I know I want at least one baby. But the more I learn about motherhood, the scarier it seems | Charlie Brinkhurst cuff

IIt’s a conspiracy, I’m sure. Since the pandemic hit in 2020, the year I stepped out of the young adult category, my Instagram “for you” page has been full of images and videos of the cutest babies you could ever hope to see. They have round cheeks and smile and drool and chatter and randomly fall on their faces when they fart, or smile when they fart, or just fart really loudly. It’s cute.

As someone who hasn’t experienced many real babies in my 30s and only has a few close friends who have started parenting yet, this online exposure has been transformative. I had always known I wanted at least one child, but approached the idea with the naivety of youth and the security of socialized gender norms – of class I was going to have a child because all little girls aspire to take care of babies, and why would I have wasted all that time swaddling a plastic doll or discussing baby names when I was barely out of babyhood myself ( Chloe was my favorite) if it wouldn’t that translate into reality one day?

Initially, the for you page became a portal to my frailty. Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to be a young mother? That my parents will become grandparents? Only at some point my feed changed from cute photos to more realistic depictions of motherhood.

First came the ultra-candid birth stories, the honest relaying of trauma. Responsibly, I decided to look for other posts and came across a parenting company that posted “positive birth stories.” Unfortunately, as I read them I realized that even though they were presented in an optimistic light, almost all of them were still terrifying to me. Then I started clinging to a proliferation of grim statistics. Black women in Britain are four times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth, I read in 2021. The following year it was reported that the number of women not returning to work after having a baby rising for the first time in decades. And in January this year it was reported that the number of women dying during pregnancy has risen sharply.

It’s great that all this information is available to women because it gives us the opportunity to make an informed choice about motherhood. But for those of us who already feel that strong urge to raise children, from these awful statistics to Channel 4’s documentary series One Born Every Minute and the brutally honest ‘mummy bloggers’, the abundance of information is overwhelming.

Even the odd bit of seemingly good news, like new legislation It says paternity leave should be made ‘more flexible for fathers and partners’, which came into force last week, but is tempered by the fact that a much bigger overhaul of childcare policy is needed in Britain to properly support families support and empower. . Campaigners have called the new paternity changes “pointless”, while the charity Pregnant and Screwed is calling for a much better change six weeks paternity leavepaid at 90% of salary.

Maybe this slap in the face was always meant to happen for me. Perhaps it is a necessary and responsible part of the process of committing to parenthood. I think it’s a good thing to be at least a little prepared and from my extensive research I know that so many people feel anything but. “What I Wish I Had Known” posts about motherhood are very common.

But just as an older friend told me about her experience with pregnancy – she was warned to read just one book on motherhood by a midwife who felt she might be going off the deep end – I think for me at least this the best way to approach this stage of life is with some blind faith. Everyone’s story is different, and learning more at this point would feel more like psychological torture than the healthy search for information.

One thing I’m certain of from all my research is that parents, no matter how messed up, traumatized, and tired they are, can truly reflect the best of humanity. All my insecurities converge around this one shining star of certainty: As I embark on that journey, I am willing to challenge myself to surrender the best and most loving version of myself. And if I have the time and energy, which I know I probably won’t, I fight the system while I’m at it. All women and birthing parents deserve better than a society that pushes us to desire motherhood and then tells us that we will suffer endlessly if we choose that path—but will be looked down upon if we don’t.

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is a freelance journalist