As I browse the blogs of my feminist mummy bloggers, I suddenly become aware that they have a tag which I don’t – ‘parenting’. Instead, I have ‘motherhood’.
When I started wondering why this was the case, it became obvious to me that the thing which I have had to come to terms with (rather than just getting used to), is the motherhood aspect. Accustoming yourself to parenting seems to be a matter of adjusting to an external situation: the presence of others in your space and the obligation to meet their demands. But for me, the whole idea of motherhood has involved a more complex set of calculations and adjustments.
Because it turns out that I am not (as I have thought for years) just some sort of man who happpens to need a bra. I have had to come to terms with being female, and with the role that I find myself in, which I don’t always like, of organiser, worrier, clairvoyant, digester of a thousand parenting books. I don’t know how much is biological (I am also the gestator and lactator) and how much is social, but I have the uncomfortable sensation of becoming something despite myself. It’s humbling and confusing and inspires a new respect in me for those mothers (and not parents) who have travelled this path before me.
I’m adding the ‘parenting’ tag, by the way. But it’s not the thing which is currently exercising my mind.
rosemarymoore
migrationtothenorth 
You make me wonder about my own relationship to gestating and lactating. It was far less thoughtful than yours. I think I’m sorry you’re adding “parenting” as a tag. It has the slightly coy ring of partner, significant other. It’s a bit bloodless. But maybe that’s not a bad thing: it covers the roles you list better than the more intimate “motherhood” – I think.
From what I am observing around me, there is also a need for constant bravery, physical and emotional, incorporated into the biological side. I never thought about that before.