"writing this book has made me a better parent, because I have had to really think hard about issues that were pretty invisible to me before"
BOYMOM author Ruth Whippman, on how the "weirdly freeing" "loss of selfhood" she experienced in motherhood helped her become a writer
Hello there! This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.
Today’s interview is with Ruth Whippman, whose new book BOYMOM: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, is out now. Like Whippman, I’m a feminist raising sons, and though my experience of mothering boys has been pretty different than hers, but the questions she’s asking about the intersection of gender, sex, and childhood have already prompted some great conversations with my kids and my husband. (I’ve found that just leaving BOYMOM on the coffee table is a great way to intrigue a curious fifth grader.) You can read Ruth’s recent guest essay in The New York Times, “Boys Get Everything, Except the Thing That’s Most Worth Having,” [that’s a gift link, so click away!] about boys and loneliness, or sample the pieces in her newsletter, I Blame Society.
Below, we talk about how becoming a parent pushed Ruth into writing, raising neurodivergent kids, and how her creative work and caregiving informed each other in the years she was writing BOYMOM.
Who do you care for?
My three sons Solly, Zephy and Abe ages 13, 10 and 6, and a badly behaved maltipoo called Hetty.
What kind of creative work do you do?
I write—essays for the New York Times and elsewhere, a Substack and books including my latest which came out this past week—BOYMOM, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity.
Paradoxically the loss of selfhood that came with motherhood for me was weirdly freeing. I no longer felt I had anything left to protect with that kind of avoidance, which allowed me to just write without the constant background thrum of vanity and paralysis.
What’s changed in your creative life since becoming a caregiver?
I started my roles as a writer and as a caregiver pretty much at the same time. Before I had children I was a TV producer and director in London, working for the BBC, making documentaries. It was a creative job, but in a very structured environment, with specific assignments to complete, rather than the more alarming open-ended creativity of a blank page. I had always wanted to be a writer since I was a small child, but before I had kids I was kind of paralyzed—probably at heart out of fear of failure. Writing is exposing—so it was safer to never do it and to hold on to the fantasy that the only thing standing between me and brilliance was the small detail of actually writing anything.
Somehow becoming a mother really threw all that up into the air. I suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of my first son—something I write about in BOYMOM. Paradoxically the loss of selfhood that came with motherhood for me was weirdly freeing. I no longer felt I had anything left to protect with that kind of avoidance, which allowed me to just write without the constant background thrum of vanity and paralysis. My mother-in-law was generous enough to look after my son one day a week, and I was desperate to carve out something (anything!) for myself in that time, so I used it to write.
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What does a day in your life look like as a creative and care-giver?
If I’m lucky, my husband will do the whole morning routine with the boys and drop them at school so I can wake up and immediately start writing, which is blissful. On the days he is working, then I get up, make three ridiculously elaborate breakfasts for the boys (somehow I find it easier to overparent than to set boundaries. Need to read more Atlantic think pieces!). Then I chivvy the boys to get dressed/ brush teeth etc etc which is a task as they are all neurodivergent and easily distracted, then I walk the younger boys to school with the dog, home for 9:30 then I work pretty solidly from 9:30 to 3:30 when the two older boys are home and start banging on the drums and wanting snacks. I can sometimes sneak in another 45 mins of work time with them there which is a very new thing (I can’t work at all still when the youngest is around). Then I pick up my 6 year old from aftercare at 5 and we start the evening routine- playing, cooking dinner, homework battles, bedtime, usually with some slightly surreal and delightful conversations in the mix.
the last couple of years have been a constant back and forth between caregiving and creativity—with both of them feeding the other
What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?
For me, because of the subject matter of my latest book, which is about raising boys in our fraught cultural and political moment, the last couple of years have been a constant back and forth between caregiving and creativity—with both of them feeding the other. The book is a mix of memoir, cultural analysis and reporting, so I try to use the things I learn out in my reporting with my own sons, and then think about my own life and the lives of my boys through the lens of the book too, and how the issues and conflicts that are showing up for us might have wider relevance for others too. I think that writing this book has made me a better parent, because I have had to really think hard about issues that were pretty invisible to me before. And my boys inspire me and challenge me and provide the grist and internal conflict needed for good writing!
Ruth Whippman's latest book, BOYMOM, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity (Harmony/ Penguin) is out June 4th. You can order it from your preferred retailer here. Find more of her writing at her Substack, I Blame Society. You can visit her website, www.ruthwhippman.com for more info.
if you liked this interview with Ruth, I bet you’ll also love these other pieces . . .
a good creatures interview with
journalist and creator of Leigh Kamping-Carder, on restarting her creative practice
a writing prompt, inspired by
, about following pleasure in writing
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. You can find my books here and read other recent writing here.
If Write More has helped you in your creative life, I’d love it if you would share it with a friend.
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Thanks so much Nancy! Such a rich topic and thanks for featuring Boymom
As a mom with a boy I can’t wait to read. Thanks!!