Motherhood and the Working Artist
From Vesperisms Season 2, Episode 4, February 2021
This is a free edition of Vesperisms. Some of the episodes which feature interviews require a transcription process of the conversation, rather than what I normally do, which is simply my own writing. If you’d like to support the podcast and this Substack, consider a paid subscription. Thanks!
Greetings and Salutations, and welcome to Vesperisms: The Art of Thinking for Yourself. I’m here to help you recalibrate toward an artistic worldview. So grab your coffee, and have a seat in my studio, and let’s have a chat. This is Season 2, Episode 3: Motherhood and the Working Artist.
What follows in the next several minutes is a true Vesperism. You get that title, right? This is a podcast based on my observations about the artistic worldview. I’m not a journalist or a sociologist; I’m a good researcher, but most of that time and focus goes toward researching the historical periods of my novels. I’m not going to be dropping stats and figures here on the podcast any time soon.
What I am is an artist. That’s one slice of the millions of slices that make up the vocational pie of this big human family. It has its own set of idiosyncrasies but isn’t exalted above other vocations. And another thing that I am is a mother. And I’m not the first, last or only one of those, either. I do my best, and I try to be intentional with my parenting, but as with the rest of life, I’m learning as I go along, and trying to leave some breadcrumbs for the next traveler.
So in true Vesperisms style, I’m going to share with you some observations and opinions on the choices that go into being a working-artist-mother.
I’m sure to ruffle a few feathers in this one. If you’re a die-hard feminist Boss Babe, I’m going to make you mad. If you’re a granola crunchy child-led parent who lets the kids make the rules, I’m going to make you mad. Or who knows, you may actually find yourself agreeing with me. But you know what? It’s good for you to hear both people you do and don’t agree with, especially people who have life experience. We give life experience short shrift these days, in favor or innovation and novelty. But I’m sorry, it’s the historical researcher and human nature junkie in me—I simply don’t think that way. So think of this as an art school critique, only on the subject of working motherhood. The roughest critiques often produce the most growth.
For some of you, this will be a painful subject, and I’m aware of that. Maybe you’re struggling with infertility, or you haven’t found a life partner. Please know that I’m not trying to cause anyone pain or exclude anyone, or to make anyone feel guilty about her own choices. Actually, my aim is to help women who are considering this specific subject of working artist motherhood, make informed choices, not based on emotionalism, but on factors we don’t always know are out there. At the end of this episode, whatever stage of life you are in, all I want you to know is that every woman artist can, and is allowed to, make the best decisions for her with the knowledge she has, and the circumstance she’s in at the time.
There are a lot of podcasts and articles out there about being a working mother, work-life balance, and how to look Instagram-fabulous while throwing your kids a spontaneous, magazine-worthy after-school party just because your kids are that inspiring and you’re that inspired by them, all the time—oh, and you’re never tired, and you’re pulling down high 6-figures in your career so you have a live-in nanny and your family can afford to all wear matching outfits every day of the week. If that’s what you’re looking for, let me suggest this is not the episode for you. This is also not the episode for you if you’re looking to hear how to be a badass CEO who’s bravely forging new paths for feminism. You’ll know the end is nigh if you ever see me wearing a T-shirt proclaiming that The Future Is Female or holding a coffee mug that says “Boss Babe.” Sorry!
Maybe some of you maybe don’t know what to think or feel on this subject—you’re young, aspirational, but you’re not sure how you’ll ever balance family and career, and so you think you have to choose between those two mutually exclusive desires, and you think you have to break your own heart on one side or the other. We’ll talk about that, too.
I often go to universities as a visiting artist, and many times a young woman will pull me aside—she usually won’t ask in the formal Q&A—she feels like she has to whisper the question—and she’ll ask me, “how do you do it? How do you have a family and a career?” In fact, one of my classmates in grad school once told me, “You know, we’re all watching you to see how this is done.” So I began to think over my training. I went to a rigorous, career-oriented arts high school, and two well-known illustration schools, yet no one had even one serious conversation with we women about how to do this. We were just told that, on the one hand, really serious and successful artists don’t have children, OR that we could have it all, do it all and be it all, and that it all had to happen at the same time.
We women are told such a fat load of lies, it’s unbelievable. And it’s unfair. So I’m going to tell it to you straight. And hear my heart on this: I actually want to encourage you. I want to give you pathways forward. I want to present to you real, accurate and honest choices, without guilt or emotionalism, so you can live your frigging life.
I’m now what can be called a “seasoned mom.” My kids are almost grown. I’m through the stages of parenthood that are the most physically and time-challenging. I’ve also seen outcomes, both in my kids and others’ kids, both good and bad, and I’ve seen outcomes in parents, both myself and my husband, and others, good and bad. And I’ve learned a thing or two that I hope will help as you think through your own decisions. I’m not going to cover certain details in here such as child care—we’d be here for hours—but this is meant to give a framework for how to think about working-artist-motherhood.
OK, with all that being said, are we ready? Take a deep breath. Here we go.
First truth: Women have always worked.
For most of the history, true, that’s taken place in the home, whether paid or unpaid. But by the way, that was true of men, too—most men worked out of the home, in family trades. This was true until the industrial revolution and the advent of the factory. Cheaper, mass produced goods made the standard of living rise, and by the post-world war 2 era, women, for the first time (I mean, other than the minuscule aristocracy), had the option to be unemployed and stay at home. For some women, this worked. There was stronger social cohesion back then; women like my grandmother were able to get together with friends during the day and let their kids play together. But for some women, it meant that their career ambition was stifled. Women were prohibited from certain schools and professions, and when they did work, faced horrendous harassment and exploitation in a truly misogynist culture.
There was a lot of good that came from the Women’s movement of the 1960s, and we owe a lot to the women who broke through those barriers for us. Universities and companies and even parents were forced to take a hard look at their official and unofficial discrimination against capable women. Because of those pioneers, women are now able to pursue careers in any field in which they show competency. More women took leadership in government all over the world. And now, women dominate in the university, and in certain high-earning fields like medicine.
But we have to keep in mind that this is all incredibly new in the scope of history. There’s a reason there is such a question mark out there about work-life balance, and it’s because we are still in the middle of an enormous experiment.
The effect of women going into the external workplace on this scale was—it can’t be denied—a fracturing of family cohesion. Paid child care puts a burden on family finances. Work is exhausting and takes time from family relationships. Divorce rates climbed commensurate with women pursuing full-time careers. I’m not making a value judgment on individual cases, here. It’s just simple human dynamics. I’m saying that with less time and focus on family and home life, those relationships frayed, to the point now that roughly 40% of marriages end in divorce in the US. Career and family are often in conflict, and without realistic expectations and a huge intentional effort, one side will lose, and it’s often the family.
Second Truth: It’s just a job.
Career means your long-term job. But Family means your long-term people. A career can be satisfying, but it’s nothing compared to healthy relationships. I say that from experience. When your relationships are struggling—your marriage or your kids are in trouble—even the most successful career loses meaning. And you know what, that’s true even when everything’s going well.
Here’s something from my own experience. I can tell you, coming from a very broken family, I never pictured myself having one of my own. I abstractly thought I might have kids someday, but more so that I could do everything the opposite of what my family did. I came from a big family of career women—a real matriarchy. None of them stayed home with their kids. Even my grandmother—once her kids were a little older—became a real estate broker, and because she and my grandfather were raising me, she often took me to work with her. So I never questioned that I would pursue a career in something that was meaningful to me.
But my plans took a different turn when I met my husband, and I was quite young when I did. We were both artists, and because we were so young, we figured everything out together—what it looked like to be working artists. Sometimes that meant having other jobs and doing our artwork at night. Sometimes it was temping in an art-related field like web design or art handling or even my time working in an art supply store. And when we did decide to start a family—totally his idea—I had to think hard about what it meant to parent in the opposite way than I was parented. I was a child of neglect, and in my parenting or in my work for children, I never wanted any kid to feel like an afterthought. I wanted my children to know how deeply they were loved and wanted, and how much we were rooting for them and preparing the way for them to live responsible, ethical and loving lives, as future adults that we would have to unleash on the world someday.
At every juncture of these decisions, I was pursuing my career. But much of the time, it was exhausting. And it wasn’t just because of kids and job. All through my 20s and most of my 30s, I had a debilitating chronic pain syndrome and ridiculous, undiagnosed medical issues. I often lamented that I wasn’t advancing the way I wanted to and that it was my own body’s fault, that it was in the way and if I could just leave my body I could do my work. Then with little kids and their constant needs, it’s hard to find those long, six-hour stretches at the drawing table that I was used to in college. But that season actually didn’t last that long, and I’m glad I focused on building a relationship with my family. The battle made me scrappy and resourceful and resilient. It made me humble and realistic without losing my ambition—because it made me truly confront how important art was to me. It tested my resolve in a way that nothing else could. Art school taught me how to draw and paint and negotiate with clients. But it was parenting that made me an artist.
Third truth: Most artists are not famous.
I tell this to every high school art student and undergrad I meet: the ones who hit it big right out of school are the rarest of the rare. Most of us will have to do the equivalent of scrubbing toilets for the first 3-5 years of our careers. That’s just a reality. It’s true if you’re pursuing medicine—you have to do your residency and you go where you’re told. It’s true if you’re a dancer and you earn your stripes in the corps de ballet until you get a role. It’s true if you’re an artist and you have to do endless photoshop production of masking out sneakers for the New Balance website or coloring endless animation cells for a Nickelodeon cartoon. Both of which I did. This girl, right here. And it sucked. But hey, 22 years in, I’m still a working artist. So, nah nah, it worked.
My point is that a lot of us go into the arts with stars in our eyes. And yes, I’m 22 years in. And yes, I love my job. I adore my job. But hear me: At the end of the day, it’s just a job. I can say now with authority that it’s not ultimately satisfying. It doesn’t deliver on its promises of constant fulfillment. And my career is nothing compared to these precious humans Ben and I have been cultivating together. They are not a job. Yes, when you’re changing diapers and wiping mouths and picking up toys and teaching them to read, it can feel like a job. Even like true drudgery. But when you care for someone who is really dependent on you, the most important thing happens: your self-centeredness is displaced by love. Notice I didn’t say “replaced”—there are some truly selfish people walking around as parents out there—but you can choose to cultivate a love that displaces the natural self-focus we all have, and the narcissism that can actually be exacerbated by an endless focus on career. Trust me, I’m saying this as someone who is not selfless!
See, at the end of the day, we all still have to make dinner, do the laundry, scrub the shower. We still get sick, our parents age, we get behind on bills. In other words, no one gets a pass on the mundane, on daily life. And that’s true whether you’ve won an Oscar or a Caldecott. Why not go through it with someone you love? And why not take what you’re learning about life, and orient it outward instead of inward? To take the best things you know about life, and train someone to be better at this life thing than you are? You can’t be an endless adolescent. You can’t go out for drinks every night forever. You’ve only got so much time on earth before you die. You might as well contribute to the health of the world, and you might as well cultivate whatever selflessness lies dormant within you and grow it into something heroic, like loving a child into a healthy adulthood, and doing it as an artist.
Fourth truth: Biology matters.
Any discussion of motherhood has to be realistic about fertility. Age is a major factor that women cannot ignore. An interesting dynamic has emerged in the last few decades. As parents have become more hovering and protective, and as schools have focused more on testing and less on cultivating independence, kids who go to college are simply not as prepared for adulthood as in previous generations, whether that’s emotionally, spiritually, or financially, owing to huge student debt from a useless degree. And that means marriage and childbearing are getting pushed later and later. But there’s a problem with that. Women’s fertility does not last forever. Say it with me now: Women’s fertility does not last forever. It’s harder to get pregnant when you’re older, when you might project that all your ducks will be in a row. And there are no guarantees that your ducks will be in a row, or that conception will work. Adoption and fertility treatments are frigging expensive and often heart-wrenching. Look, you take risks either way, but you have to make your calculations based in reality, not fantasy.
I wish to God that someone would sit girls down in high school and college and present a big pro-and-con list. On one side, it would say, “having kids when you’re young.” One the other, it would say, “having kids when you’re older.” Here are some of the things I’d put on that list. You probably have more.
Having kids when you’re young: Pros: You’re at peak fertility. It’s overall easier to conceive. You’re statistically less likely to lose a baby through miscarriage, or to have a baby with congenital defects or Down’s syndrome. Babies aren’t as expensive as everyone makes them out to be, so you probably can afford it, if you’re financially smart, which you should be anyway, because adulting. Your own parents are probably still young enough to help you. Your friends are probably having kids at the same time, so you can swap clothes and share childcare. You’re not as jaded by life. You have a ton of energy and can bounce back from childbirth easier. You’ll be the young, hot mom. And when your kids are older, you’ll still be the young, hot mom—only now with way more experience and resources. Little kids are little for a very short time. Very short. At a time in life where most people make a lot of changes, your kids are likely to be as young and resilient as you. Fighting for your career makes you scrappy. And because your career would be growing alongside your children, they get to be a big part of it and be your biggest cheerleaders. Cons: You won’t advance as fast in your career (even though their littlehood is a relatively short season), and you may feel jealousy or resentment sometimes, which you’ll need to fight so they don’t feel it. You’ll need to keep your skills up if you want to continue your career, and it’ll take the aforementioned scrappiness to make the time to create.
Having kids when you’re older: Pros: You likely have more money…or more debt. You may be more established in your career, allowing for more maternity leave (if you work for a company, or if you’ve saved up living expenses to live on) and higher quality childcare. Cons: You have far less energy than when you’re young, and you’re likely to be set in your ways in a way that kids will definitely disrupt. You probably will have fewer kids than you may want because of declining fertility, and that can put pressure on only children or smaller families to bear the brunt of caring for each other and you down the road. Other moms will likely be younger than you, and it can be harder to relate or make friends. When your kid is entering adulthood, the generation gap will be glaring. You’re likely to be further into the “sandwich” of taking care of your parents and your children at the same time. And you’ll be looking at paying for your kids’ college while simultaneously looking toward ensuring your old-age safety net.
OK, that’s a lot to think about.
If these are decisions you’re working through, I’d encourage you to make a similar, literal, written-down pro-con list of your own. Talk to experienced mothers—not just bloggers or influencers, but people whose life and parenting outcome you can see—who have made these different decisions. Ask what they’d do the same way again, and what they wish they’d done differently.
Fifth truth: Family is good for artists.
A creative home can be a happy home. It gives you skin in the game. Look, I create work for children, from babies through young adults. Having my own kids means the work I create is first for them, but I’m aware that my audience are other people’s children, and I feel an immense responsibility toward them and their parents. It’s not just about my own self-expression, but about a sense of mission in the world. I’m creating work that helps kids have more life tools at their disposal and become grounded and loving future adults. Whatever your medium is, parenthood can be an important part of that. It can give you fresh perspective. New eyes. And compassion for others.
You know, we all know it, but artists can be really narcissistic. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Whether it’s through parenting or other long-term other-centered work, we can fight that tendency. The choice I make to put my husband and children ahead of myself does not in any way negate me as a woman or as an artist. You might be able to tell that I’m a pretty self-actualized and confident person. I believe a large part of that comes, not from hours of self-help and meditation and yoga retreats and spa visits (though I do try to take a healthy bit of time for myself now and then). No, it comes from the reality of working out both my life and my art daily, in the trenches, sharing the triumphs and losses in the context of very intentional family life.
As we close, let’s check what I’ve said against the four principles of Vesperisms and see if we can focus it through the lens of an artistic worldview.
Artists see. When artists are properly oriented toward truth, we see our situation with clarity, even if it’s uncomfortable. This includes real, factual considerations about motherhood and family.
Art is human-centered. So if your art is taking away from your relationships, you’re not in a healthy place, and you need to change things. We feel our art so deeply that sometimes it makes us suffer. But the kind of suffering that comes from sabotaging human relationships for the sake of art? That’s not proper. We must not make others suffer for our art.
Art is open and expansive. We don’t need to play by rules of scarcity. We can love and create. We live in possibility, and the artist is specifically equipped to look for possibility, to live as walking question marks, to ask, “what if?”.
Art allows for growth and change. We can allow for seasons and life transitions to be what they are, and to see the beauty even in the painful seasons, because that’s how we grow. We can ebb and flow and be flexible, and make the best decisions with the information we have right now.
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Work isn’t everything, but everything is The Work.
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