A raw exploration of motherhood’s dual nature

Motherhood is often portrayed as something that should be joyful and fulfilling. Mothers are supposed to be caring, happy and loving all day, every day. But that’s simply not the case. It’s a concept that Margo Lowy challenges in her powerful new book, Maternal Ambivalence, inviting readers into the complex emotional terrain that many mothers navigate but few openly discuss.

“I really want to lift the taboo, to lift the stigma that’s attached to ‘mothering has got to be perfect’. No it doesn’t,” Lowy told The AJN. “We are actually human. We’re actually not machines.”

The concept of maternal ambivalence – something that Lowy focused on for her PhD – looks at, as the book title suggests, “the loving moments and bitter truths of motherhood”. That is, the contradictions inherent in modern motherhood.

As Lowy writes on her website, “We love our kids and yet sometimes they drive us to distraction and, for a minute of two, we can experience confronting feelings which are extremely difficult to admit to.”

But admit to it, we must.

“We’re all fed this myth about being perfect and we buy into it,” Lowy said. “Let’s give mums a break. Let’s give ourselves a break. Not only let’s give ourselves a break, but let’s pat ourselves on the shoulder when we do something good. We’re not very good at that.”

Lowy uses many stories throughout the book to show that the darker feelings can actually be transformative. The psychotherapist talks about melting moments. Those moments when those uncomfortable feelings of resentment, anger, fear and even hating feelings melt into joy, enjoyment, fun and happiness.

By acknowledging the difficulties alongside the joys, Lowy’s exploration offers a more nuanced understanding that many find validating and liberating.

“It’s also important to be able to name these feelings; to be able to name the loss and the resentment and the bitterness and the love and the courage and the pain,” Lowy explained. “What we do as mums is that we make it binary. We say we feel selfless or selfish, but we don’t. Sometimes we’re selfish and sometimes we’re selfless and we have to own that and be okay with that. And I want to make this a conversation.”

Lowy emphasised that motherhood is designed to have a lot of feelings and mothers shouldn’t dismiss the dark ones, but try to think about them and to understand them. “They’re normal, everyone has them. And I would also say to make sure you surround yourself with people who understand you and aren’t going to undermine you,” Lowy said. “Embrace it. Flow with the mothering.”

Maternal Ambivalence has already received widespread praise for lifting the feelings of shame and guilt that so many mothers feel.

Lowy told The AJN that at first, she thought it would be challenging to switch gears from her academic writing. So, instead of trying to write like an academic, she simply looked inward.

“I didn’t look at my academic work. What I did is I just wrote from my head, from my heart and somehow it all flowed.”

Importantly, Lowy pointed out that while the book is aimed at mothers, it’s actually for all people who care for children. “We all have to take ownership, but we, as mothers, we need to lead this,” she said. “I talk about mothering as messy and interrupted … an experience of making mistakes and repairing them,” she continued. “It would have been a really positive thing for me at that time, I think. To have this book when I was bringing up my children would have been wonderful.”

Motherhood is complex, messy and conflicted. But the important thing, according to Lowy, is that we normalise and embrace all the feelings, even the contradictory ones. Because that’s where the heart of mothering lies.

Maternal Ambivalence is published by Post Hill Press, $32.99 rrp.