Writing at Burger King

During my first semester in college, I read a curious essay, “Romans et enfants” (Novels and Children) by French literary theorist and social critic Roland Barthes. In this short and biting piece, part of his famous book Mythologies, Barthes takes to task the women’s magazine Elle for the way it was profiling women novelists in accordance with the following formula: author’s name, followed in parentheses first by the number of children and then the number of novels. Barthes sardonically quips that according to Elle, women’s fertility results in birthing babies and novels in alternation. After a series of snide asides about the latent societal expectations that women’s writing had better not impede their baby-making abilities, he concludes that Elle’s profiles reinforce a view of gender roles that is backward, oppressive, and condescending. Shouldn’t it be enough for women writers who happen to be mothers just to be thought of as writers, and introduced simply as writers in the public sphere?

Barthes’s essay meant little to me at eighteen. I was neither a writer nor a mother. And I was, at that time, a secular Jew. And yet discomfort over this piece lingered somewhere in the recesses of my brain over the ensuing couple of decades, as I became an academic, an evangelical Christian, and a mother of three. This essay came to mind again recently while reading Agnes Howard’s thoughtful review of Julie Phillips’s new book on motherhood and writing, The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem.

Like Barthes, Phillips is conflicted about the ways in which women can (or, at times, cannot) balance writing and similar creative activity with mothering. Her conclusions, which ultimately privilege women’s creative work and present children and societal structure as de facto hindrances, generally have the same flavor as those that Barthes reaches. But now, over two decades removed from my first reading of Barthes, I can see not just what is present in these works and their arguments for recognizing the creative work of mothers. No less important is what is so strikingly missing from both discussions: a recognition of humility as a virtue essential for finding a well-ordered balance of priorities, particularly for mothers but really for anyone inspired to create.

Photograph by mliu92

Howard notes in wrestling with Phillips’s arguments: “What is lost if women can’t do creative work, as Virginia Woolf and others have testified, is a lot of good art and good books. Conditions enabling creative women to produce their work should be found; otherwise, we all are the poorer. Phillips mostly takes that point for granted, animated instead by what would be lost in the personal fulfillment of her subjects had motherhood gotten in their way.”

One can imagine – and mourn – the invisible library of works not written by mothers who chose to place their children’s needs first by giving up their writing. But what of the converse sacrifice? The imperative to create art without being burdened by other responsibilities has a cost as well. Rightly pushing against the potential enabling of selfishness and the concomitant sacrifice of the needs of other family members that such quests for fulfillment by either men or women can take, Howard concludes that the quest for the balance of creative work with family life requires “mutual deference, which comes from love.”

If we take love as the foundation on which a husband and wife can (and should) build a system that allows both to pursue creative endeavors while fulfilling their duties to their children, we accept that women’s creative work matters, but not in lieu of their task as mothers. At the same time, embracing motherhood does not mean sacrificing creative work altogether.

One can imagine – and mourn – the invisible library of works not written by mothers who chose to place their children’s needs first by giving up their writing. But what of the converse sacrifice?

To bring these two callings or competing priorities – mothering and writing – into well-ordered balance, mothers who are writers or artists will need to cultivate humility. Humility is perhaps not the first virtue to come to mind vis-à-vis writing and creative work. It is, however, a central virtue connected with motherhood, as seen particularly clearly in Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). In this prayerful song of thanksgiving, Mary expresses her joy that God “has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” Mary’s joy at her God-approved humility echoes the frequent descriptions of Jesus himself as humble – not just humble in our modern English sense but also lowly in a socially despised sort of way. As a motherly virtue, this humility is beautiful and countercultural, especially in the prayer of a young woman who is rejoicing over motherhood in such difficult circumstances. Hers is a humility that embraces motherhood as a divine calling above all others, because she knows that it literally is a divine calling upon her life.

But just because a particular calling exceeds others does not mean it definitively rules out simultaneous callings on our time and love. Having well-ordered priorities does not require us to give up all other callings that may be less significant in light of eternity. It simply means knowing which of the many competing callings is most important and therefore above the competition. In our society, which does not value children as the absolute good they are, it may be the most countercultural admission of all for a mother to push back against the assumptions of Barthes and say that while we should celebrate women’s creative work, children are image-bearers in a way that novels or works of art are not.

So, in light of this, what is the worth of a mother’s written word? George Eliot famously mocked her fellow women writers, criticizing the “silly novels by lady novelists” whose authors took themselves too seriously even while writing ridiculous tropes and unrealistic plots. Evaluating the worth of literature in light of her admonition seems appropriate. But in Eliot’s vision, the weight of some words is so glorious because of the acclaim the works receive for the great weight of their subject matter. And to be fair, Eliot herself achieved such acclaim because of the works she composed.

As I reflect upon the callings of motherhood and writing, both of which I feel intensely, my calling as a mother obviously comes first.

But such a view of evaluating words, even in the best of great literature, presents the same problem we find in the Barthes essay – it leaves out the greater weight that image-bearers have. Words of mortals, no matter how glorious, will always have a more humble place in God’s ordering of priorities than image-bearers. And so, in my affections, it is well and right for my children to rank above my writing. This does not mean that writing isn’t important, or that it cannot be a beautiful, God-ordained instrument to shape minds and hearts, orienting them toward eternity.

And so, as I reflect upon the callings of motherhood and writing, both of which I feel intensely, my calling as a mother obviously comes first. The humility required of me to admit this has an invariable impact on my writing as well. Anything I write becomes, by default, more humble, lowlier, more prone to give way to the child who needs yet another snack or snuggle: ideas jotted down on random grocery receipts or texted to myself from the playground, or questions to myself that I would like to explore further but need to lay aside for the moment as I climb up a tree to get down the three-year-old who confidently clambered up but cannot figure out how to get down. In her case, I see the tangible results of a typical preschooler’s hubris, that spectacularly disordered elevation of the self, coupled with the confidence that she can do all things by herself. This is how the Tower of Babel was built. Safely restoring her to the ground, I breathe with relief, glad that we have both achieved the literal humility of proximity to the earth, humus, once again, unscathed.

Here I am, yet again, at a playground with the kids. This time the oppressive heat of the day has driven us inside, into an air-conditioned indoor playground that Burger King has recently constructed. I sit at a table, still suspiciously sticky in spots from the previous occupants’ sauce-laced lunch. I am writing about Augustine while keeping an eye on the kids happily climbing inside the tubular structure suspended several feet above the ground. Oddly, the experience feels like the perfect mix of high and low, honestior et humilior, noble and humble, balanced out at last. And as the kids happily run back and forth to grab a bite and return to their play, for these few minutes the chicken nuggets and fries flow as freely as my written words.