The 'Meternity' Backlash Isn’t Really About Children At All

Meghann Foye, meanwhile, has taken on the unfun burden of being the person whose gaffe pulled the curtain aside to reveal a deeply dysfunctional, unjust system that does everyone—not just moms, not just single ladies, not just pet-lovers—dirty.

Let’s dial it back a minute. Why does the main character in Meghann Foye’s book fake a pregnancy? So she can get more time off. The fake pregnancy is a functional premise, but the main beef in the story is not with mothers on maternity leave—it’s with a work culture that offers you no place to direct your grievances when you feel like you’re approaching burnout. Faking a pregnancy to get a vacation from work is at least as plausible a plot line as saying to your boss, “I feel like I work too much! I have no time for a life! Can I take a break, without getting fired, or being treated like a liability?”

Though I feel as if identifying the problem as American-style free market capitalism is the quickest way to make people put on their noise-canceling headphones, I understand why it’s so hard to endure the rehashing of a problem that seems inescapable. The concept of Batman Vs. Superman was taken seriously enough to actually get made and given major distribution, but critiquing the economic system that governs our land makes a person seem tedious and delusional unless they’re literally Thomas Picketty. I’m not a tin-foil hat person on the fringe, I swear. My consumer habits are just like everyone else’s—got my Sephora card and everything.

But who benefits when Meghann Foye writes a book about how her job sucks her life out of her, and uses working mothers as a straw man in the process? Who benefits when working moms take the bait—again—and attack Foye for not understanding the actual labour of motherhood? As all of this is taking place in our culture, qui fucking bono?

An unregulated labor market benefits. The myth of perpetual growth enjoys another day of not being debunked. The notion that paid leave is bad for business benefits. The idea that two weeks of paid vacation a year is part of a totally A-OK quality of life, not to mention being essential for “growth,” continues to go unquestioned. If you were to approach your boss with this request, she would shrug you off with some variation of, “If I give you a break, I’d have to give everyone a break.” And to give everyone a break would mean slackening the tripwire running taut as possible between competitors. To become less productive—it’s an immoral act.

When I moved from the U.S. to Montreal (I’m a dual citizen and I wish you all were, too) I gained access to a labor environment that gives parents a little bit of breathing room. My employer was bound by law to welcome me back after each of my 10-month-long paid maternity leaves. Even after I quit my job and went to graduate school, I could afford good daycare for two kids. And people work too much here, just like they do in the States. But the workplace policies in place here dramatically reduce the stress related to raising a family. I like to think I’m a calm person, a woman who doesn’t let stuff like “Meternity” get me too riled up. But if I’m being honest, it’s mostly thanks to my social programs that I can play the role of “chill mom.” Who knows how I’d feel if I were doing all of this with no help from my government.

Until we stop griping at each other for failing to understand each other’s struggles, all of which are very real, nothing will change. It’s hard, because the common enemy of burned-out single women and burned-out working moms is invisible, spread diffusely over our entire culture, impossible to isolate or pillory. And when you address that enemy, very few cool people take you seriously. Sometimes you end up trying a roundabout and possibly inauspicious angle, like writing a book called Meternity instead.

Ultimately, I respect Meghann Foye for maybe-accidentally, maybe just for a moment, ripping the scab off the weeping wound that is professional life in America. I hope she got a nice advance and spent part of it on a vacation that she really enjoyed.

Illustration by Jim Cooke, source image from Shutterstock