How do you know when it’s finally time to have children, or rather how do you know if you should have children at all? Sheila Heti attempts to answer this question for herself through her novel Motherhood, exploring the confusing nature of choice and maternity as she begins to fall into the early years of menopause. The novel offers an interesting internal dialogue between Heti’s desires and contemplations as a woman in her late thirties facing the difficult (and timely) decision of maintaining her status as a “non mother.” While the choice of children comes so naturally to others, Heti finds herself frustrated and confused, fighting between her intuitive understanding of herself and the sentiments being pushed onto her.
The novel starts with a short introduction to the ancient Chinese text of I Ching. With note of the I Ching method, Heti goes on to create her own personal decision making model based on the results of three flipped coins. Following every question, Heti would flip three coins to reveal heads or tails, yielding either a yes or no response. The result of two or three heads meant the answer to the question is “yes,” whereas two or three tails meant the answer to the question is “no.” The conversations between Heti and these three coins create a sort of socratic dialogue, forcing Heti to use her discernment and delve deeper into the true meanings of her curiosities.
The focus of Motherhood is based heavily on Heti’s claim that choosing to reject motherhood should not be viewed as a lack of having, but rather as a state of being in and of itself. Heti argues that to be without children is to be able to live fully for yourself, allowing your experience to be shaped at your sole discretion. However, this state of being becomes difficult to describe without acknowledging the essence of being “without.” This is why being a “non-mother” feels so indescribable, as the only true commonality between “non-mothers” is the absence of children. The ability to make your life so uniquely your own leaves too much possibility for difference, whereas the experience of motherhood offers women the unmistakable common grounds of maternity.
Heti also introduces an interesting take on the perceived obligation of women to have children, stating that many women feel it is their duty to extend the branches of their family tree like the many generations before them. But Heti proclaims that her legacy lies not in the continuance of her bloodline, but rather through the survival of her art. It is through writing that Heti is able to curate a legacy that is exclusively her own, unscathed by others and able to withstand the stakes of morality. She states that “it seemed to [her] like all [her] worrying about not being a mother came down to history – this implication that a woman is not an end in herself. She is a means to a man, who will grow up to be an end in himself, and do something in the world. While a woman is a passageway through which a man might come,” (Heti 158). To Heti, the implication that her own doings were not good enough to fulfill her legacy disgusted her; why should she not be seen as a complete person through her own means?
Being one of the only “non-mothers” in the novel, Heti received harsh criticisms from her friends on her choice to reject the pursuit of motherhood. Heti states that it felt like her choice of not having kids was seemingly offensive to many of the mothers she talked with. But, “the woman without kids is not saying that no woman should have kids, or that you – woman with a stroller – have made the wrong choice. Her decision about life is no statement about yours. One person’s life is not a political or general statement about how all lives should be. Other lives should be able to exist alongside our own without any threat or judgement at all” (Heti 134). The sense of competition between the mothers and “non-mothers” felt to Heti like a disruption in the ideal harmony of humankind, pinning one woman against the next on the premise of children alone.
Motherhood is an inspiring novel about trusting your intuitions and inherent understandings of your true self against all odds, societal pressures, and criticisms. Heti reminds us that women who reject maternity are not deemed any less loving and womanly than those who choose to embrace it. Motherhood is a choice with no clear answer. Motherhood is complex, emotional, unpredictable, and everything in between. Motherhood is not what defines a woman, but simply an experience offered to them.
Heti, Sheila. Motherhood. Henry Holt and Company, 2023.