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The Mom Wars
The Mom Wars
Motherhood Should Come With A Warning Label

Motherhood Should Come With A Warning Label

It would read "This is better than you ever believed it could be."

Bethany Mandel's avatar
Bethany Mandel
Jul 03, 2025
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Motherhood Should Come With A Warning Label
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woman carrying baby
Photo by Jenna Christina on Unsplash

I’m not one of those women who spent her childhood cradling baby dolls or daydreaming about her wedding day. I wasn’t the little girl who played house or fantasized about motherhood. Honestly, for a while, I wondered if I might be a lesbian, simply because I felt so detached from anything stereotypically “girly.” It wasn’t until puberty that I realized—nope, I definitely liked boys. But even then, I never fully embraced the traditional ideas of femininity, and I certainly didn’t expect to follow a conventional path into marriage and motherhood.

Which is why it still feels so surprising—even to me—that I’ve become such an unapologetic advocate for this life. So when I see headlines like the recent New York Times piece, “Motherhood Should Come With a Warning Label,” I feel an almost visceral disgust. The video compilation featured women crying as they recounted how having children had derailed their careers.

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