It’s the stuff of gothic horror stories—the seemingly inescapable fate of slowly morphing into your mom over time, the one person you swore you’d never turn into (or at least, the one person I swore I’d never turn into). A 2019 survey even helpfully pinpointed the age when you begin to feel and act more like your parents, which just so happens to be 33, about three years after the median age you give birth to your first child. Motherhood, it seems, doesn’t just turn you into a mom, it turns you into your mom.
So, what exactly happens in those few years? Dr. Julian De Silva, who led the aforementioned survey, hypothesized that during that time period, we turn to the values and habits we were raised with, and start liking the same things, watching the same media, and saying the same old sayings as our parents. It’s also when we begin to see the challenges our parents faced and why they were sometimes frustrated and stressed out. When it comes to our mothers, we’re finally able to see that their exhaustion and complaints came from taking on the majority of the childcare and domestic and emotional labor, much like mothers still do today.
Nightbitch, the new film based on Rachel Yoder’s feminist magical realism-style novel of the same name, explores this metamorphosis in a surreal tale that aptly captures the complexities and identity-ravaging strangeness of motherhood. The main character, played by Amy Adams, is an intentionally unnamed artist turned stay-at-home mom of a 2-year-old, who thinks she might be turning into a dog. In this horror comedy, it is the transformation into motherhood that is monstrous—like growing a tail or patches of fur—whereas when she is a dog, she is at her most alive, most free.
Though it was originally her idea to stay home to be her child’s caretaker, over time she finds the role taking over her life, keeping her away from her career and passion for art, while her husband’s life remains largely the same. This isn’t something she’d anticipated or wanted, and like a lot of mothers, she finds herself having to redefine her identity, priorities, and relationships. She’s overwhelmed and angry and not sure who she is anymore. As she nears a nervous breakdown, she delights in embracing the primal nature of an animal who can get away with things that mothers never can (like running at night with relative safety or ignoring social conventions).
There’s so much you don’t know about motherhood until you become a mom. You’ve got to experience some things, like the torture of sleep deprivation or the relentlessness of daily caregiving, to truly understand it. Apart from adolescence, parenthood is also one of the biggest changes a person can experience in their lives—and for moms this transformation includes changes in the brain as well—yet the guidance and practical help received falls far short of what is needed. This is partly due to the fact that people didn’t talk much about the realities and inequities of raising kids, until recently when the larger culture began taking a closer look at all sorts of structural inequalities, including the ways we rely on mothers to fill in the gaps.
Amy Adams begins to transform in Nightbitch.
Some of the most poignant scenes in Nightbitch are the flashbacks to the main character’s childhood. Raised in an unnamed Amish-esque community, she often watches her mother with concern. She could tell her mother was unhappy, but she didn’t understand why. Her mother eventually explained that she was hoping to shield her from the disappointment she felt in a community with such rigid gender roles, but in the end, not knowing what her mother was going through prevented her from understanding what she’d be up against as a mom one day.
My mom was a stay-at-home parent who managed everything for my brother and me. She was in charge of teaching us all the basics, from tying our shoes and instilling good manners in us to helping us with homework, and making sure we got to all our doctor and orthodontist appointments and extracurricular activities. She was caring, loving, and played with us.
Unsurprisingly, she was also often tired. Doing almost all of the emotional labor and domestic duties in our household was frustrating, and she wasn’t quiet about that frustration. She taught us what our responsibilities were and provided constant reminders when we didn’t follow through. Had my dad, brother, and I understood that taking care of each other and the house was our shared duty and behaved in kind, there likely wouldn’t have been any reminders to annoy us. Instead, my dad tuned her out, dismissing her contributions to the family. Following his lead, my brother and I did the same.
My mom got underneath my skin in other ways too, but my annoyance with her mainly stemmed from the constant coaxing and prodding. I attributed all the things I disliked about my mom to her personally, rather than looking at the broader picture of her role in society and my family’s home, or of her responsibilities, which included things like making sure my brother and I didn’t turn out like assholes. And I sure didn’t think about what it meant that so many women I knew felt just as horrified as I did at the prospect of turning into their mothers—because we feared being taken advantage of and treated with as little regard as they were.
I wish I had read this quote from Bonnie Burstow in Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence when I was growing up, or at any point before I had kids: “Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
When I became an adult, my mom and I got along a lot better. With her released from the pressure of raising me, we had the room to relax into each other’s company. We didn’t talk about what that pressure had been like for her or how she struggled on her own, but I wish we would have. I still probably wouldn’t have truly understood until I became a parent, but at least I would have had the chance to apologize for not appreciating her or for judging her by toxic patriarchal standards.
When I became a mother, I came to understand my mom much more deeply. By that time, she had already passed away, so I sat alone with the questions I had just for her. Without even paying attention, I fell into the pattern of trying to do it all until I couldn’t anymore. Both of my kids, who were then 2 and 4, were finally in preschool, so I was able to increase the number of hours I worked. Then the pandemic hit. After months of being their main caregiver again and with little time to work, my executive functioning slowed to a crawl.
Now I see that what I interpreted as nagging was just my mom asking us to step up and take care of ourselves and each other. She was telling us that being part of a family meant sharing responsibilities, and that no one person can do all the caregiving on their own, nor should they be expected to. When I realized that, my fear of turning into my mom morphed into anger at the unfairness she and so many women face.
It was only through finding a balance in my own home that I was able to function more normally again. I needed a village to support me, and I needed to let myself be taken care of too. The mother in Nightbitch, who also lost her mother before she became a mom, comes to a similar conclusion. She and her husband separate for a while so she can create some time for herself and regain some semblance of identity again. She becomes closer with several moms and reincorporates art back into her life. It’s only when she is able to reckon with all her parts that she’s able to be herself again—just herself. Likewise, today I carefully guard all the parts of me that make me me. I consider this just as much an act of resistance as it is a matter of survival.