between present and future never really narrowed. I’ve never felt opposed to children, but I’ve never particularly looked forward to them, either. (I loved the children I cared for but nannying in both Paris and New York painted a daunting picture of what was needed to juggle a career and a family in an expensive city.) But the fact was, my instinct wasn’t temporarily quelched-it had never existed at all. For a while I assumed many years of nannying had temporarily extinguished it, and that it would eventually reappear at some random time. I have never felt any sort of strong maternal instinct. But I think back on that conversation often because the truth of it is, nothing drove my commitment to improving my finances more than the idea that my fertility was swiftly expiring. However, it’s very unlikely I could comfortably afford to be a single mother in New York City even now, and in fact my circumstances have changed dramatically in the last five years-I’m no longer single and I no longer live in the city, having relocated to the more affordable Hudson Valley region. I eventually achieved my goal of relative financial stability, and selling my new book, Just Like Mother, gave me the freedom to pursue fertility preservation. I think I was less interested in the reality of it and more interested in having the ability to choose. I am not sure why I became so preoccupied at that time in my life with the hypothetical scenario of being a single mother. “Weren’t you just promoted?” I replied that yes, I was just promoted (to a just-over-mid five figure salary), but that being a single person in New York City was difficult, and “What if I want to be a single mother someday?!” I just realized I’m overdue in paying the very expensive storage fee for my frozen eggs-a fee I have committed to paying into perpetuity, I guess.įive years ago, at age 33, I sat in front of my friend and former boss at a coffee shop and explained that I needed more money.