After reading The Mother Knot, I think I've come to a sort of "conclusion" about many of these writings on motherhood. As Lazarre wrote, "We learned always to expect sentences to have two parts, the second seeming to contradict the first, the unity lying only in our growing ability to tolerate ambivalence - for that is what motherly love is like". It may be familiar or even obvious to others, but to me, it's something new and surprising. I never knew that so many women struggled through motherhood until I did all of these readings in class. I know parenthood certainly is difficult, but I've only known people to complain little, and be proud a lot. But I think that's where we find these contradictary statements. These women hate it, but love it too. And surprisingly, out of all of the readings, I enjoyed this one the most, maybe because of the format it was written in. I experienced the frustrations, rebellions and observations that the writer shared and was surprised to find the ending as content and happy as it was. Usually at the beginning of the readings I find myself swearing never to have children, which is different for me because I've always liked kids. In high school I remember thinking that I wanted to have children in my late 20's but now I have definitely changed my mind. In the end of most of the readings though, there is a subtle acceptance of motherhood that I think is almost like a natural progression through all of the roller-coaster emotions that these women go through.

Once again, the solution to many of these marital frustrations is communication. As simple as communicating sounds, it's incredibly hard when you're stuck in a certain state of mind. When I read about these women I always think, "God, if she could just talk to her husband openly...", but then I realize I also have the same problems communicating. When I'm mad at my boyfriend I only think of myself and how unfair things have been for me. It's kind of pathetic since I'm supposed to be a professional writing major and yet when I get caught in the whirlwind of frustration I can barely come up with words that could solve a problem. But in the story, changes occur after the women begin to talk amongst each other about their problems and eventually the fathers begin to take their children out a little more. Although some marriages are broken, others continue, if only for the sake of the children.

The Yellow Wallpaper, on the other hand, did not really talk about issues of motherhood in my opinion. It was hard for me to read through only because it feels almost like being inside the mind of a crazy person. I'm glad that I read "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper", though, because I almost missed it. Now I know the point of this story and why it screamed insanity. Maybe I didn't read into it deep enough, but how does it relate to motherhood? It is about a woman living in a nursery which she can hardly stand. She has other people taking care of her baby, which is different from the other readings because she does not have a highly interactive relationship with her child, but is not worried about it much. It really is a strange writing, but I'm glad that it saved more people from going insane, which is reallly unbelievable.