Jennifer Case
Things People Tell Me When I Write About Motherhood
- From an esteemed essayist I have long admired: “Yes, we need to talk more about what women gave up when they left the home.”
- In a cream envelope, containing a Xerox copy of an 1860s parenting manual, instructions on how to hold a baby properly to reduce colic and keep the baby happy: “Maybe these will help you.”
- Scribbled in the margins on an essay about loneliness and online parenting forums: “Post-Partum Depression?”
- From someone who clearly has never had a child in daycare: “The writing is strong overall and I loved the humor! The idea is original and relatable. However, I ultimately felt that the illnesses, one after the other (Six colds? Two stomach bugs? Hand, foot, mouth disease? All in a year?), overwhelmed a piece of this length, and while this is certainly the narrator’s experience, it is not everyone’s.”
- From many male agents: “I am not the right agent for this project.”
- From many female agents: “Although I am personally interested in this project, it isn’t revolutionary enough in a market quickly becoming saturated with books about motherhood.”
- From an editor in NYC (as well as an old boss): “Sorry. I’m not a ‘parenting person.’”
- From other mothers with young children: “This made my nipples hurt.”
- From other mothers with older, grown children: “We need to see the baby more! We need to see the joy!”
- In personal messages and private emails from friends and acquaintances too self-conscious to talk face-to-face or “like” a link on social media: a series of stories about their own insecurities as parents, or their own relationships with their mothers, or their own doubts and regrets.
- From most of my family: nothing.
- From most others (my OBGYN, my dentist, the other parents in the daycare pick-up lane…): nothing.
- But mostly: “We wish you the best in placing this elsewhere.”
Jennifer Case is the author of We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood (Trinity University Press, 2024) and Sawbill: A Search for Place (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). Her essays have appeared in journals such as The Rumpus, Orion, Ecotone, Literary Mama, and North American Review, among others. She teaches at the University of Central Arkansas and serves as an assistant nonfiction editor at Terrain.org. You can find her at www.jenniferlcase.com.