Not a day goes by when I don’t hear a story like Maggie’s.
Maggie’s 17-year-old daughter was sick; she’d been vomiting for two days and was unable to keep any food down. Having raised a few children and ridden this rodeo many times, her illness presented like a bad stomach virus. (A number of her daughter’s friends were also sick.) On the third evening, her daughter started complaining of bad pain in the center of her belly, at which point Maggie started getting worried, mostly about dehydration. She called the pediatrician.
“This is day three, and you haven’t brought her in yet?” said the female pediatrician. As she put it, “If her daughter could make it through the night, she needed to take her to the office or urgent care first thing in the morning.” The doctor’s tone was disapproving and judgmental.
After hearing the doctor’s comment, Maggie gathered her daughter and headed to urgent care. The doctor there told her that the teen needed to be evaluated for appendicitis—STAT- and so off they went to the emergency room. But after six hours in the hospital, the lab work showed that imaging was not necessary; she should follow up with the pediatrician in the office. That night, she and her daughter returned home at 3 am, which (as an aside) completed a 22-hour day of professional and parenting work for Maggie.
The next day Maggie cancelled her plans and got her daughter to the pediatrician as instructed. The doctor there conducted some tests, but was not alarmed and sent her home with instructions to watch and wait. By now, her daughter was feeling a little better, no longer vomiting, and able to keep a bit of food down. But still, the pain in her belly continued and was not getting better. And so the next day, she took her daughter to the pediatric gynecologist, where the sonogram showed that she had fluid in her abdomen, which was probably what was causing the pain. She told Maggie she needed to be evaluated once again in the ER, for more imaging, since this was serious.
Running on fumes and having missed three days of work, sleep, and food at this point, Maggie asked the female gynecologist if it made sense to call in a prescription for an emergency MRI or CT scan, so they could have it done quickly at the nearby private facility—so they wouldn’t have to spend another day waiting for a scan in the hospital hallways. The gynecologist’s eyes grew large with disbelief; she told Maggie again that her daughter had large amounts of fluid in her belly and needed to be evaluated immediately in a hospital. She also (angrily) added that Maggie would be going directly against medical advice if she pursued any other plan than the one she, as a doctor, was proposing; she would be both doubting her advice and putting her daughter at risk. But then came the real kicker…
For months, Maggie had been working on a critical presentation; if she landed the deal, it would change the trajectory of her entire career and deliver what she’d always wanted. The presentation was scheduled for later that afternoon. Maggie decided to take the risk: She asked, “If we go to the ER you’re suggesting, do you think there’s any chance we’ll be out by 5 pm, or could you speed things along because it’s your hospital?” (It was then 12:30 in the afternoon.) The doctor’s eyes then grew to the size of saucers; if she had been a cartoon character, her eyes would literally have popped out of her animated head. She responded, “You’re asking about your 5 pm meeting?” Dripping with disgust, she went on to inform Maggie that she “had serious concerns” about a parent who rejected medical advice and was asking if she was going to be out of the hospital in time to make her meeting.
And so, Maggie did as she was told, not wanting to be “that” mother about whom the doctor had “serious concerns,” the mother who thought not only of her child, but also about herself, who dared to mention her own needs in the face of her child’s needs. Maggie’s intuition and experience told her to get the scan done outside the ER, though her pediatrician’s office, so she and her daughter wouldn’t have to spend the entire day in the freezing cold hospital. As expected, it took ten hours for an attending radiologist to read the scan, and Maggie and her daughter returned home, antibiotic in hand, at 11 pm. Having “appropriately” missed her meeting, Maggie was now sick with a sore throat, but with the seal of approval that she was a “good mom.” She was also deeply upset, shamed, and angry.
For a woman who loves and is devoted to her child, why is it a crime, a spiritual abomination, for that mother to bring her own needs into the conversation? The harshest judgments (from both women and men) in this society fall on those women who break the silent code of conduct for mothers: the instant a woman becomes a mother, she must disappear, become selfless, admit no needs of her own, and exist solely for the sake of her children. Having needs, her own needs, distinct from her children, is treated as sacrilege, and women are metaphorically burned at the stake for it. That mother is shamed in the public square when she dares to let the genie out of the bottle and admit that she’s still in there, that separate grown-up person who existed before she had children, and who still matters, not only as a mother but as a human being.
It’s 2026, and we’re still horrified and disgusted by a mother who—also—considers her own needs, and who doesn’t solely exist for her children. I wonder, what needs to change to move the dial, so that a mother can admit out loud that she has her own needs, without being dragged through the toxic mud of imposed morality. A good mother and her child can both matter, without it being contradictory or incompatible, and without stripping her of her goodness, compassion, and fierce devotion. It’s not our children—or ourselves—and it’s preposterous and imprisoning that the Kool-Aid we’re drinking hypnotizes us to think it is, and should be.