When being capable of carrying a child becomes an expectation to have one.
Season Two: Motherhood — Conversation No. 1
There are certain questions we ask women almost automatically.
Are you seeing anyone?
Then, When are you getting married?
And if she gets married, sometimes before the wedding cake has even made it into the freezer, somebody is already leaning across the table asking:
So...when are you two having a baby?
Girl, can she get the thank-you cards mailed first?
We laugh because most of us have either heard some version of it or watched it happen. But underneath those questions is something much bigger than harmless curiosity. There is an assumption about what a woman's life is supposed to look like, and for generations many of us have inherited that assumption without ever stopping to examine it.
Grow up.
Get married.
Have children.
Raise a family.
It is such a familiar blueprint that motherhood can begin to feel less like something a woman chooses and more like something she eventually arrives at simply because she is a woman.
And lately I have found myself sitting with a question that might make some people uncomfortable:
Does having a womb automatically mean a woman was created to become a mother?
I am a mother. I raised four children. I know the love, sacrifice, fear, pride, exhaustion and heartbreak that can live inside that one word.
And perhaps that is exactly why I believe the question deserves to be asked.
Motherhood is far too important for us to treat it like the automatic next step in a woman's life.
Before Motherhood Became a Title
When I look back at my younger self, there is something I have had to admit:
I fell into motherhood.
That does not mean I regret my children. I don't.
It means I cannot remember sitting down as a young woman and deeply asking myself, Mayah, do you want to be a mother?
I wanted to be a wife. I remember that.
Motherhood seemed to come attached to the life I imagined. You found someone. You got married. You had children. That's what women did.
So I did.
And then I became responsible for four human beings.
Once you're a mother, you learn very quickly that motherhood isn't the little collection of beautiful moments we like to photograph.
There are beautiful moments. Absolutely.
But there are also ditches.
And mothers know exactly what I mean when I say that.
You dig ditches your children may never know existed. You sacrifice things you never announce. You lose sleep over problems they slept peacefully through because you were the one carrying the worry. You stretch money. You rearrange plans. You make decisions that make you the bad guy because being liked by your child and protecting your child are not always the same job.
Sometimes you stand between them and something dangerous and take the impact yourself.
And sometimes, after everything you have poured into motherhood, you discover that love does not guarantee the ending you imagined.
I know something about that too.
There was a devastating season in my family's life involving someone I had trusted spiritually and my daughters. What happened changed us. It changed relationships within my family, and it changed motherhood for me.
I remained their mother.
I loved them.
But the motherhood I had known before that season was never quite the same afterward.
There are losses inside motherhood that we don't always know how to name because the people we love are still alive.
That's part of the truth too.
And when I consider the enormity of all of it—the responsibility, the sacrifice, the vulnerability, the love, I cannot understand why we would ever pressure a woman into motherhood as casually as we sometimes do.
Motherhood Is Sacred. But Is It Every Woman's Assignment?
I am a woman of faith, so naturally I have thought about this question through that lens too.
Scripture speaks beautifully about marriage. Proverbs 18:22 says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing.”
But Scripture also makes room for another life.
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul speaks openly about singleness and the freedom it can provide for devotion to God. And throughout Scripture, women appear in roles that cannot be reduced to whose wife or mother they were. Deborah, for example, appears in Judges as a prophetess and judge whose wisdom and leadership affected an entire nation.
That doesn't mean the Bible contains a verse saying, Some women aren't called to motherhood.
It doesn't.
I don't want to make Scripture say something it doesn't say.
What it does make me wonder is why we sometimes make motherhood the defining measure of a woman's life when Scripture itself shows women participating in God's purposes in different ways.
Perhaps we have confused something being sacred with something being mandatory.
Marriage can be beautiful without being everyone's story.
Motherhood can be holy without being every woman's assignment.
And a woman can live a meaningful, God-centered, fruitful life without ever giving birth.
When Everyone Wants You to Have the Baby
Here's the part I really want us to talk about.
People can become very invested in a woman having a child.
Parents want grandchildren.
Friends want their children to grow up together.
Church communities celebrate pregnancies.
People ask, encourage, hint, pray, tease and sometimes outright pressure.
And then the baby arrives.
Everybody takes the pictures.
Everybody says how beautiful the baby is.
Everybody goes home.
And Mama is still there.
The 2 a.m. feeding is still there.
The childcare bill is still there.
The laundry is still there.
The doctor's appointments are still there.
The emotional labor is still there.
And for many women, the job is still there Monday morning too.
We spend an enormous amount of time asking women when they're going to have children and nowhere near enough time asking mothers:
Who's helping you?
That question matters to me.
Because if we're going to publicly celebrate motherhood while privately abandoning mothers to carry the physical, emotional, financial and mental weight of raising children largely by themselves, then perhaps our celebration isn't as supportive as we think it is.
Motherhood doesn't need more applause from the sidelines.
Sometimes motherhood needs somebody to get on the field.
Bring dinner.
Take the baby.
Drive somebody to practice.
Sit with the teenager.
Let Mama sleep.
Remember the appointment.
Ask what she needs and mean it.
Celebrating motherhood publicly means very little if mothers are being abandoned privately.
What Happened to the Village?
There is an old idea that it takes a village to raise a child.
I think somewhere along the way we kept the phrase and misplaced the village.
Raising children was never supposed to be one woman's private project.
Fathers matter, Grandparents, Aunts, uncles, Teachers ,Mentors matter.
Neighbors matter, Faith communities matter.
Healthy communities matter.
Children become adults inside ecosystems. And when those ecosystems fail, mothers are often expected to compensate for every missing piece.
We cannot continually tell women to have children while refusing to build communities that help families raise them.
And we certainly shouldn't shame women for looking at the reality of motherhood and asking themselves whether that is a responsibility they genuinely want.
There Is a Seat Here for the Woman Who Doesn't Want Children
I want to be very clear about something.
A woman should not have to provide a tragic explanation before we're willing to accept that she doesn't want children.
She shouldn't have to say she cannot conceive.
She shouldn't need a traumatic childhood.
She shouldn't have to explain that she can't afford children.
She shouldn't have to produce an impressive career that makes motherhood inconvenient.
She shouldn't have to give us a reason we find respectable enough.
“I don't want to be a mother” is information about her own life.
That can be difficult for people to hear because we have spent so long connecting femininity with motherhood that choosing one without the other can feel like a rejection of something fundamental.
But it isn't.
A woman choosing not to become a mother isn't making a statement about women who do.
And a woman loving motherhood doesn't invalidate the woman who knows it isn't for her.
There is room for both truths.
In fact, knowing yourself well enough to resist one of society's strongest expectations for women may require an extraordinary amount of honesty.
A woman does not owe society a child simply because her body may be capable of producing one.
Her womanhood existed before anyone called her wife.
It existed before anyone called her mother.
And it remains hers if neither title ever arrives.
And There Is Another Woman at This Table
There is someone else I don't want this conversation to leave behind.
The woman who wanted the baby.
She imagined the pregnancy.
The nursery.
The tiny clothes.
The first day of school.
Maybe she picked out names years before there was anyone to give them to.
And motherhood did not happen for her biologically.
I don't want to cover that grief with a pretty saying.
Sometimes we are so uncomfortable sitting beside someone else's pain that we rush to give it meaning.
Everything happens for a reason.
God has another plan.
You can always...
Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is stop trying to finish another woman's sentence.
Let her grieve what she wanted.
My sister could not have children of her own.
And yet when I look at the role she has played in the lives of my children and now my grandchildren, I see something that has expanded my understanding of motherhood.
She has loved.
Guided.
Protected.
Shown up.
Poured into.
Helped shape.
She did not give birth to my children, but she has mothered in ways that mattered.
And I think there is an important distinction here:
Giving birth, being a mother and mothering are not always the same thing.
There are women who have never carried a pregnancy who have spent their lives pouring into children.
Aunts.
Stepmothers.
Adoptive mothers.
Foster mothers.
Teachers.
Mentors.
Grandmothers.
Women who became a safe place for a child who desperately needed one.
Recognizing them does not erase the grief of the woman who wanted to carry her own child.
It simply reminds us that a woman's capacity to pour life into another human being is much larger than her reproductive capacity.
Children Are Gifts, Not Proof of Womanhood
There is another side of this conversation that I believe deserves our attention.
If we truly believe children are gifts from God, then perhaps the question isn't simply:
Do I want a child?
Perhaps parents should also ask:
Why was this particular child entrusted to me?
That changes something.
Instead of seeing our children as little people we're supposed to mold into the lives we planned for them, we begin paying attention.
Who is this person?
What did God put inside them?
What are they naturally drawn toward?
What needs protecting?
What needs developing?
What needs correcting?
What might this child one day contribute to a world I will not always be here to guide them through?
Suddenly parenting looks less like ownership.
It begins to look like stewardship.
Our children are not evidence that we succeeded at being women.
They are people entrusted to our care.
That is a very different responsibility.
And it makes me believe even more strongly that motherhood deserves discernment.
Children deserve adults who understand the magnitude of what they're accepting.
Before She Was Mother, She Was Woman
This may be the part of the conversation closest to my heart.
When a woman becomes a mother, something strange can happen.
Her name starts disappearing.
She becomes so-and-so's mom.
Her conversations become about the children.
Her schedule revolves around them.
Her body may no longer feel entirely like her own.
Her wants move farther down the list.
And because sacrifice is so deeply woven into the way we talk about good mothers, she may even begin to feel guilty for remembering that she was once someone outside of motherhood.
But before she was somebody's mother...
she was a woman.
She had ideas.
Preferences.
Curiosity.
Purpose.
Friendships.
Desires.
Questions.
Faith.
Dreams that belonged entirely to her.
Motherhood can add something extraordinary to a woman's life without needing to consume the entire definition of who she is.
And if motherhood never comes?
The woman is still there.
Whole.
Woman Came Before Mother
Perhaps that's what I want us to remember as we begin this new season at The Table.
Some women will give birth.
Some women will adopt.
Some will mother children they did not carry.
Some will desperately want motherhood and grieve when it doesn't happen.
Some will know with absolute certainty that they do not want children.
Some will be sitting somewhere between all of those things, still trying to figure out what they want when everybody around them seems to have an opinion.
There is a seat for every one of those women here.
Because a woman's womb is part of her body.
It is not the entirety of her purpose.
Women carry children.
But we also carry wisdom.
Ideas.
Businesses.
Communities.
Faith.
Creativity.
Leadership.
Stories.
Healing.
And sometimes, when life gets particularly heavy, we carry one another.
Maybe honoring motherhood doesn't require us to make it the definition of womanhood.
Maybe we can call motherhood sacred without making childlessness shameful.
Maybe we can celebrate the woman who becomes a mother without questioning the woman who doesn't.
And maybe we can love our children fiercely while still telling the truth about how difficult motherhood can be.
Those things do not cancel each other out.
They make room for the fullness of women's lives.
Tea at Today's Table
For this conversation, I would choose something gentle.
Lavender tea.
Not because this is an easy conversation, but because it isn't.
Lavender asks almost nothing of you. There is no need to make this moment productive. Let the water steep. Let the fragrance rise. Hold something warm while you consider a question women have been answering with their lives for generations, sometimes without ever being asked it aloud.
You don't have to solve motherhood today.
You can simply make room for the truth.
Return Practice: Separate Your Voice From the Blueprint
Find a quiet moment this week and ask yourself:
Which parts of my life did I consciously choose, and which parts did I simply inherit as the way life was supposed to go?
This isn't an invitation to regret your life.
I don't regret my children.
It is an invitation to become curious about your own voice.
Perhaps motherhood was always something you deeply wanted.
Perhaps you became a mother before you were old enough to know yourself.
Perhaps you never wanted children and spent years defending that choice.
Perhaps you wanted them desperately and are still carrying the grief of what didn't happen.
Whatever your story is, resist the temptation to rewrite it into something prettier before you examine it.
You are allowed to tell the truth about your life and still be grateful for your life.
Those two things can sit at the same table.
From My Journal
When I look backward, I can see that there were many decisions I made because they seemed like the next thing I was supposed to do.
Motherhood was one of them.
Then I actually became a mother, and I learned what no blueprint could have shown me.
I learned that love can make you stronger than you knew you could be.
I learned that sacrifice doesn't always get acknowledged.
I learned that children grow into people with their own interpretations of the life you thought you were building together.
Reflection Questions
- Before motherhood entered the conversation, what did you imagine your adult life would look like?
- Did anyone ever ask whether you wanted children, or was motherhood simply assumed?
- If you are a mother, how intentionally did you enter motherhood?
- What has motherhood given you that you could never have anticipated?
- What has motherhood cost you that you rarely say aloud?
🌿 Take Today's Conversation With You
Some questions need more than a few minutes at the bottom of a blog.
This week's journal page is a place to sit with your own story privately—without defending it, explaining it or making it acceptable to anyone else.
→ Download the Conversation No. 1 Journal Page: The Table Journal Page
Before You Leave the Table
I don't know that the question “Is motherhood for every woman?” needs a neat answer at the end of this conversation.
I think the more important thing is that women are finally allowed to ask it.
Because motherhood deserves more than assumption.
Children deserve more than obligation.
And women deserve more than being told what their bodies mean their lives must become.
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