Let me stay in blissful ignorance (Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro)

Have you watched Motherland? It’s brilliant and hilarious, but terrifying.

It’s brutally revealing about what it’s like to be a mother – a single mother, a working mother, a mother with a hopeless, absent husband whose idea of parenting is to say hollow supportive things down the phone from a stag do on a boat.

Why BBC Two’s Motherland may be the most perfect reflection on modern parenting

My boyfriend and I binged the whole first season on Sunday and I was delighted by it – there’s one visual gag about a child’s vomit that genuinely still makes me chuckle – but also quietly horrified.

My desire to be a mother is delicate enough as it is, without watching footage of a woman wade through literal human soup at a pool party to supervise her kids and then go to an important work event with wet hair and mascara trailing down her face.




I am frightened enough without knowing just how volatile politics at the school drop-off gate can get, how relentlessly difficult it is to keep a child alive and well, how empty paternal support can be and how harried you become trying to find appropriate childcare.

The constant chaos and sometimes harrowing reality of parenting is more visible than ever, thanks to pop culture and social media.

We childless women are given a sneak-peek at the horrors of navigating motherhood on prime time telly, if we’re game.

The savage realities of being a parent used to be a secret.

Women were silent about how difficult mothering was because the general expectation of feminine decorum in all aspects of life dictated that they be.

They were dangerously quiet about post-natal depression and loneliness – so of course I support and applaud any woman brave enough to speak about having those experiences.

I don’t suggest we return to any sort of silent suffering; in fact I respect this new era of candour about parenthood.

It is thanks to feminism, truly, that women can afford to be open about how awful motherhood can be sometimes.

It is still a revolutionary act to admit imperfection, and I’m very much here for any woman who wants to do that.

But someone just sent me a picture of a child’s poo sitting neatly on a windowsill – straight from social media – and I’m just not sure this new trend of honesty is doing wonders for the non-parents among us.

Um… no (Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro.co.uk)

Mothers and fathers are more open on social media than ever about the challenges of having kids and while I could look at failed birthday cakes forever, the constant, frenetic mundanity of parenthood along with the supreme challenge of not dropping, damaging or spoiling your child is extremely confusing for someone with a wavering maternal instinct and a delight in her own autonomy.

Motherland is just the latest in confessional telly about parenthood, and I have to say it is excellent in the way it hones in on the experience of being a woman with kids (and in one case, a stay at home dad called Kevin).

There’s also been Outnumbered, the sheer chaos of which frightened me less only because both parents seemed to actually contribute to that household, but it remains nonetheless terrifying.



There’s also Bad Moms and now A Bad Moms Christmas, in which women enthusiastically reject the idea of motherly perfection.

All this pop culture colludes to give the impression that motherhood irrevocably changes, if not shatters, the life you once knew.

Add to all this the fact that it’s very difficult to communicate the infinite, beautiful love you allegedly feel for a child you have brought into the world and we are getting an incomplete, rather frenzied version of parenthood in pop culture.

Luckily for me, I have nephews, though they live 12,500km away, so I do get glimpses of the adoration between parent and child and know how glorious that can be.

One of my dearest friends became a mother nearly two years ago and her toddler is offensively cute and makes my heart sing because he knows how to say my name and once pressed my nose like a button.

Do we need to know ALL the brutal truths? (Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro.co.uk)

Kids can be great, I get that; I just despair as we’re inundated with the impossibly difficult, frightening parts of making a family without yet knowing the full and probably redemptive loveliness of it.

I’m not the only one frightened about becoming a mother because she’s watched some telly or scrolled through Instagram.

Sophie, also not a parent yet, had a different trigger for her fear. ‘For me, One Born Every Minute was the gateway to absolute parenting terror.

‘Obviously being scared of giving birth doesn’t exactly fill me with ambition to be a parent,’ she says.


‘But more than that, I think social media has been the game changer.

‘Facebook and Instagram are a real double-edged sword because although it helps parents connect and share the horrors of having tiny humans, it means the rest of us are caught in the crossfire.’

That fear doesn’t disappear when you become a parent, either.

Sarah is a mother and the hypothetical fear of parenting that I feel has given way to the very real terror of keeping that child alive, happy and well.

‘I was petrified of so many things,’ she says.

‘She’s five now and I keep thinking about the things that are to come and I often get this sickening wave of anxiety wash over me.

‘For a while I used to think about how I could adopt her out without it being controversial within my family.

‘In the beginning I was worried I’d kill her. And the real humdinger I struggle with today: that I’m just not a good parent.’

And so, with yet more candour about the realities of being a mother, I am left with this ever-swelling fear of what it is to bring a child into this world.

Maybe that’s just a part of it, maybe the very experience of being a human is riddled with fear and you just live with it.

Maybe the love you feel for your child overrides that fear sometimes, like there’s not enough room in your heart for both.

Maybe it’s transformative and important and wonderful sometimes. Maybe it’s all worth it. I won’t know until I become a mother myself.


Perhaps then I’ll re-watch Motherland and Outnumbered and recognise in those characters a sense of solidarity and familiarity that gets me through.

Maybe I’ll put photos of my child climbing into the washing machine on Facebook, or exhausted mum selfies on Instagram, who knows.

In the meantime, I’m going to go and call my own mother to remind me that childhood is a phase and that one day, your kids grow up and you get to have this totally lovely relationship with a human you made.

Perhaps that’s the secret reason you get through all the dirty nappies and tantrums.

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