Someone Other Than a Mother: Flipping the Scripts on a Woman's Purpose and Making Meaning beyond Motherhood

by Erin S. Lane

Overview

Theologian Erin S. Lane overturns dominant narratives about motherhood and inspires women to write their own stories.

Is it possible to do something more meaningful than mothering?

As a young Catholic girl who grew up in the American Midwest on white bread and Jesus, Erin S. Lane was given two options for a life well-lived: Mother or Mother Superior. She could marry a man and mother her own children, or she could marry God, so to speak, and mother the world’s children. Both were good outcomes for someone else’s life. Neither would fit the shape of hers.

Interweaving Lane’s story with those of other women—including singles and couples, stepparents and foster parents, the infertile and the ambivalent—Someone Other Than a Mother challenges the social scripts that put moms on an impossible pedestal and shame childless women and nontraditional families for not measuring up. You may have heard these lines before:

“Motherhood is the toughest job.” This script diminishes the work of non-moms and pressures moms to make parenting their full-time gig.

“It’ll be different with your own.” This script underestimates the love of nonbiological kin and pushes unfair expectations onto nuclear families.

“Family is the greatest legacy.” This script turns children into the ultimate sign of a woman’s worth and discounts the quieter ways we leave our mark.

With candor and verve, Someone Other Than a Mother tears up the shaming social scripts that are bad for moms and non-moms alike and rewrites the story of a life well-lived, one in which purpose is bigger than body parts, identity is fuller than offspring, and legacy is so much more than DNA.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593329313
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,073,379
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Erin S. Lane is a writer, theologian, and someone other than a mother. She is most recently the author of Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Davidson College and a master’s degree from Duke Divinity School, both with a focus on gender studies. Mentored by Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal, she works as a vocational retreat facilitator, helping people discern their wildest questions of purpose. She resides in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her improbable kin.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

 

Script: Your Biological Clock Is Ticking

 

Rewrite: The Sound of Your Genuine Is Calling

 

There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself.

 -Howard Thurman

It's been a little over a year since I legally became a parent after decades of being childfree. This isn't even the strangest part, although I'm having a terrible time trying to explain myself to myself. The strangest part about becoming a parent has been the reaction from my community. Elation. Relief. Recognition. One friend expressed shock-"Holy shit. Okay then."-when I shared the news, but nearly everyone else responded as if motherhood was not only the most exciting thing I'd ever done but also inevitable. "I knew you'd come around to having children," my aunt confessed, "even if you had to do it unconventionally."

It's possible that a large part of the fervor was precisely because Rush and I had come to parenting unconventionally. Our people, which is to say White, Christian, American people, do love a good adoption story. We are nothing if not optimistic about the salvific power of family. Still, while it may be highly praised, it is not highly practiced. "Bless you," the church ladies would say to me in one breath, followed by, "I could never do what you did," in the next.

To be fair to all our enthusiasts, most women do end their childbearing years with children of some kind. But I have not "come around" to being one of them. I can still hardly call myself a mom, though I do understand that this is a widely agreed-upon word for a female parent. There are good reasons for my resistance. One, the girls already have a woman whom they call Mami, and neither they nor I are interested in replacing her. Two, I never really intended on becoming a mom, so while I've been researching the role for some years, I've had scant time to make it my own. (That I want to make it my own-as precious and unique as an individual snowflake-is, I'll give you, a very modern dilemma.) And three, I am keen to believe that a woman doesn't have to be a mom in order to be Someone.

It must be said, or people will worry, that I care deeply for the three small Someones-hereafter referred to as Oldest, Middle, and Youngest-under my roof. I care deeply that they are safe and supported and capable of penning a handwritten thank-you note when the occasion calls for it. Hours of my life are given to scheming what helps each of them to be a human person. Is it a beautiful book? A sewing class? A different parenting strategy? Giving up on the strategies entirely for a while? There is little I like more than sitting shoulder to shoulder with a child while we order personal hygiene products from Target.

So, I am doing the work of loving and living for more than myself, even if I, like many parents, do not enjoy it half the time. This is not my main trouble with motherhood. My main trouble is that I thought I was doing this work, albeit with different people, before I became a mother, and I do not fully get why people are so galvanized by my life now. Or what was so uninspiring about my life before.

A life before motherhood has historically and stereotypically been cast as a prepubescent version of what it could be. Nothing wrong with it, in theory, but to try and stay there forever would be to enact, in the words of C. S. Lewis, "a perpetual springtime." It would be small-minded, underdeveloped, and not just a little bit narcissistic. A perpetual springtime would also be highly unnatural anywhere but San Francisco.

And so, I've taken it upon myself to start sitting down with friends, especially friends not mothering, or not mothering traditionally, and grabbing them by the proverbial hands to say, "Motherhood is not inevitable. Finding your purpose in motherhood is not inevitable. You are not inevitable." In other words, I want to tell them what I wish someone had told me.

More to the point, I want to know how I might embrace my life as a parent without dismissing my life as a nonparent. Contentment, I've gathered, can be a good look. Contentment with conviction.

Table of Contents

Preface: Mother or Mother Superior xiii

Movement I Discerning a Life Well-Lived 1

Chapter 1 "Your Biological Clock Is Ticking" 3

Chapter 2 "Home Is Your Highest Duty" 29

Chapter 3 "Motherhood Is the Toughest Job" 53

Movement II Fashioning a Life Well-Lived 75

Chapter 4 "But You'd Make a Great Mom" 77

Chapter 5 "Children Are a Gift from God" 104

Chapter 6 "It'll Be Different with Your Own" 126

Movement III Savoring a Life Well-Lived 151

Chapter 7 "You'll Regret Not Having Kids" 153

Chapter 8 "Family Is the Greatest Legacy" 178

Chapter 9 "You Don't Know Love Until You Become a Mother" 199

Acknowledgments 217

Notes 219

About the Author 227

Editorial Reviews

Beautiful and clear-eyed, this book clears out the rubble of our culture’s baggage about motherhood to make room for a kinder, more honest account of love in all its forms.”
—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of No Cure for Being Human

“Smart, witty, and moving, Lane’s deft blend of history and memory forces us to reconsider the cost of conflating womanhood and motherhood. She reminds us that love is not defined by biology, and—through the raw honesty of her own story—shows us the value of making parenthood a choice for women rather than a destiny.”
—Beth Allison Barr, author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood

"Erin Lane is a guide of uncommon revelry and reverence. Think Elizabeth Gilbert with a theology degree—curious, clever, and ever-evolving. Feminists of many faiths—and those in the making—will feel deeply seen in this story of finding contentment and conviction in a purpose other than procreation—and motherhood writ large."
—Melody Moezzi, author of The Rumi Prescription

“Erin Lane has written an important book that gently and courageously addresses an often unvoiced question women ask themselves: can I be a whole person if I choose not to be a mother? She draws insight from her spiritual heritage and shares meaningfully from her own life. I consider her work essential reading to remind all of us that our choices are both holy and our own.”
—Julie Bogart, author of Raising Critical Thinkers

“With humanity, vulnerability, and humor, Lane boldly and astutely rewrites the scripts of motherhood so that all women might have the opportunity to choose what a life well-lived means to them. This book is a whole-hearted healing balm for everyone who has struggled with the absolute messages she has received about motherhood and the truth she feels in her heart.”
—Rosie Molinary, author of Beautiful You

“As a woman of color, a mother, and a clergy person, I found Someone Other Than a Mother deeply true and resonating. By rewriting the social scripts around motherhood, Erin Lane affirms those of us who feel outside the acceptable spectrum of womanhood and makes room for something more capacious, joy-filled, and humanizing for all." 
—Mihee Kim-Kort, author of Outside the Lines

“This book is an invitation to all of us, mothers and non-mothers alike, to refuse to be categorized and to embrace our God-given wholeness. The wisdom here is a gift.”
—Micha Boyett, author of Found

"I cannot get enough of Erin Lane's words. Readers of Someone Other Than a Mother will relish in her pleasurable, disruptive, and inclusive invitation to be free of the archaic mother scripts and thrive as 'bare-faced human souls together.'"
—Cara Meredith, author of The Color of Life

From the Publisher