Nope, my uterus has never had an organism inside it.

Today I will be tackling tacky terrible tropes.
namely, the classic line

you wouldn't understand, you're not a mother.

That is in fact quite true, generic character, I have not had a miniature alien person grow inside of me. I have not shoved a watermelon out of my vagina.
I certainly have NOT had a tiny person depend on me for everything.

While I agree, these things can change you and toughen you up, and make your hormones get crazy jumbly, I disagree that they make any mother magically more enlightened on any parenting topic.

I especially hate seeing this line in tv shows where a 17 year old wants her kid back after adopting them away.
What the hell do you know about anything?

You don't understand responsibility, you got knocked up in high school.
You made a responsible choice to give your kid away, and are fucking up the ONLY good decision you made by insisting your used womb gives you a free pass for a kid.

Yes, you totally are a mother. And still a shitty person.


but I digress....


The main issue I have with this line is just how not anything it really is.

Parenting is certainly tough and eye opening and enlightening and selfless- i'm not here to invalidate that.
Giving birth sounds HORRIBLE. Painful, you have to be goddam tough for that....
all the things associated with being a mother are indeed trying and could give someone the credentials to be experts in certain places.

But people are different. Each woman's experience can be different from the next.
Just like how not all celebrities are out of touch and rude and rich, not every mother has picked up these qualities.

Imagine, for example

you wouldn't understand, you're not a lawn mower

we can assume lawn mowers would indeed have a great understanding of certain things, perhaps beyond human understanding. That doesn't mean every lawn mower can talk, and if they could would share their great grass clipping wisdom with us.