Mr Viral
Chappell Roan, the 27-year-old Grammy-winning pop superstar, is not a parent. But last week, she said that American motherhood seems like “hell,” and the explosive reaction to her comments is revealing how broken our system really is.
It’s important to note that Roan wasn’t attacking mothers or the choice to become one. She was talking about what she’d witnessed in her friendship group, and her own response to that. But more broadly, she might have hit upon a truth of the state of motherhood in the US—one in which moms have no social net, minimal support, and are focused to often burn the candle at both ends. It’s the state of American motherhood that is, in actuality, rather hellish.
For starters, women in the US are currently facing an attack on our reproductive and civil rights unlike anything we’ve seen in decades. In several states, the choice whether or not to continue a pregnancy, or become a mother, is one that is becoming increasingly controlled.
But once a woman gives birth, she is largely on her own. The US is the one of only six countries in the world with no federally mandated paid leave policy, meaning that one in four women return to work within two weeks of giving birth. And even if you are one of the lucky mothers with maternity leave provided through your employer, things are tough. The lack of affordable childcare in the US has been deemed a “crisis” by the Center for American Progress, which found that the problem has grown even worse since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Pew Research found that one in four US parents have struggled with affording food or housing in the past year amid inflation and child care costs.
In fact, last year the then-Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, declared parental burnout and stress a national health crisis, saying “we must do more to better support parents and caregivers.” He cited issues such as financial stress due to health care and child care costs, demands from employers that have led to an increase in working hours across the board, and societal pressures that lead parents to engage in more intensive child-rearing than previous generations.
So yeah, it’s not surprising that Roan’s friends, or any young mother facing an uphill battle against a system that doesn’t want them to succeed, are tired and burned out. When you’re exhausted from being up all night with a newborn yet still have to go to work the next day, you do lose—as she noted of her friends with kids—the “light behind your eyes.” When you have to pick up extra shifts to pay for childcare and go back to a job two weeks after giving birth, you may feel unhappy. And compared to any other developed nation, American motherhood does kind of feel like hell.
I’d like to think that is what Chappell Roan was getting at when she went on “Call Her Daddy” last week and chatted with host Alex Cooper about everything from her new relationship to her favorite sex toys and dealing with her haters.
The conversation started when Cooper asked Roan if she was still close with her friends from her hometown (Roan famously grew up in a small town in Missouri). The singer responded that yes, she was, even though her life was very different. While she’s at the Grammys and touring the world, her friends are mostly married with children, something she said she’s unsure will happen for her, or that she even wants. Given that Roan identifies as a lesbian, these attacks on women’s rights feel even more heightened.
“I don’t know, part of me is like is it even going to be legal to marry like my wife one day you know?” Roan said.
Roan’s brief comments sparked an immediate controversy, but I would argue the discourse that emerged has missed the point, and any anger against Roan is misdirected.
The overall sentiment seems to be that Roan was personally attacking mothers, and motherhood, as an invalid or somehow a poor choice to make. In that context, the emotional tone and anger of the videos is understandable. It’s easy to see how young mothers could feel attacked by a successful, rich, pop star casting their life decisions as hell, and how jarring and upsetting that could be.
None of this is Roan’s fault, and it’s not the fault of any individual mother either. She is saying what she sees. It’s the fault of the US government and society, which refuses to actually support family-friendly policies while continuing to strip the rights and autonomy of women and pregnant people.
It’s easy to understand the knee jerk reaction of anger toward Roan for calling this out, and maybe there’s a more eloquent way she could have said it. But I wish we could move this conversation away from online anger pointed at her, and direct it toward the institutions who really deserve our ire. It’s clear the comments struck a nerve—let’s do something about it.
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