On Motherhood

"It’s hard to describe the joy of motherhood. It isn’t as easily Instagrammable as a life (without kids) of endless holidays, blue skies, cocktails and local pastries on cobbled streets in faraway lands, so it doesn’t necessarily register in surveys or even in casual conversation. It isn’t a joy that’s as easily shared with the world or on social media. In restaurants when my daughter, in her high chair with her two and a half teeth, scrunches up her face, I look around to see if everyone has noticed and been charmed. Nobody has (except for the occasional old lady) and I get annoyed, even though I myself constantly ignore all other babies in my vicinity. The joy and fun of motherhood are so deeply personal, so intimate and so selfish, there’s no way to explain it to the world, particularly our current social media heavy world. Jennifer Senior, author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, says in an interview that the 'feeling when your kid laughs or when your kid says something that’s so totally, like, amazingly weird, or insightful, or sensitive – it’s not the same as like getting a good laugh out of watching a movie or having a really nice time with a friend. It’s just like a different category of experience.' It is a different category – one that can’t compare to your life before you had the child because no point of reference is the same after you’ve had the child." 
     — Diksha Basu, from her article Rebranding Motherhood in The New York Times