REVIEW: Motherhood by Sheila Heti
Motherhood by Sheila Heti is a deliberative exploration of the social norms that shape our personal decisions such as whether or not to have children.
As a writer (arguably a fictionalised Heti) nears the end of her thirties, in a stable relationship with a partner who is more or less indifferent to the thought of having children, it seems that what once was clear (or at least what did not have to be determined firmly yet) had become opaque and open to questioning. Motherhood is an exercise in both evaluating one’s decision-making process and a reassurance that we can trust that process and our intuition, without pressure to succumb to external expectations.
Heti explores motherhood on both social and biological planes - the novel unfolds by following the writer through her travels between her home in Toronto, and to New York and Stockholm for work, before entitling the phases in her life by the stages in her menstrual cycle. The relationship between the pressure of the decision to have children and the biological capabilities of doing so are drawn into focus. When the writer considers having her eggs frozen, she muses,
Indecision has always been with me, but I didn’t want it to dominate my life more than it has already done. Getting my eggs frozen would have been like freezing my indecision. I couldn’t reveal my weakness to myself in such a tangible way.
For many, decision-making is an anxiety-inducing assignment for even the smallest of choices, and unbearable when the product of a decision inevitably reaches beyond the realm of the decision-maker - it is to cast the stone upon the water and send ripples travelling upon their own trajectory; unrestrained, unpredictable and mercy to the whims of a wider ecosystem. However, the process of decision-making is an invisible burden, which perhaps explains why some turn to writing or otherwise externalise the process in one way or another. The writer in Motherhood adopts the practice of flipping three coins to answer the questions she poses. The coins provide certainty, allowing only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as answers without space for nuance. Though the writer does not simply ask the coins whether she should have a child or not, to do so would remove the process of decision-making entirely and instead proscribe a task to be completed. Instead, she converses with herself to reveal her own inhibitions in what is essentially a truth-seeking act.
Motherhood first came to my attention in 2018 when content creators Leena Norms and Ariel Bissett each spoke about the book with high regard.
The journey of the writer in debating motherhood is largely introspective, with the writer reflecting upon her relationship with her partner Miles, a lawyer, and his certainty around his desire to have a child. Miles’ effective indifference to having children is due to him already having a child from a prior relationship with whom he actively parents in a shared custody arrangement. Consequently, when the writer discusses having a child with him, he places the weight of the decision entirely upon her, ‘we can have one, he said, but you have to be sure’. In this way, Heti explores motherhood as solely a woman’s decision but affected by social expectations and external pressures - such is the truth of women’s agency.
Motherhood has oft been referred to as a feminist text, not only for its questioning of motherhood, but for its lack of pitting the archetypal women against each other, the career woman and the mother. The writers’ ultimate rejection of the possible betrayal of “the woman inside of [her] who can’t bring herself to this thing” is not a rejection of women who choose to have children, but only a self-deprecating reflection at something she feels she may lack, which is grounded in the “fear that without children, it doesn’t look like you have made a choice”, despite the reality of both parents and the childless being more or less “just a continuation of what they lived before”.
The reflection on cultural norms surrounding parenthood is both general and personal. Heti writes,
It’s like the story my religious cousin told me when we were at her home for Shabbat dinner - of the girl who made chicken the way her mother did, which was the way her mother did: always tying the chicken legs together before putting it in the pot. When the girl asked her mother why she tied the legs together, her mother said, That’s the way my mother did it. When the girl asked her grandmother why she did it that way, her grandmother said, That’s how my mother did it. When she asked her great-grandmother why it was important to tie the chicken legs together, the woman replied, That’s the only way it would fit in my pot.
I think that is how childbearing feels to me: a once-necessary, now sentimental gesture.
The sentimentality of childbearing is a poignant aspect of the relationship between the writer and her mother, who she remembers as a woman who cried and was detached from her as a child, however, they remain forever linked as the writer will always be a daughter. The relativity of being a future for someone who cannot experience it, familial obligations and intergenerational trauma are alluded to when the writer takes her manuscript to her mother and wonders whether their lives have validated that of her grandmother’s, who had survived the Holocaust; and whether the pain they carried with them was worthwhile.
Heti queries motherhood from every crevice of its social and emotional understanding, through sex, religion, biology, spiritual - no stone is left unturned. Her reflections on these influences upon motherhood are so delicately woven into the narrative as naturally as our minds dance and leap from one thought to the next, that they present no marked process of investigation - perhaps to the disappointment of some readers searching for a framework to guide their decision-making. In Motherhood, Heti’s writing is stripped down to the essentials to ensure the narrative truly shines through - reminiscent of Rachel Cusk and Ali Smith.
It may also be the disappointment of some readers that in much the same way that Heti’s writing of the decision-making process is organic, so too is the decision itself:
I experience biology’s forgetting about me as an immense relief, as a sort of bliss. If you do not have a child, a a certain age, you become your own child. You start life all over again, this time with yourself.
As a woman who, at this point in my life, does not intend to have children, Motherhood was a comfort to read. The to and fro of the writer’s position felt like my own thoughts had been laid out before me in ink - confronting but affirming. Even those who have their heart set on being parents may nevertheless find Motherhood to be a perfect read, as Heti also writes about a certain fear in being a parent, of doing things right or wrong, and not knowing who your child is or will be.
Like any reader, I have a soft spot for books that I feel represent a part of myself and Motherhood has undoubtedly been one of my favourite reads this year. As I move through my adult life, I suspect I will return to it, and measure how I relate to the writer and perhaps that will help me find certainty in my own decision.
This book is largely limited to the experiences of straight, white, western cis-gendered and heterosexual women, so whilst Heti’s writing is interesting and raises important talking points about the personal and social position of motherhood, these reflections may not apply broadly.