#WomanCentered: NANDINI SESHADRI
Part One of Two
#WomanCentered is an independent project by conceptual artist and community organizer, Natasha Marin. Inspired by Women at the Center, a project created with support from the United Nations Foundation Universal Access Project. This series of interviews seeks to tell the inspiring, interconnected stories of women’s reproductive health, rights, and empowerment.
How has having or not having children affected the overall trajectory of your life?
I think all new parents undergo a rude awakening, to one degree or another, but I can’t overstate the extent of mine. It was a nightmare. My passively, but deeply absorbed ideas of what a Good Mother is (tender loving nurturer, sexy-earth-mama, breast feeder), were up against an unyielding reality (sleeplessness, a marriage in stress, a baby who would not latch for three months).
As I pushed myself to breaking point trying to achieve the world’s idea of perfect motherhood, I realized there was literally nobody I could trust to support ME and have MY best interests at heart anymore. None of my friends had babies, so they didn’t have a clue. My parents and in-laws were busy being angry with me for refusing to behave in traditional Indian new-mother ways. My husband got to leave the house for ten hours every day to go to his baby-free, parent-free, in-law-free workplace, and just didn’t seem to understand how insane my life had suddenly become. My doctors violated my body (e.g. forced me to undergo medically unnecessary internal exams), condescended to me (everyone who has ever been pregnant knows what I’m talking about), and gave me patronizing fear-driven advice unsupported by scientific evidence (don’t drink coffee ever! your occasional glass of wine is killing the baby!).
Even the internet websites I turned to for help and support with breastfeeding shamed me and gaslighted me: if my baby won’t latch then I was obviously positioning the baby wrong, if I don’t get enough milk pumping it was obviously my fault for failing to stay relaxed enough, and hey, I was probably imagining my low-supply issues, because new moms are delusional like that, silly us.
I nursed a snarling rage at my husband, my family, the world, and even at my baby for those first six months. It was PPD (Post-Partum Depression), of course, but my rage wasn’t all an irrational feeling. It was mostly justified.
Some things improved. I fell in love with the baby once he started latching on and let me sleep! My husband and I found a better equilibrium — he showed more care towards me, I stopped snarling at him all the time.
I got better at telling everyone to fuck off: doctors, parents, in-laws, and mother-focused websites.
Our second baby turned out to be way easier, and not just because she latched correctly from Day 1. There was no PPD. I got a taste of the motherhood bliss everyone talks about all the time. I started blogging and writing about feminist motherhood, and found like-minded feminist mothers on the internet.
But other things stayed bad. My old doctors continued to bully me through my second pregnancy so much that I fired them less than two weeks before my due date. I had a hard time finding a job after staying home with the kids for over half a decade. The mommy wage gap, chore wars, the care-work gap, people taking “Lean In” seriously as a solution… well, my rage against the world has stayed lit.
So this is how having children has changed the trajectory of my life: it has made me passionate about feminist motherhood. I write letters and emails and articles, I share personal stories with everyone who asks, I constantly poke at mainstream feminism/feminists to take notice of mothers already, and above all I tell the truth as often as I can in every way I can. Motherhood is political. There is a conspiracy of silence surrounding it that needs to be broken.
Do you feel pressure to fulfill an idea of womanhood that may/may not correspond to who you actually are? If so, please describe.
I certainly used to! I used to worry a lot that I wasn’t the right kind of daughter because I did all these forbidden things like having boyfriends and wearing spaghetti-strap tops. I spent only a little less time worrying I wasn’t the right kind of daughter-in-law because I’d refuse to bow to my in-laws’ authority and play the traditional “bahu” role. These days I get the occasional twinge about “ehhhh maybe I should shave my legs/wear makeup/buy more stylish clothes?” but I find that as I age it gets easier and easier for me to lol and move on.
One area in which I felt a huge deal of pressure to be a certain type of woman is when I was a stay-at-home mom, I would often feel worthless because I was terrible at housework and didn’t earn a wage. Intellectually and even physically, I am fervently aware that mothering is real and difficult and essential work. But I don’t seem to be able to believe it in my heart. My judgement never extends to other SAHMs, only to myself. I “caved” and started working full time and I feel much better about myself since then. In this area, I am a bad woman and a horrible feminist.
Nandini Seshadri is from Bangalore, India, and lived in Singapore for close to a decade before making her home in Albany, NY. She is a writer.
