Do mothers perceive women without children as, essentially, children themselves?

Chantel sent me this article about two relatively similar women and their different takes on identity as women, as writers, and the decision to become parents. It took all my concentration to get through this discussion - part of the reason I haven't blogged all week, but it was completely worth reading the whole thing.

I like to think I could identify with both women. I caught myself identifying more with Sarah, the '"unmother", but I don't think it was because I don't have children. Something about the way she responded to questions seemed more understanding/patient? to me. Don't get me wrong both women were very thoughtful and enlightening, but maybe it was because I felt Rachel was driving the discussion with her questions, that it went back to her trying to understand Sarah as a non-mom. I'm not sure. This whole article rocked my week. I really like thinking about how and why women understand and judge each other. Of course it made me want to read their books. What is the category you identify most with? For me? young/woman/scientist?

Woman Writer + Writer Mother: A Conversation between Sarah Manguso and Rachel Zucker

Our ages, educations, professions, resumes, and mailing addresses are similar, but Sarah has no offspring and Rachel has three sons. This one difference seems more than any other quality to establish and absolutely separate our private and public identities as women, as writers, and as human beings.

In an attempt to understand why, we corresponded over several months.

Some captivating statements made in an exchange between two women writers, one a mother and one not.

"Capacity versus experience—that’s an important distinction, absolutely. Still, why does the experience still have to be an identity-changer for women but not men?"

"One of the wonderful and terrible things about being pregnant is how public and visible it is."

"I hate being perceived as a potential mother—an empty vessel—but in Western medical culture, that is my identity."

"I know, of course, that I can do many other things with my body, be many other things, but it still means something to me that this is the original or truest function of my body."

"I am genuinely interested in the lives of mothers inasmuch as I am interested in the lives of people in general, but I’m separately fascinated by some mothers’ apparent conviction that nonmothers are shallow, that mothers suffer and feel more deeply than nonmothers. It seems as if these mothers want to shun me because I’m not a member of their sorority—hell, I didn’t even show up to rush."

"Maybe because I’m trying to justify my own path or maybe because I truly feel this way—I don’t know—but I’ve spent my whole life assuming that (to bring it back to James Baldwin) no mother, no matter how wretched, would want to trade places with a nonmother. So I’m back to the dichotomy."

"It is hard for me to understand mothers who assume I envy them, or who assume that motherhood is my goal."

"Every mother has also been a nonmother, so only they know the difference. Nonmothers simply can’t have this perspective."

"...being a mother is learning to tolerate discomfort."

"As you say, there are degrees of participation in being a mother. Unfortunately I don’t know many (any?) mothers who feel at peace with the degree of participation they’ve chosen. This seems, unfortunately, an ineluctable part of being a modern mother."