Mother, Destroyer

Guest co-host Julie Douglas stops by to talk about her role as mother, and as destroyer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
God. I hope I don't burn down the studio too. Hello,
and welcome to stuff Mom never told you. I'm Annie
Reese and I am joined today with a guest co host,

(00:28):
Julie Dugett Dougo. I'll take that. Julie Dougo, that's what
I call her, sometimes known as Julie Douglas. Yes, sometimes
known as Julie Mom Douglas. Yes. And that is important
to our topic today, which you pitched to me. Yeah.

(00:50):
I had read this article by Claudia Day in Paris
Match and the name of the article is Mothers as
Makers of Death. It's a great at Yeah. I was
doing a death metal voice, um, and he was really
intriguing because, you know, I think there's been a lot
of discussion about the perception of mothers, but it put

(01:10):
it into a new light, or rather, she articulated it
in a way that hadn't really heard before. And she
talked about the complexity of motherhood. And it may seem
to people who are not mothers out there, or who
are you know, non binary, who don't subscribe to this
sort of femininity or associated femininity, that it might not

(01:33):
have something to do with them, But in fact, this
lens on motherhood has some really far reaching implications for
society as a whole, and that's why I thought was
a good thing to pitch to you. Yeah, And I
mean when I heard the title, I was immediately in.
But then when you explained explained kind of what that

(01:54):
meant and the conversation that you want to have of
course immediately of horror movies, which we're going to talk
about a little bit, but it has been on the
public's mind. I think wrestling with this idea of the
perceptions around motherhood and just the things that ripple out
from that. And I am not a mother, so I'm

(02:15):
very glad to have you here. Otherwise it would be
a very short episode, I think. Um, but I do
because I'm someone that loves in this society. I do
have a lot of I have internalized a lot of
these perceptions. And I think that motherhood is one of
the most monolithic, romanticized, sanitized things in existence. Baby just

(02:42):
and that we we we don't even think about it.
That's the thing. We just sort of accept that story
that we've been told. The example I kept running into
was June cleverer um Old June Old June from is
leave with the beaver, right, yeah, okay, I'll see you
if For those that don't know, I mean, I've never
seen leave it to beaver, but I know her. I
know she is. She's got the dinner ready for you.

(03:04):
She's perfect. Oh Charles, I have your dinner ready and
your slippers that oh beaver, now behave I don't I
don't know did you just put that that voice in there,
because I wouldn't know. I've never seen it, so you
could lie to me right now. I feel like I've
seen clips, but I don't really honestly know that the
character's names, but I do believe the gist of it

(03:26):
is this idea of of this um sort of prototypical
female mother who is one dimensional. Yeah, and thinking about
it now with my my adult brain, it's very kind
of wish fulfillment, I think for what a man would want,

(03:48):
perhaps slippers, slippers and food ready when he gets home.
That's right, Yes, But we erased when we we create
those characters, and when we say that motherhood is this
one monolithic thing, we erased so many, all of the
shades of it and the nuances of it and the
complexities of it. Yeah, totally and It's interesting because I

(04:11):
I feel like when my first daughter was born nine
years ago that I had a pretty full sense of
what I thought I was getting into. Um. But I
remember just how completely gutted I felt after she was born,
because I had that whole flood of love, which is intense,

(04:34):
but along with that, I had this sense of dread
because I suddenly understood, experienced rather that I had made
something that time would destroy. And it was I just
felt thunderstruck, you know, and shocked, and you know, saying

(04:54):
that you're like, of course dull, right, But I think
that is again the experience as opposed to the knowing
of the thing, and and right then I understood that
what I was getting into in motherhood was far more
complex than any of the what to expect when you
were expecting books had ever put forth. Yeah, I don't

(05:18):
think we ever hear about that aspect of it, because
it is the miracle of life. You don't hear, well
what happens after that miracle of life? We just really
painted in these these bright colors. Um. Yeah, And you
say miracle of life, and it makes me think of

(05:40):
the Virgin Mary, you know, because I had never really
given the virgin Mary A lot of thought, i'll tell
you until this episode. And then when I began to
look into it, I was like, oh, this is this
idea that here is here's again this sort of prototypical
mother figure who is one dimensional in her portrayal. And

(06:02):
yet she was the vessel for, you know, of Jesus
and her part and the whole thing had just been
conflated to again vessel. She wasn't the agent who actually
was responsible for, you know, becoming um pregnant, and you know,

(06:23):
there wasn't any sort of indication of like, oh, this
is a sort of a complex thing you're entering into
Mary um Jesus after all. In no way is it
ever posited that Mary had again any agency or any power,
or that she actually ultimately led to Jesus's demise just

(06:44):
by virtue of bringing Jesus into the world. Right. But
I do think that these sort of stories are important
because I think that they inform us subconsciously about what
we think a mother should be or is. And I
remember this sense of this sort of one dimensionality happening
to me when my daughter Sadie was born, and the

(07:08):
moment after she was born, I was referred to in
the hospital as mom. It was sort of this first
feeling of like, oh, you've lost your identity and now
you are a mother. And I can't think of any
other instance in a hospital where a person is addressed
as patient or it's such like a categorical way, And
that was that was my first inkling that, even though

(07:31):
I felt the complexity of motherhood and just being a human,
that it was being marginalized in such a distinct way. Yeah,
and I'm really glad you brought that up, because as
someone who is not a mother, I've never thought too
much about it. But we have spoken a lot on
this show about the importance of names and identity for

(07:53):
a lot of people, and I am someone who knew
like I us, I never consider changing my name never,
So it's it's something I haven't given a lot of
thought too, because I've never had to. I've never considered it.
But just losing that and being like, oh, now you're
now your mom? Oh right, right? You mean like if

(08:16):
you were to take another person's name, and then on
top of that you feel like further marginalized. I mean,
not that you're marginalized. Who takes someone else's name? Bet
you know what I mean, Like, your identity is, as
you say, the importance of naming, and your identity is
tied to that. Yeah. And um, as we are about
to move into our our horror movie section. Um, that

(08:37):
reminds me of one of my favorite Armor movies, The Ring,
where it's so strange in the movie that it's a
relationship between the mother and her son Aidan, and Aiden
only calls his mother Rachel by her name, by her
first name, and they never say why. It is a
plot point in the second one. That's how she realizes

(08:58):
he's possessed when he's mom. But it's strange and they
never address it. And I remember thinking, huh, I can't
imagine calling my mom by her name Susan, but that's
her name if not mom, you know when you need
to get her attention sometimes, right Yeah. Um, Well, to

(09:19):
kind of set you up for that, I wanted to
read this bit from the article by Claudia Day when
she talks about this complexity of motherhood. Um. She says
birth is not nearly that which divides women from themselves,
so that a woman's understanding of what it is to
exist is profoundly changed. Noted, she says, another person has

(09:40):
existed in her and after their birth, they live within
the jurisdiction of her consciousness. When she is with them,
she is not herself. When she is without them, she
is not herself. And I would eat again that this
kind of divided consciousness isn't relegated to biological children. It's
really an extent mention of our mind's eye to any

(10:02):
being that we care for and we wish to survive,
right um And I was thinking of of things like
mother Earth, mother Nature, mothership, these things that sustain as
that we depend on, but can be our death as well,
can be very terrifying. If you're at the mercy of
mother Nature, that's scary, which we are. It's a frightening

(10:25):
situation to be in. Um. And it's one of those
things that we I think we only look at the
one side of it. But putting it in terms of
like mother Nature and mother mother Earth was actually really
helpful for me. Wasn't because of this sense of randomness
and force or power power power to be both the

(10:49):
creator and the destroyer. I think, because if you're thinking
of of Mother Earth, then it's something that you depend on,
that you need, that sustained you. But it is kind
of a dangerous situation to be in, which makes it's

(11:10):
such fertile territory for the horror movie genre. It does,
and right now, horror movies are in love with telling
stories about mothers and around motherhood. It's been around for
a long time that the genre of maternal horror, it's
its own genre. But right now, just just off the

(11:32):
top of my head, Hereditary is a very focused on motherhood.
The Baba Duck Mother of course, which I don't know
if i'd call it a horror movie, but it's weird
and creepy. Stranger things on Netflix in a Quiet Place
came up when I was reading about this a little bit,
because we're we're in the middle of reimagining that genre

(11:54):
because for a while it was very much not complex
and nu one um. And one thing that's interesting about
the genre maternal horror and in general horror, it's written
by men. So if we look at this genre for
a long time, it did pretty and accurately represent this

(12:15):
mother child dynamic. And one of the interesting things about
it this genre is that it's the mother we're afraid of,
usually a mother willing to do anything for her child.
This category includes things like Rosner's Baby, The Extracist Friday,
The thirty UM, and Scream Too, even which listeners no,

(12:38):
I apparently could talk about scream To all of the time.
Really have a Scream To side podcast. I feel like
you could teach a course on it. I could. I
really think I could give a lecture. I would take it. Oh,
it would be really interesting. But all of those are
sort of part of this tradition of presenting seriously flawed

(13:01):
mothers and horror movies, UM and and it kind of
branches off into this other subset of mothers where the
flaw there's some flaw that the mother has and it
sets off the whole chain of terrifying events like in Scream,
where UM, as a viewer, you're supposed to be really

(13:23):
wary of Sydney, the main character of her mother, and
her mother's infidelity, and that was the reasoning the serial
killer gave for his whole murder spree, which I gotta
that's flimsy, right, yeah, oh yeah, Billy loomis um and
then his mom comes back in the second one. Anyway,

(13:44):
I need to stop talking about Scream. Yeah, there's Marge's
alcoholism from Nightmare on Elm Street Wendy's passive nervousness, and
I would argue foolishness in the portrayal in The Shining Um.
Just these bad mother's that set off again blaming women

(14:06):
set off this whatever horror movie monster his chain of events,
because it usually isn't he, And so don't you kind
of feel like it's a moral code written in these
movies by men about you know, here, here are the consequences.
If you're going to be a bad mother, You're you're
going to be responsible for some you know, terrible things. Yeah,

(14:31):
it's a writer saying, mom, I could have become a
serial killer. It's some weird message to their own moms.
I don't know. That's a that's a new theory I
have off the top of my head. Another aspect that
is particularly horrifying in horror movies is single motherhood. The

(14:52):
implication that a woman might not need a man is
downright scary to some folks, and in our patriarchal society,
any single mothers are viewed as a threat to masculine authority,
and we see it in horror movies all of the
time and another other media too. But the clingy mama's boy,
who's usually a feminine and unable to function in the

(15:14):
world without his mother. There's an undercurrent of Oedipus Rex
usually there too, and this is seen as a failure
on the mother's part. It is usually a son in
this equation too, because without a father to provide a
role model, society has an anxiety that the boy will
not be as masculine and that he won't reject and
separate himself from his mother's femininity. And this is a

(15:37):
danger to the patriarchal structure of our society. Yeah. And
but this is not just like a you know, sort
of idea or like a paper that was written on this, right,
Like we we hear and see this in political rhetoric. Right,
there's the breakdown of the family unit. Yeah, yeah, completely,
um and and we were kind of discussing to how

(16:02):
if it's a single father, it's seen as much more
a positive like look what he's doing an applause, applause,
scream again, it's there, It's all there. Um, it's so true.
We're talking about in social media. There was a guy
who um mcgiver styles one does as a parent, changed

(16:24):
a diaper in a public restroom without a changing pad,
and this can be very like a tenuous thing. You
can end up with lots of excrement on you. So um,
he was celebrated and I was like, hey, you gotta
be kidding me. Man. I just get the stink eye
whenever I see that from people, because they're like, you
took so long in the restroom with with that damn

(16:47):
kid of yours, you know, right, because it's expected of
women and the mother typically and like, oh surprised, look
at this of the man. Yeah. Um. Horror movies, if
we go back to them, they have traditionally been divided
up into two categories. So you have the abusive mother

(17:08):
who creates the monster or killer or what have you
via her bad parenting and all of these like end quotes,
heavy quotes like Friday, Psycho, Carrie, um. And then you
have the other path that these horror movies to petly
go down is the victim, who is usually helpless to

(17:30):
save herself and maybe her child, like the Extorcist, Rosemary's Baby,
the Olmen, the Shining so many examples I could go on, Um,
but as you had said, this is becoming a more
complex portrayal. It is and more current horror mothers are

(17:51):
they have more nuance, and the Babba Duck is a
great example. It's it's on Netflix. Should you want to
watch after this. Amelia, the main character, is neither the
screaming victim or the abuser. She loves her son and
she resents him. She shows fury at the sacrifice motherhood
has demanded of her. And this is kind of a
radical thing to admit that as a mother, that you

(18:13):
don't love motherhood. You always hear like it's so great,
it's one of the most beautiful experiences. You're gonna love it.
And in this movie her to me, seeing that was
new and completely radical and just it made sense though, like,

(18:33):
of course her child was annoying, and I'm saying, like
that is objective. He is annoying, and he's like screaming
at her, pulling her hair and shooting her with this crossbow.
And you can understand she she is both. She still
loves him and it's clear that she loves him, but

(18:55):
he wears her down as well. But that's kind of
going back to that bi ercated consciousness, right, this idea
that you can't be alone in yourself ever, even when
you're not with your child there within the realm of
your consciousness, and even with your with your child, you
you're still like not yourself and and suddenly like your

(19:16):
hair is being pulled and your child is trying to
name you yeah. Um. And there's she's also a single mother,
and there's a whole complication of the story that her
husband died the day her son was born. But so
you also get to see that play out, and you
get to see the other mothers kind of looked down

(19:38):
on her. Literally in one scene, it's shot in such
a way that the camera all of the other mothers
are standing and the cameras from their po ving it's
looking down at Amelia and judging her her parenting skills
and blaming her for her son's bad behavior. She lives
in a very isolated home, and you just get get

(19:59):
this that her whole world is dominated by her son
and the Bobba took the The monster in this movie
very much represents like her her depression and it's it's
I don't want to spoil the ending, but I would

(20:20):
highly recommend watching it if anyone's interested in our movies
about motherhood. This is this is a good one. Well,
it strikes a nerve, right, because it's it's saying like
motherhood can be isolating. Yeah, it's supporting what we already
know from a lot of studies about what happens when
in a headin norm couple they become parents, a man
and a woman. That a lot of the onus, the

(20:43):
responsibility is on the woman, and how society is supporting that. Yeah, yeah, completely.
And another example that I'm in love with her Hereditary.
I will disclaimer Hereditary is very good. It is emotionally brutal.
It's tough. People have walked out of the theater. This

(21:03):
movie came out like last year. Okay, so tell me,
tell me what about motherhood? Yeah, like why do why do?
I sort of like tremble on the inside when you
start to talk talk about this very um it. It
messes with both of those tropes of the victim and
the abuser because the main character Annie, she is both,

(21:28):
and she she's seen as the villain or she sees
herself as the villain for failing her family, and it's
a The film is a really uncomfortable look at the
damage mothers can inflict on their children with at the
same time without being judgmental for it um. And she's

(21:49):
just in part because of the great performance by Tony
Klett and the main role, you understand her like even
if sometimes there's one scene where the look on her
face of resentment and anger towards her own son is
stunning and I think about that all the time, just

(22:11):
the hatred. But you again, you can she's a human being.
She's a well thought out character and you can see
where these feelings are coming from because it's a it's
a study on grief and destructive how how destructive grief
can be? UM, And I thought it was very effective.
And there's one point in the movie where she's at

(22:32):
a grief like counseling group, almost like a a but
for grief, and she she starts talking about why she's there,
and it's sort of on ravels into something else, and
at the end she says, I realized I am to blame,
or not that I am to blame, but I am blamed.

(22:52):
And I remember leaving and that line stuck with me
for a while because I wasn't quite sure what it
en Um, what do you think it means? I think
it means that she well, there there's two levels of
what it means because there is like a demonic thy
spoiler alert, but on the level of grief and ah family,

(23:17):
which I think it's more about. UM. I think it
means she feels that she has failed and that she's
set up to fail, that she cannot succeed in all
of these ways. And um. She later in the movie,

(23:38):
she's talking about how she made this mistake and it
was a pretty serious mistake with her children, and how
they will never forgive her for it, Like she could
do anything and they'll never forgive her. And she has
frustration and anger about that because to her, she's like,
I it was an accident, I didn't mean it, but

(24:01):
they're never gonna forgive me for it. So I think
it's a good example of how we set mother's up
to fail and how she felt that. Yeah, I think
that's the sense of the stakes, right, if they're that
high when when you're a mother, um, and in some

(24:23):
ways just you're when you're a caregiver at all in society. UM,
this idea that you're being judged harshly and that you
won't be able to ever really rise to these impossible
standards because we're human and like, so that's a lot
of this discussion this idea that we're compartmentalizing our humanness

(24:44):
into this sort of binary like a or b um,
you know, like Madonna whore or you know, good mom,
bad mom. Yeah. Yeah, just the idea that you have
to be perfect all of the time and that your
relationship with your children is perfect all of the time.

(25:04):
It's not realistic, and I can we see it all
the time, and I can totally understand that feeling of
that you're not succeeding with these goals that you think
that society has told you are the goals. And apparently

(25:27):
horror horror, it's it's tapped into that. Well, it's a
perfect truth for horror movies, right, Like it's it's kind
of I think that's why it strikes a nerve to
even talk about it in this way, because it feels
taboo to even say like, oh, a mother could feel
negative about her children or um or resentful. And and

(25:49):
to be clear, like this is not a conversation of like, oh,
motherhood is hard, you know, it's it's that's not it.
It's it's saying like, let's really look at um at
this issue and then how it's portrayed in society and
with nuance. And I do want to bring up one
example of of like a really cool this is how

(26:12):
it's changing is if you look at the original Carry
versus the new Carry by the Stephen King movie Stephen
King movie book. I don't know, but yes, Carrie shows
and the first one, the original one, the mother is
very one dimensional, very abusive scene as the villain when
she's a single mom too right, Yeah, and when Carrie

(26:34):
kills her at the end spoilers I guess, um maybe
not at this point, Yeah, I feel like the statue
of limitations is past. Um. That is, she is vanquishing
the monster. The monster is not Carry. The monster is
the mother in that movie, but in the new one, um,
you have, I would argue much more sympathy for the

(26:59):
mother because she does show that love. She's abusive, but
there she has like another layer to her. And it's
when Carrie kills her and the new one that it's
much more out of sadness and you have you can
at least relate to this is a human being and
not like a straight up one dimensional monster. Well, she

(27:24):
hasn't been objectified to the point where the audience is
going yeah, yeah, yeah, which I think is a more
powerful film. Um. And then I did want to bring
up because I watched this a couple of nights ago Lyle,
which is sort of a re remake. It's not a remake.
It's like Rosemary's Baby reimagined with a lesbian couple. And

(27:47):
I saw it described in a lot of places as
a horror movie version of Cheryl Sandberg's book Leaning, which
right there, I mean, you have me, Yeah, that's all.
I was like, what movie is this? Um? One of
the couple, she's pregnant and they already have a daughter
named Lyle Um and the baby dies in an accident,

(28:09):
and the pregnant one starts to suspect that it wasn't
an accident, and you know, it's a hard movie, sou
and the movie really plays on this fear women have
around family and ambition, and that we have as a
society around ambitious women. Um, who who would dare choose
career of her family? And the movie is all the

(28:30):
more shocking because as opposed to Rosemary's Baby, it's a
woman making a deal with the devil for success the
family instead of guy and Rosemary's Baby. UM. I think
that's why it caused a lot of conversation. Oh, why
is this so much more different seeing a woman in
this role? Yeah, And I think that we'll get to

(28:51):
this is I definitely think that ties to this idea
of the perceptions are the costs of becoming a parent,
um in this society. So let me just say it again. Um,
that has real implications, right, And how that works out
in the real world when you become a parent, and

(29:11):
how you are sort of you know, you've heard the
mommy tax before, um, And how in the workplace you're
seeing differently. Um. But before we get to that, yes,
let's talk about lost, Children of Men, Let's talk about loss.
We're gonna, We're gonna go though, We're out lost when
which is off the rails? Now, these are other pop

(29:33):
culture examples of seeing protecting the pregnant woman at all
costs lost. The whole first season was kind of set
up on that, and Children of Men, the old movie
and book about that, and there are so many examples
of what women and especially women need to be afraid
of when it comes to parenting and children. And the

(29:54):
movie The Others is a great example of this to
the extreme because Nicole Kidman's character is obsessed of the
protective of her children. She never lets them leave the house,
she keeps all the blinds closed because they have allergy
to light, but still um and she ends up being
the threat to her children and her over zealousness to

(30:15):
protect them, which is basically what people are telling us
with the helicopter mom. Right, that's true. It's not just
your role as mother, but role as partner in the
sort of heteronorm arrangement where you know you've got to
be the help meet. Is that? That's how it said,

(30:37):
I believe the perfect sort of spouse to make sure
that the structure is in place where you are supporting
the male. Yeah. And this came up in a discussion
around Breaking Back, of course, of course we're talking about
all kinds of things here, and the depiction and reaction

(30:58):
to Skylar from Breaking Bad versus I don't know her name,
but the plea Wendy Wendy from Ozark with they essentially
similar plat lines, and they these two female characters were
essentially in the same role. Right, So their husbands are
sort of dabbling in um and criminal activities, and one spouse, Skylar,

(31:23):
it was like, hey, maybe not cook meth. I think
that's terrible idea, pretner family and danger, and she's seen
as like, you know, sort of like this Fishmonger's wife
on the doc screaming at him all the time, just
what Walt b Walt right? And then you have Wendy
who is supporting Marty in his endeavors laundering money. And

(31:45):
it's an entirely different reaction from audiences. And yet Skylar
is the one who has the moral compass. And I
bet people are getting marrid just hearing her name. People
did not like her, and I remember watching that show
and I used to have this test where I would

(32:05):
kind of I would I would maybe make a judgment
about your character where I would ask, like, when did
Walt lose you? When when were you turning from Oh,
he is the hero of this story too. He is
the villain of this story. And if you if some
people have said, like season four, but I remember being

(32:28):
shocked by how vitriolic the response was to Skyler. And
I mean, she's not we're not saying she's great, but
she's flawed. Yeah, yeah, I mean they both were. And
I would argue that she was trying to protect her
family too. She was just a woman doing it trying

(32:51):
to do her own, her own way. Yeah, and I
think that there was there was so much empathy from
the audience for Walt. I mean, it was his story, right,
and and she became the anti hero or you know,
the person that they could place all the blame on
for Walt not finally getting what Walt wanted. Right. It's
a lot of money in respect and money and respect,

(33:15):
and this society is huge, right if you're a man,
can't you see that? You know? I think so? I
think I think I've seen some examples of that. Yeah.
And another aspect of this is people of color have
traditionally been left out of this space and entertainment, and
when they are included, the tropes are amplified or they

(33:36):
have their own specific tropes. In many cases, Um, for
a long time, the black mother especially has been portrayed
as the welfare mother or the like angry, violent, sassy
mother Tyler Perry's media. That's an extreme example. But um
that that dynamic, that tripe we see play out a
lot too. Yeah. And although I will say that, um,

(33:59):
Cookie Line and from Empire is a great example of
an unapologetic, flawed woman who is both committed to her family,
but also very ambitious, and so I think that's you know,
I don't know if neat is the word, but that's
kind of cool to see. It's real neato. Slippers are

(34:24):
right over here, darling. People wear a lot of slippers
back then. I feel like if in the nineteen fifties,
I always had like like the guy would get this
is my idea. The guy would get home for my
long day's work and he would sit in his club
chair smoke pipe, and then his slippers were waiting for him,
so he could take his lace up shoes off and

(34:45):
then put his big, stinky feet into the comfortable slippers.
I mean that sounds nice. The turkey was on the table. Yes,
So let me ask you this, Okay, you, being the
sensitive gentle soul that you are um growing up with

(35:07):
an appetite for horror movies, how did this affect you?
Like all of these narratives, I apparently I very much
took those in and internalized them. And I've shared on
the show before. When I was fourteen, I went to

(35:30):
I had a kind of college disappointment, and he told
me I was pregnant and I wasn't, but he very
adamantly said you are pregnant, and he called my dad
to come pick me up. And I just remember the
feeling of horror I had, of like pure terror, and

(35:51):
I kept thinking, Oh, I wonder if this is how
my mom felt when she found out she was pregnant.
And I don't know if it's that, if that is
what set this off. But when I was seventeen, I
decided to do Nana Ramo for the first time, which
is coming up National Novel Writing Month, and that's where
you write a book in one month. Uh, pretty self expanatory.

(36:16):
And I had no idea. I was just I gotta
start writing because I kind of decided maybe a weekend
to do it. And the story that I wrote was
about a character. It's kind of like Cam's Tale meets
Children of men Um. Basically, you live in this world
where it's very difficult to get pregnant, and if you do,

(36:37):
then you don't. There's no guarantee you'll keep your child
um because you have to go through the board of
better parenting. Uh. And the main character, she gets pregnant
against the law because there's certain circumstance. Anyway, it's confusing,
but she is. The book is her on the run
and like trying to protect her child and constantly feeling

(36:58):
like she's failing, like she can't. She feels like she
is more his sister, that she doesn't deserve this title
of mom, and that he doesn't realize that she's not
a good mom um, that he's she's not living up
to it. And it isn't until the end when she

(37:19):
has this revelation when she finally feels like she is
a mother. And I've never been a mother, and I
that story is the one that I wrote not thinking
about it, that that's what happened. And and you are
seventeen when you're with us, Yes, do you still feel
this this way? This sort of like sort of accidential terror?

(37:41):
I think I do, um, And I've gone back and
kind of rewritten it and reshaped it, and I toyed
with the idea of trying to get it published, and
I'm still toying with that idea. But I wanted to
share it with someone who's actually been a mother. So
I went to my own mom and asked her to
read it. And just when she finished, I said, did
that make sense? Was I touching? Is that a real

(38:04):
thing that you experienced? And she said, yes, Um so
I yeah, I don't know. I guess it is a
really powerful narrative that we absorb and it is frightening. Um.
I just love that you and your mom have that

(38:26):
kind of relationship and had that relationship when you were
in that age that you guys could talk about that. Yeah.
I think that my mom would have would have just
shut down if if, if she had read something like that. Yeah,
and she's great, I love you, you you know what I mean,

(38:47):
you know, you know what I mean. And then I
wrote it ended up. I wrote three of them. That's
a trilogy. And in the second one, she it ends
with her child getting abducted and she wakes up and
she has this moment of fear like I don't know

(39:08):
who I will be without without him if I can
never find him again, I don't know who I am
without him. Um, which is just it's interesting that apparently
that is suck into my my brain. Well, what I
think is interesting about that too, is that you are
at an age where you probably shouldn't have been able

(39:30):
to take that perspective for a number of reasons. Um,
but you tapped into again this idea of a split
consciousness that immediately happens when when you are taking care
of a life. Yeah. Yeah, and I, um, it's to
this day. I look back at that moment of like,

(39:52):
you know, the blank screen, what am I going to write?
And that's what poured out, and it still surprises me.
I have no idea. I had never thought about it before,
or at least not like consciously thought of this story. Um.
And I was very active and raising my brother, and

(40:14):
I mean that's in no way the same, but I
did have this constant concern about him, like all the time,
where is the easy Okay? What was he doing with
the kids? Being me into him? Oh? No, it was
really it was really exhausting. Um, maybe that was part
of it. I thank you. I think you definitely picked
up on it. Um. But I think that's important, like

(40:36):
that this is this sort of conversation is really important
because again it's confronting the complexity of what it is
to take on this role in society and uh, something
that we are going to explore right after this ad
break and we're back, Thank you sponsor, and we are

(41:06):
going to turn our discussion now to Ma Calli or
the Dark Mother, the candle for whom the God is
for whom the candle burns in our studio currently, that's right,
we have a candle lit. Nothing has has burned down
so far, but it is it's it's an attempt to

(41:27):
try to tap into Kalima. Who is this goddess of creation, preservation, destruction. Yes,
she is all three. She she's known as the mother
kind of essentially, and while she is all of those things,
she is most known as the destroyer. One of the

(41:50):
best known stories about her describes how she devoured the
entrails of her dead consort Shiva and her yoni, which
is a k volva or woo so john is a
word for but it usually has a spiritual aspect to it.
Um sexually devoured his penis. So we we definitely here

(42:12):
a lot, at least in the West, we hear a
lot more about her role as the destroyer. Yeah, and
we want me to bring her into this conversation, not
so that we could talk about devouring organs um, but
to talk about, like here here is a narrative, a
goddess Um who really brings all these disparate parts together

(42:38):
of what it is to be a human and to
exist on earth, which is to feel pain and suffering
and love and joy to also have the destructive force
along with the creative force within you and um and
I think the reason why she gets the destroyer wraps
so much is because she is ferociously depicted. I mean,

(43:02):
we are talking about wearing a garland of skulls and
a skirt of dismembered hands. Yeah, that's pretty hardcore. Yeah.
And uh, you know, in one hand she brandishes a
sword and what's in the other hand severed head. Of

(43:22):
course she probably used the sword for probably, and then
she's her eyes are ablaze, her tongue is sort of
lolling out of her mouth. I mean, this is not
a gentle depiction of what we would typically call like
a feminine figure. No, not at all. And that definitely

(43:44):
played a role, I would say, and you would say,
into her becoming reduced down, watered down to just the
destroyer and most Western thought and the creation and preservation
aspects of her are forgotten. She's paint it as something
evil and or demonic. The Encyclopedia Britannica did not even

(44:06):
include her role in the creation. Uh huh, We've got
our eye on you, Encyclopedia. We're coming for you. She
is full of love though and all types, and all
of this love flows out from her to all women
on earth, her earthly army, and her role as the mothers.
She was also called the treasure house of compassion, the

(44:30):
giver of life to the world and the life of
all lives. Men who worshiped Collie are instructed to bow
to the feet of women and learn from them. Only
male animals were to be sacrificed in her name, due
to an ancient belief that they had no role in
the cycle of generation. M Yeah, those that worshiped Collige

(44:52):
worship both aspects of her, two sides of the same coin,
life and death, giver and destructor. A worshiper might a
his goddess, his loving mother and time, who gives him
birth and loves him in the flesh. She also destroys
him in the flesh. His image of her is incomplete
if he does not know her as his terror and devourer.

(45:13):
That is so badass if you think about it, right, like,
if you are worshiping, are you you're you're invoking this goddess.
And to actually say those words and confront your mortality
in that way, it kind of it puts everything into perspectives. Yes,
absolutely does. Side note. Side note, Collie is also regarded

(45:36):
as a manifestation of the Virgin Mother and Crone. And
we see that that kind of three um manifestations echoed
and several other cultures, to the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts,
the Egyptians, and I love this quote, the hungry Earth
which devours its own children and fattens on their corpses.

(45:57):
So like a less disneyfied circle of a life in
the circs will devour your courses. I don't know why
Disney didn't go that route. Right. Collie is sometimes called
the Terrible Mother in India. She is depicted as the feminine,
as the way creation and life and death and destruction
are all intertwined, the womb and the tomb at once.

(46:22):
I wish I could take credit for that, but I
saw that in several places describing her um, and that
that depiction was common in thousands of eight ancient religions.
So right, And so that's what I think is interesting, UM,
is that this is a very old concept in people's
ability to absorb this information and weave it into the

(46:43):
cultural narrative without passing out is pretty significant and to
me um, Collie Mack stands an opposition of virgin Mary
in a way, and that here is, you know, here's
sort of not just the opposite of the vision Mary,
but rather a fuller depiction of what it is to

(47:04):
be a creator slash destroyer rights. And she also is
a great example of delegation because her three functions are
delegated out to Brahma, Vishnu, and Schiva, the gods of creation, preservation,
and destruction, respectively. And Vishnu is written to have said
about Collie maternal cause of all change, manifestation, and destruction.

(47:26):
The whole universe rest upon her, rises out of her
and melts into her. From her, crystallized the original elements
and qualities which construct the apparent world. She's both mother
and grave. The gods themselves are merely constructs out of
her maternal substance, which is both consciousness and potential joy.

(47:47):
And in the beginning, in the beginning, in the beginning,
Collie was an ocean of blood, sort of like the
primordial soup that all life sprang from. Ocean of blood.
That's intense uh. In the final of Collie's three stages
is the nothingness that comes after death after she has

(48:09):
devoured time quote the generative womb of all the beginning
and end of beings. So again, this is radical thinking
for us right now in this modern age because it
is taking on time and space. Like we're essentially saying
that Collie was the big bang in a way, right,

(48:29):
Like she was not just the creative destroyer of beings,
but that she actually spawned time itself, which is cool. Um.
And there there's so many good quotes about her as
she devours all existence, as she choose all things existing
with her fierce teeth. Therefore, a mass of blood is

(48:52):
imagined to be the apparel of the Queen of the
gods at the final dissolution. That's that's on my resume,
is it? Yeah? You should get it on business cards,
on a pillow. I would love it on a pillow, honestly,
that would be great, like to include in all of
like those, you know, the quotes that are being circulated
around right now, just quotes about Cali, like you know,

(49:15):
I dig it something about a Yoni. Yeah, I think
I think our listeners could could work on that for us.
But it is interesting because we always paint motherhood as
this nurturing thing. Which it is, and we talk about
fierce Mama bear, sure, but the connotation is still someone
protecting her child in this sort of nurturing aspect of it.

(49:38):
And if we go back to horror movies for a second,
the newer and more complex depictions we were we were
talking about are closer to Cali, the life giver and deathbringer,
capable of creation and destruction. And this is scary, right
if we always see and here as a society is
in these black and white terms of mothers are stable,

(49:59):
perfect loving or abuse of monsters? If we show more
of that gray, it's unsettling because we don't talk about
it and we don't see it reflected in our media.
Right because again going back to this sort of binary
right bucking white, sun and moon, good and bad um,
you know that it's ignoring this mosaic of the human

(50:20):
experience and we we should not ignore it, No, we shouldn't. Instead,
we should just dig a little deeper. And there's nothing
like digging deep than to go to old Papa Freud.
That's right, That's what I always say. I'm gonna go
to old Papa Freud. Yeah, the Madonna Hore complex um,

(50:42):
it plays into this Yeah, that binary. And it's what
we're talking about here is how men both fear and
desire women, which can create a cognitive dissonance that results
in misogyny, sexism, and sometimes violence. And Sigmund Freud came
up with a theory of how men deal with this,

(51:05):
and it involves separating out women, um, the man admires
and respects into the category of the madonna, and the
women that the man is attracted to and therefore doesn't respect,
into the category of the whore. And these are mutually exclusive.
Love is seen as clean and pure, and lust and
sex are viewed as dirty and shameful. And you know,

(51:27):
a lot of what freud um has done has been
brought into question, but this is one of those things
that sort of has stuck. People have said, you know, Freud,
we think that he might have been on to something
here in the way that the binary works in society. Yeah,
and it's been really interesting. We almost went on, well

(51:48):
I almost did, on a huge tangent about the celebrity
baby body because they are trying to be both the madonna,
uh and the horror Well not really, they're not trying
to be, but both things that they're trying to combine together.
And if you throwback to when to me more collided

(52:12):
these two ideas in her nude photo shoot for Vanity
Fair while she was pregnant with her second child, and
that was a huge deal. Some stories insisted on selling
the magazine in a closed package, and we see it
on our magazine covers all the time, the celebrity post

(52:34):
pregnancy body. How quickly can she get rid of that
that baby I don't know, it's almost a baby bump.
That's not it some cases, you know, right, yeah, um, yeah,
it's just this pressure of that we're putting on women
to lose the baby weight as quickly as possible and
become attractive to the male gaze again, to get your

(52:57):
body back, Like that's a frequent thing you'll quote that
you'll see when saying I want to get my body back.
It's strange when you think about it. It is strange
because it doesn't really honor again, the complexity of the
experience or anything that a person has gone through, and
instead it's like six weeks to you, what a better

(53:19):
post mom baby, And it's not. It's not like that's
going to happen. And then suddenly society is going to
drop this binary perception they have of you because you're
now a mother and think that you're Hella sexy. Right.
And for the social media mentioned in the episode, social
media comes up all the time. UM, just remind yourselves that, UM,

(53:45):
celebrities are paid to look a certain way. It's their
job project a certain image, and it's a one dimensional
rendering of them that you're getting. And some celebrities, especially
recently have got real with their struggles with pregnancy, with
losing weight. Um afterwards, if that's something that they wanted

(54:06):
to do. I know Charlie's Theron recently talked about it. UM.
And I remember I do remember when Tom Cruise called
book Shields out for taking medication for postpartum depression, which
is another throw back that was a while ago. Case
he's an expert on postpartum depression. I'm sure he is, so.
I mean the bottom line is, UM, it's just bad

(54:28):
for everyone, this sort of idea that you can compartmentalize
a person's identity into box A or B. And there's
actually a study is published in the journal Sex Roles
UM and involved a hundred and eight hetero is really
men And what it found is that those men who
bought into this idea of Madonna horror, meaning like you know,

(54:50):
if my if my partner it becomes a mother, then
she is no longer sexually desirable or you know she
can engage in you know a quote dirty act. Right, Um,
those men felt less satisfied in the romantic relationships with
their partners overall. So think about it, like one of

(55:12):
your most intimate relationships is affected by this overlay. That
is a complete construction in society. We could delve so
much more into the Madonna horror complex. We were talking
off Mike about this eighty page study I found comparing um,
Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton in the coverage of them

(55:33):
in this lens. So we'll probably have to do a
return episode UM on that and discuss that. I just
wanted to note to the listeners that Annie read all
eighty pages. Is that interesting? Because that's our Annie. I
wanted to know more. And speaking of more, we do
have some more for you. But first we're going to

(55:54):
pause for one more quick break for word from our sponsor,
m and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. Another thing we
wanted to talk about in this whole conversation is the
change of perceptions after becoming parents when you look at

(56:17):
male versus female how that differs, and the results of
one study looking at the differences in these perceptions UM
of male versus female parents found that both men and
women viewed women with children as less ambitious than those without,
up to thirty percent less ambitious. And we've we've mentioned
other studies on the show before that might be related,

(56:39):
um showing that bosses are less likely to give flex
time to mothers thinking that their their loyalties are divided,
um are all of the pregnancy discrimination that we've talked
about on the show that we've seen in the news
a lot lately. And men with children were were rated
as having a higher social status, seen as more generous,

(57:01):
more faithful, more honest when mature, all of these good
things that the women were not seen that way in
this study, right, which it's again that disparity of this
this thing happens in your life to two people, and
it's a vastly different outcome in terms of perception. And

(57:21):
again it goes back to identity, because the role of
motherhood is seen by society is central to a woman's identity.
And this is from a paper called across the transition
to parenthood. Um, so his parenthood is more salient for
women's self conceptions than for men's. And men perceive fathering
is something they do, whereas women experience mothering is something

(57:44):
they are. And I will never forget my husband once
put a post up on Instagram where he said he
was babysitting our children, and it was a picture of
him and our children. Oh my goodness, he got it right.
He it from me, He had it from a lot
of people. Um. But and that's someone who has awareness

(58:06):
about these sorts of things. Yeah, it's pretty ingrained, right
he was. He was not doing and being. And another
added layer that we've talked about a lot on on
this show before, especially in our episode around emotional labor,
is um undervaluing women's work. So traditionally, jobs that are
traditionally women's work, like child rearing or teaching or nursing
or cleaning or anything nurturing semi mother esque is undervalued

(58:32):
in our economy. And this is doubly so for women
of color. And we have seen and I've seen this
role into the conversation around women's anger. But um, women
starting to like the teacher strikes is a great example
of women fed up and wanting to be compensated rightfully

(58:53):
so for the work that they're doing that is undervalued.
A study out of the Institute for Women's Policy Research
in Oxham, America, looked into this whole thing and they
started by using for criteria to identify women's work um
occupation primarily composed of women medium wage less than fifteen
dollars an hour thouand or more women doing performing this job.

(59:17):
And then the number of jobs projected to grow over
the next twenty years, and they were they were specifically
looking at um lower paid women's work and two jobs
were identified and of the workers for these jobs on
average were women almost half living one percent I'm sorry, okay,
almost half live in poverty and the median age is

(59:39):
thirty six are single mothers about that total percentage are
women of color. This is impacting a lot of women, right,
So you think, oh, this this uh, this thing about motherhood.
It's you know, if you're outside of it, that it
doesn't extend to you in some way. It does because

(01:00:00):
this is a very fabric of society that we're talking about.
These systems in place like education or nursing, and it
turns out that this ability to care give is really
not just important to society right now, but sort of
like the future of humanity. Yeah, because I've heard a

(01:00:22):
lot of I think I've heard a whole series about
what jobs are safest in the future. Well, it turns
out it's a job that a robot can't do right,
and one thing that robots aren't great at is empathy
and caregiving. So there's been some research showing that in
the near future, empathy and emotional intelligence are going to

(01:00:42):
be the most desired traits among human job applicants, which
is blowing my mind just to put it in terms
like that human versus robot job applicants. Well, I'm just
trying to imagine like, uh, sort of like the bro
version of this, because you know, obviously in the future
this will extend into fields that men are also being

(01:01:03):
asked to be empathetic or to tap into this sort
of caregiving role, and so that either is liberating or
then we redefine these traits as being masculine. Oh yeah,
I mean, I there's so many examples of jobs that
were once women's jobs that once they started making money,
Like computer science is a good example that was that

(01:01:25):
used to be primarily dominated by women, but then men
realized why WHOA, They're making some money, this is a
needed job, and it came in, took the jobs and
redefined it as a masculine occupation. So I can very
much see in the future where um, the same is true.
Teacher Teachers used to be a masculine profession, but then

(01:01:46):
it wasn't getting paid enough. It was seen as like nurtury,
and then it became feminine. I can see it going back.
If there's money to be made and the power is there,
I can see it changing well. And I can't help
but like the ut opian version of myself saying, this
is when everybody will be enlightened and liberated and we
can finally take the sun in the moon and combine them. Um,

(01:02:11):
but perhaps not um. Sort of. The last thing that
we're going to talk about here in terms of a
casualty of gender identity is politics. Yes, politics, we saved
the worst for last. Isn't that everyone's favorite thing? You
don't leave on a high note. I'm pretty sure you'll
leave on a low note, not not for this one. Um,

(01:02:33):
So let me just lay this out. I think most
people recognize that we in the United States are in
a sort of systemic, structural, systemic situation here in terms
of misogyny or um ability for a woman to move
forward or have the same resources as a male counterpart. Right,

(01:02:55):
we sort of all agree that short shrift is given
to women. So we think about this sort of short
shrift and the reasons why perception right, this masculine feminine um.
Can we extend that to the Democratic Party? I think
maybe we can, yep. And Jezz Zimmerman, who writes for

(01:03:17):
Slate dot Com, I think so as well. And in
the article why Can't Democrats Get Angry, she argues that
Brett Kavanaugh's testimony underscores herbally quote that the left, even
the moderate left, is feminized in this country to a
degree that I have come to believe actually restricts its
avenues for acceptable self expression. So what does she mean

(01:03:40):
by that? She means that Democrats are restrained and empathetic
in the ways that they behave see Christine blaisie Ford,
and that Republicans are bombastic see Kavanaugh and Lindsay Graham.
That this sort of inhospitable environment does not bode well

(01:04:01):
for Democrats, and that in a sense, they're rendered ineffectual. Yeah,
and I was telling you before we started, at as
far back as middle school, I had that in my
head that the Republican Conservative Party was masculine and aggressive,
and that the Democratic Party for me was more feminine

(01:04:24):
and associated more with women. So I I completely I
think that Zimmerman is onto something. Yeah. She goes on
to write, our weird cultural commitment to the gender binary
goes way beyond actual living men and women. I love
actual living men and women. If it didn't, people wouldn't
freak out so badly when someone declines to choose. Masculinity

(01:04:48):
and femininity are concepts we layer on top of everything,
from people depends to political parties. Take any opposed things Democrats, Republicans,
cats and dogs, even the sun and moon, and you'll
find one of them associated with physical strength, action and
domineering behavior, and the other associated with emotion, reticence and calm.
That's not just descriptive, it's prescriptive and prescriptive too. If

(01:05:11):
we could judge the moon for yelling, we would, we
would good night moon, And she says, and I'm so
glad that she pointed out in this article. She said,
it's worth noting that many of the lawmakers who have
recently been most courageous in standing up against unacceptable miscarriages
of power have been not only women, but women of color,

(01:05:34):
despite the fact that they have to contend with multiple
layers of cultural disapproval for doing so. Yes, um, I
completely agree. When I was thinking of examples off the
top of my head, most of them are women of color. Yeah.
And I think that this time the extension of this
binary to politics, to this uh maybe even hampering of

(01:05:56):
our the way that our government is currently running. Uh,
it shows that it really does hurt everyone. And that
really is what this threat is of motherhood to just
sort of like being a human living on planet Earth
in the United States right now. Um, you know, it's
these boxes that were being asked to enter into Sunner Moon.
What we actually need both, right, we do need both

(01:06:20):
and the solution, according to Zimmerman quote, the path forward
for a feminised group has already been laid out by
the third wave. Learned to be a bit, be angry,
even if you aren't allowed be ruder than you think
you can be without losing your principles. If they say
feelings don't matter, turn your feelings into a weapon. Never
shut up, never stand down. And I agree. I agree.

(01:06:45):
I feel like, you know, tap into your inner Callima, right, like,
embrace this role of creator and destroyer. I mean, I
don't necessarily need to wear a string of skulls around
my neck, but if I need to the message across,
that would be a great fashion choice. You did tell me,
I don't know if you're a joking that you wore

(01:07:05):
this black turtleneck in honor She's wearing black turtleneck, by
the way, listeners, in honor of Jason's mom from Friday.
I am because I feel like I need to inhabit
her spirit. I'll allow her to to live in the
light of complexity that she is both mother and destroyer.

(01:07:28):
And I feel like we don't know her full story.
And I would really love it if you could write
that for her from her perspective. You know, I I
I might, I might dabble. All right, all right, let's
hear it. Novembers coming up. I am debating on whether
or not to do it. What's the name of the

(01:07:49):
of the year of writing, Nano raimo, Nana raimo? Can
you explain that for people who don't know what that is.
It's the National Novel Writing Mom. There we go, yeah us,
and it is coming up. It is a charity for literacy.
It's that's its goal is promote literacy and reading and writing.
And I will say it's coming up. If you've ever

(01:08:12):
thought about doing it, and you you have it, I
highly recommend it because the number one thing it taught
me is to just write. Just write it. It could
be stupid, come back and edit it later. Don't get
caught up in thinking in your head. I don't really,
I don't like this. It's not good. That's right. That's right.

(01:08:33):
And now you have inspiration. Callim, Callima. She's great inspiration.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Julie. Shall
we both blow out the candle? Yeah? Are you ready?
I think I'm ready. Thank you. Thank you for joining
us today. Setting everything on fire, that's right. Few did

(01:08:54):
not get in trouble with the building manager yet. Um. Yes,
thanks thanks so much for joining us. Please, we'd love
to have you back any time. Oh yeah, thank you,
thank you for indulging me. I appreciate it, guys. Yeah,
and we would love to hear from you listeners as well.
Where we have issued a call for anything that any fiction,
fan fiction, non fiction, poetry, anything that you would like

(01:09:17):
to share with us that you don't mind us sharing
on the podcast, We would love to get it. Our
email is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
You can also find us on social media. On Twitter
we are at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram we
are stuff Mo'm Never told you. Thanks so much for listening,
and thanks as always to our producer Andrew Howard much