The Waves: Should You Become a Mom at 25?

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s episode of The Waves, a conversation with Atlantic writer, Elizabeth Bruenig. In the first half of the show, Elizabeth talks about her recent New York Times article, “I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait” with Slate’s news director Susan Matthews. The two get into why pregnancy is both so personal and yet so public, how society and particularly the job market deals with that, and the randomness of deciding when the right time is. After the break, Susan and Elizabeth delve into the backlash the piece received from the left, and then the backlash that backlash received from the right, and what we can take from that cycle. Elizabeth talks about whether she was trying to be provocative, and only being “happy stupid” on Twitter. In Slate Plus, the women each share a piece of their past that made them feminists. For Susan, it was taking all the classes for a gender studies degree … without getting the degree. And Elizabeth talks about reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in junior high school. Recommendations Susan stans the Tour de France (which she has stanned before in the pages of Slate, but it is once again Tour de France season). If you can’t make it to the French countryside anytime soon, watching the cyclists pass by ancient castles may help scratch your travel itch. And for the people who are there, remember to keep your signs out of the way of the cyclists. Elizabeth missed the TV show House when it first came out, but during the tail end of the pandemic, she’s been binge-watching it. She recommends the first few seasons of the medical drama, especially while folding laundry. Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. And additional production assistance by Rosemary Belson. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Waves. This is The Waves. This is The Waves. This is The Waves.
0:12.8	Welcome to The Waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and the precise correct age at which
0:18.1	to have your first child. Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we
0:23.5	can't get off of our minds. And today you've got me, Susan Matthews, the news director at Slate.
0:28.9	I'm joined by Elizabeth Bruning, who is now a writer at The Atlantic, but just before that,
0:34.3	she was an opinion writer at The New York Times. It's one of her last pieces there that we're
0:38.9	going to talk about today. The piece was published on Mother's Day, and it was called,
0:43.5	I became a mother at 25, and I'm not sorry, I didn't wait. Liz, welcome to the show.
0:49.6	Thanks for having me on. It's a thoughtful piece, and it also spurred quite a bit of backlash,
0:54.8	and argument online. And so I wanted to have you on to talk about both the arguments in the
1:01.2	piece itself and to sort through why it provoked the kind of response it did and what we should take
1:06.8	from that. So we'll get into both of those things right after the break.
1:25.6	So Liz, I wanted to start by asking you how you came to write this piece in the first place.
1:31.0	There's been a lot of conversation lately about the following birth rate, a lot of consternation
1:35.6	about that. To me, though, this piece really felt like something that came from a more personal
1:40.8	place. So I just wanted to start by asking you if you can tell me a little bit about like when you
1:46.4	realized, oh, people think that you are a young mom, and they have all these feelings about that.
1:52.7	Yeah, it was mainly during the pandemic. So most of my friends are my age. They're 28, 29, 30,
2:00.8	or somewhere around in there. I'm 30 years old at this point. And during the pandemic,
2:05.8	my friends would say stuff like, I haven't seen or spoken to anyone in weeks. I'm completely alone.
2:13.2	I'm so by myself. I would feel the complete opposite way. I would be like, I have not been alone
2:20.0	in weeks. I have had someone like literally breathing in my mouth as I wake up every day
	...

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