Outrage Over Blogger’s Mother’s Day Message: ‘Motherhood Sure As H*** Not My Job’

Mother’s Day is on Sunday, so Salon blogger Mary Elizabeth Williams took the opportunity to fit in one subtle dig that didn’t sit well with readers.

According to Williams, who has authored one book in addition to her work for the website, motherhood “sure as h*** isn’t my ‘job.'”

Williams says that if you want to call it her job, then you’d better pay her for it.

The comments come in a May 8 column entitled, “Sorry about Mother’s Day, my childfree girlfriends: Moms aren’t any more special (or unselfish) than you.”

While Williams purports to be a mother of two, she doesn’t think there is anything special to warrant the whole “cult of motherhood” that comes out to play each Mother’s Day.

From the column.

“I was extremely fortunate to be able to choose when in my life I wanted to have kids. I was, at the time, in my early thirties. I can tell you this much — I know I was already a fully formed, feeling, thinking, useful to the world human being at that point.”

While Williams says she was grateful for the child, she also conceded that “it’s a baby, not the Blue Fairy.”

“My friends without kids can check off a different box on the ‘most profound, meaningful experience’ form, and our boxes don’t have to be the same to be important. I assume Debbie Harry and Gloria Steinem and Margaret Cho and Georgia O’Keeffe and Coco Chanel [women without children] all did just fine checking off theirs.”

This isn’t the first time that someone has stirred controversy with comments centered on lessening the importance of motherhood in society.

The Inquisitr reported on Liz Pardue-Schultz’ comments that being a stay-at-home mom was a “hobby” and not a job.

Schultz said that it doesn’t matter “how difficult it is or how hard we work. Period. Getting to do nothing but raise a person you opted to bring into the world is a privilege, and calling it anything else is ignorant and condescending.”

As expected that touched off a firestorm with many stay-at-home moms taking her to task for ignoring the financial benefits that stay-at-home moms bring to the family budget.

Likewise, commenters weren’t too keen on Williams’ thoughts in the Salon piece. A sampling follows.

“Salon should be ashamed for publishing this clickbait that I fell for. I’m tired of bending over backwards to make childless women feel good. If they made a choice, stand up for it — don’t diminish the love and work that mothers put in for their children.”

“Mother’s Day is not an occasion to apologize, empathize or handwring [sic] about child-free mothers. Talk about #FirstWorldPains and #WhiteGuilt over nothing at all…. What’s next? A lapel ribbon to honor the childless?”

“This type of article perpetuate the idea that mother’s day, or valentines day, or whatever day is a nightmare for anyone who’s not celebrating said day, it’s ridiculous and annoying [sic] mother’s day is a day for families, mother’s and children, I don’t have kids but I have a mother so I do get to celebrate too, and if I didn’t have my mother alive (thank goodness I do) then it would be just another sunday as the other 51 sundays in the year [sic] I don’t need anyone trying to be ‘understanding of the void’ I’m supposed to feel on mother’s day because I have no children or trying to ’empower me for being brave enough to stand by my choice’ I choose not to have children and I have absolutely no problem with that, I still get to celebrate mothers day with my mother and my sisters and my aunts and my grandmother, so stop trying to ‘make it easy for me’, it’s alredy easy! [sic]”

Do you think Williams meant well with her comments, or do people need to stop overthinking Mother’s Day and stop apologizing for it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

[Image via New York Times]