{"id":26931,"date":"2020-05-10T11:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-10T15:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=26931"},"modified":"2020-05-09T17:53:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T21:53:29","slug":"is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it more difficult to be a mother today compared to 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>From our local public radio station: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbur.org\/cognoscenti\/2020\/05\/08\/mothers-day-flowers-homeschooling-pandemic-covid-19-sharon-brody\">&#8220;I Love My Kids But I Loathe Mother\u2019s Day \u2014 Especially This Year&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8230; our culture has a pretty long rap sheet of under-appreciating women. And day in and day out, those moms tend to not get the credit they deserve because they make so much look easy: holding together infinite moving parts to accomplish the mission of the family machine, plus adding glitter. Metaphorical glitter. Sometimes real glitter, added by real children. Which the moms are usually stuck cleaning up.<\/p><p>The truth is, of course, that at this moment nothing\u2019s okay for anybody. And I get that it isn\u2019t the holiday\u2019s fault that we need to adjust gender and work roles and laws and unwritten rules. But right now, it\u2019s easier to imagine a marginally improved version of Mother\u2019s Day (minus the false pedestal mess) than to dare to dream of civilizational change.<\/p><p>Solidarity, moms. Each and every one of you: Happy sub-optimal holiday in these sub-optimal times to some of the most superoptimal people on Earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, something humans have been doing for 200,000 years is now intolerably burdensome, despite a climate-conditioned home packed with labor-saving machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Readers: Is motherhood in fact now more burdensome than in earlier eras? Or it was always intolerably burdensome, but mothers did not have as many outlets for complaining about the burden so we don&#8217;t how unhappy women were in Ancient Athens, Siddhattha Gotama&#8217;s India, or the China of Confucius?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/L-gbacsUKpc\">Bill Burr on motherhood being the most difficult job<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From our local public radio station: &#8220;I Love My Kids But I Loathe Mother\u2019s Day \u2014 Especially This Year&#8221;. &#8230; our culture has a pretty long rap sheet [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-nature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Is it more difficult to be a mother today compared to 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is it more difficult to be a mother today compared to 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From our local public radio station: &#8220;I Love My Kids But I Loathe Mother\u2019s Day \u2014 Especially This Year&#8221;. &#8230; our culture has a pretty long rap sheet [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-05-10T15:46:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"philg\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"headline\":\"Is it more difficult to be a mother today compared to 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago?\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-05-10T15:46:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/\"},\"wordCount\":273,\"commentCount\":5,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Human nature\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/10\/is-it-more-difficult-to-be-a-mother-today-compared-to-1000-10000-or-100000-years-ago\/\",\"name\":\"Is it more difficult to be a mother today compared to 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago? 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