3 Comments
Mar 4Liked by Vilma

I have a feeling that calling motherhood a privilege is paternalistic. On the other hand, parenthood is a privilege, and I've come to understand that living life for the young truly is the ultimate realization of self, it's defeating your own mortality. I think I understand your mom and my own folks too.

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Love this comment for two reasons:

1) it leads me to ask you a genuine question: what do you find paternalistic about calling it a privilege?

2) it makes me admit that in the end our parents were right

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I find It paternalistic because it reeks of old schemes: woman, stay in the house and make my meals. Isn't it enough for you, to have this great privilege of being in charge of bearing and raising the kids? I wouldn't dare to intrude and take it away from you, by helping you out.

Still, yes, parenthood is a shared honour and burden, and I believe that's where we'll have to play our most consequential cards.

I've been watching The Durrells on Netflix, largely a true story: what an incredible mother could nurture and keep together such an incredible family, and what great things they went on to achieve in their lives!

Likewise, another one of the great minds and most interesting people of the last century was Nobel laureate Prof. Richard Feynman. I read his autobiography years ago, and there he credited his father with raising him with all the curiosity and wit that eventually made him the extraordinary mind he became. I don't know much about the man himself, but I'd love to make Feynman's father into my life model.

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