Why would a woman try to steal another woman’s new baby? Not to mention slice her neck and leave her for dead? There is no doubt some serious psychological dysfunction going on— but are there also larger social pressures that mandate motherhood for all women and at all costs?
Though there are an increasing number of women who choose to remain childless, for many women their role as a mother underpins their identity. Indeed from early childhood, girls are socialized for their domestic role and are regularly encouraged to develop their nurturing skills in preparation for their upcoming motherhood. And while many parents go to great lengths to demonstrate to their daughters that other identities are available to them, there is still great cultural pressure to conform to the strict gendered norms of society. For some, a woman without a baby is like a fish without a bicycle, but for the vast majority it is more akin to a fish out of water. So deeply ingrained in our collective cultural psyche as to be both powerfully apparent and yet rendered invisible, these pressures go part of the way to explaining how the Baby Abby incident was not merely a single act of depravity, but was also part of a systemic flaw in our gender role mandates. Very few women are so desperate to solidify their mother identity that they will resort to attempted murder and theft. But this instance, and the many others like it that occur with frightening regularity, speak to the paralysis that many women feel when facing the thought of a female identity not tethered to motherhood. It is not out of sympathy for those women who become so severely damaged as to resort to brutality that we should reflect on these socially prescribed tenets of femininity. All women deserve a culture which supports their own particular vision of womanhood, whether or not that vision involves children.
