An ode to everything a mother juggles
Plus, creative parenting in the age of optimisation.
Hello friends,
They say creativity can not exist without some kind of chaos. If that’s true, then motherhood must truly be the most creative time in a mother’s life.
And yet. As anyone who has cared for tiny humans knows all too well, there is precious little space to be creative. Head space, heart space, space in the day.
Which is why I love photographer Priscillia Saada’s photo series Moons.
Keen to show a “modern, messy vision of motherhood”, her new photo series aims to capture an angle that isn’t often shown in depictions of motherhood: “something dynamic, powerful, and imperfect.”
In an interview with It’s Nice That, she says the series was inspired by her own experiences as a parent, but also her memories of her mother:
“I’ve always been inspired by that image of her. Her imperfection, her strength and her elegance as a mother, always putting her children first while remaining very dynamic.”
I love that this is neither the bucolic, good-vibes-only Insta friendly motherhood imagery we so often see, nor is it the haggard, mental load overloaded, burnt out motherhood – rather, it’s something new, finding fun and beauty and a (pun intended) cheeky irreverence in the beautiful chaos of it all.
Explore more of Priscilla's work here.
Living through a moment that feels “so specifically punishing as a mother”
As I navigate and adapt to what AI and the rapidly changing creative work landscape means for my working life (while also juggling the magic and the mundane of day-to-day parenting), Rachel Many’s brilliant essay and poster series Creative Motherhood in the Age of Optimization hit home hard. Though it’s about the commercial design world, it could be about any creative career.
Honest and funny and brutal at times, with the receipts and stats to back it all up, Rachel explores the reality of “how much operational labor women are expected to absorb invisibly, and how little of that reality fits neatly inside the architecture of professional ambition.”
Some choice cuts:
On the exhausting performance of trying to do both:
The modern creative market thrives on the appearance of total spontaneity. It relies on you to cruise through job interviews and client pitches looking entirely unburdened, while you quietly shove the messy realities of caregiving into the corners of your day.
On the lack of tinker and exploration time:
The same domestic labor that compresses our working hours also compresses our capacity to adapt to an industry reinventing itself in real time. There is no surplus time to play with shiny new tools, fail at them safely, and build the fluency now required for survival. Motherhood, it seems, makes you logistically complicated in a creative field that has run completely out of slack.
On the motherhood penalty:
“But much of this penalty is more subtle, driven by the currency of perception. We are routinely perceived as less dependable, are evaluated more harshly in hiring, and passed over for promotion more frequently. One landmark audit study found that childless women received more than twice as many callbacks as equally qualified mothers, despite identical resumes. Mothers are held to higher punctuality standards than fathers, while simultaneously being offered lower starting salaries and few opportunities to advance.”
On the evolution of “the motherhood tax”:
The motherhood tax itself may not be new, but what does feel newly acute is how many taxes are now being levied at once. And for mothers trying to lead creatively while also contributing fiscally, emotionally, and logistically to their households, the cost becomes cumulative.
A few other interesting links
Mother, not other: Photographer Tekie Quaye is looking for mothers to take part in a portrait project documenting mothers who are perceived as not looking like their children.
“I wanted to show that you can have your child and you can still have fun and still be sexy and still have dreams and still live for yourself.”: This TikTok video explores how Beyonce created her raunchiest song postpartum.
1680 Hours: I love Lisa Sorgini’s work, and especially this project where she made an image each day over six months to explore “the ways caring for my children unfolds through repetition, interruption, and continual return and attempting to give visual form to a structure of time that exists outside our dominant systems of measure and value.”
Adore how Rihanna answers the perennial question of whether she feels like her (pre-kid) self again.
The games industry isn’t taking care of its caretakers: [paywalled] How the commercial gaming space is forcing people to choose “between being a good caretaker versus a fulfilled creative and diligent employee".
That’s it for now friends! I also want to take a minute to send a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has kept this newsletter in their minds and sent me interesting reads and links over the months. It meant more than you know, and encouraged me to keep tinkering away at it.
Until next time,
Nathalie