Written with the intellectual and emotional precision of writers like Roxane Gay and Leslie Jamison, and drawing on classic feminist thinkers such as bell hooks, Silvia Federici, and Adrienne Rich, as well as on popular culture from The Bachelor to Look Who’s Talking, the author draws connections between caregiving, consent, reproductive control, and the sacrifices women are expected to make throughout their lives. She found herself asking a familiar question, one that had followed her since girlhood: Had she really asked for this? The conditions of modern American parenthood-the lack of paid leave and affordable childcare, the isolation and alienation, the distribution of labor in her home, and the implicit demands of marriage-were not what she had expected.

Like many mothers, she struggled with the physicality of caring for children, but even more with the growing lack of autonomy she felt in her personal and professional life. Memories of being used, violated, and seen by men resurfaced. She had the desperate urge to finally say no, though she didn’t know how, or to whom she might say it. But on the eve of #MeToo, as she struggled to adjust to the new demands on her body, she began to see a connection between how women were feeling in motherhood and the larger culture of assault. When author Amanda Montei became a parent, mothers she knew spoke of the physical overwhelm of caring for children as though it were par for the course.

Although parenthood is often presented in media and politics as a choice, motherhood, for many, feels like an assault-one girls are coerced into from a young age. In American society, women are expected to prioritize their children, often by pushing their bodies to the limit and ignoring their own desires and needs.

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