FEATURE:
Don’t Like Me?
IN THIS PHOTO: U.S. rapper Rico Nasty in 2020 (she gave birth to her son, Cameron, while in her senior year of high school, and she explained how there is this mixture of fulfilment and struggle balancing music and motherhood)/PHOTO CREDIT: Myles Loftin for The New York Times
The Mixture of Struggle and Fulfilment from New Mothers in Music
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I owe a massive tip of the hat…
IN THIS PHOTO: Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul/PHOTO CREDIT: Garry Jones via The Line of Best Fit
to Allison Hussey, who recently wrote a feature for Pitchfork about the struggles new mothers in music face. I write about this subject a while back, when thinking about the difficulty of female artists especially balancing parenthood and touring. With little to no childcare and that new responsibility, it can often be an impossibility balancing the two worlds. Also, when sufficient time has passed, it is not necessarily a case of them slipping into this old routine like things had not changed. There is transition. Physical and emotional changes post-pregnancy can be quite noticeable. The fulfilment and sense of pride from becoming as mother is an obvious reason why the risks and struggles are worth it. So many artists can draw inspiration from a new child, and it can provide a stability and sense of directional focus that was previously lacking. I don’t think music should be an industry where women are weighing up whether to have a child because they feel like, if they do, then that will cost them too much. As Hussey uncovers in her article, speaking to female musicians, you get this sense that the industry is image obsessed to the point where mothers are seen as maybe far less bankable and sexy than bright and fresh young artists:
“The image-obsessed world of entertainment has been exceptionally grievous in minimizing the demands of motherhood, with children long considered “career killers.” While that perception has changed over the years—just look at Beyoncé and Cardi B’s wildly successful (and joyously explicit) work since they had kids—many modern musician moms still experience undue pressure amid an industry that’s always in search of the shiny new thing. “It’s ingrained in the back of our heads that we have some kind of shelf life, and if you’re not fuckable, no one’s going to want to see you perform or hear what you have to say,” says the country singer-songwriter Margo Price, who has two children. “We objectify young women and youth, and then set them out to pasture.”
The electro-pop singer, songwriter, and producer Charlotte Adigéry remembers signing a record contract in December 2020, on the same day she found out she was pregnant. The coincidental revelation clouded her with doubt, and she considered terminating the pregnancy. “I didn’t think that the music industry would support it or even be interested in what I had to say after becoming a mother,” she says. Adigéry ultimately had her son the following year, and her pregnant belly curves outward on the cover of her breakout 2022 album with multi-instrumentalist Bolis Pupul, Topical Dancer. “For the first time, I really learned to love my body, and I wanted to celebrate that,” she says of the black-and-white image.
Price had her own reservations about her second pregnancy. Nearly a decade earlier, one of her twin boys died in infancy as the result of a rare genetic heart condition, leaving her awash in grief. When she unexpectedly found herself pregnant again in 2018, Price wasn’t sure if she was ready for another baby. Early in her pregnancy, Price says she talked to country legend Loretta Lynn’s daughter, Patsy, pressing for answers: Did she resent her mom for being gone all the time on tour? Was she still angry? Patsy reassured her, and not long after, Loretta called her directly to say, “I just think you should have as many babies as you want.”
This reassurance held particular weight for Price, who idolized the late singer of songs like 1971’s “One’s on the Way” (which ends with Loretta quipping, “Oh gee, I hope it ain’t twins again”) and 1975’s “The Pill,” an ode to birth control and women’s freedom. Price delivers a stark pro-choice ballad on her latest album with “Lydia,” where she describes a down-and-out pregnant woman contemplating her future in a clinic. “Make a decision, it’s yours,” she sings.
Many of the challenges that women in the music industry face echo broader fights against inequity, such as the struggles for paid maternal leave and universal healthcare in the United States. “If something isn’t good for your average musician, it’s not good for your average mother musician,” notes Meg Remy, a Torontonian who was lucky enough to not bring home a five-figure hospital bill along with her two babies thanks to Canada’s universal healthcare system.
The general lack of paid leave contributes to many women—including touring musicians—working through physical discomfort and other health risks all the way up to their due date. Corin Tucker had a rude awakening while carrying her first child during a tour with her band Sleater-Kinney in the early 2000s. “I was pretty young, and there was this feminist mentality of like, ‘Women can do anything, it doesn’t matter if you’re pregnant,’” she says. “But it was pretty horrible. I was so sick and exhausted. I would just sleep in the van all day, play the show, and drag myself to the hotel.”
There’s no paid maternity leave for the vast majority of musicians, which can leave new mothers with precious little downtime. Raquel Berrios got pregnant unexpectedly around the same time that she had begun making dreamy electro-pop with her partner, Luis Alfredo Del Valle, as Buscabulla. She gave birth to her daughter at home in New York in 2013, on the same day she listened to the masters to Buscabulla’s debut EP for the first time. As Buscabulla picked up momentum, Berrios found her burgeoning music career growing inextricably alongside her baby.
IN THIS PHOTO: Raquel Berrios (Buscabulla)/PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Newton
“The first three years were really, really hard,” she says. “It took a toll on me.” There were times when she felt that she was living a “triple life”: going to the full-time day job that gave her family financial stability and health insurance, playing shows at night, mothering most of the hours in between. On some occasions, she’d go to breastfeed her daughter in the morning only to find the baby dusted with glitter and makeup that had rubbed off during a post-show feeding. Meanwhile, Berrios’ health was taking a serious hit from the long-term pressure, creating issues with allergies and digestion that dragged on for about eight years”.
Rico Nasty has been raising her son on her own for most of her music career, with stints of assistance from her divorced parents. She gave birth when she was 18; her baby’s father died of a severe asthma attack during her pregnancy. Being a single parent has had a significant impact on her music: Would-be collaborators had to be flexible with remote work long before it became a norm. Part of the rebellious streak that courses through her music comes from, as she puts it, “being young and having everyone tell you that your life was over because you’ve made such a life-changing ‘mistake.’” That doubt helped steel Rico’s resolve, and she released her first major-label studio album, Nightmare Vacation, in 2020.
But there’s no such thing as free childcare, really, and Rico found that having her parents in rotation at her home was not always relaxing. Last year, she was able to hire a nanny for the first time, and she says she’s never going back. “I was literally burning myself out for years,” she says. “It’s a whole new ballgame”.
There are a couple of other features I want to reference to sort of back up this point that the music industry is not as accommodating and flexible to new mothers as it should. Whereas there are many powerful and inspiring female artists who have children and can return to work and there is not too much loss or massive accommodations needed, there are many more women who are finding they have very little support. Rolling Stone’s Laura Lane looked deeper into this issue in 2021:
“The music industry is not set up for motherhood.
Across occupations, a general “motherhood penalty” — a social phenomenon describing how mothers are perceived to be less committed or competent than working fathers, leading to disadvantages in pay and advancement — is widely documented. Across the board, researchers have found, women seem to be hit with a 4 percent pay cut per child while men receive a 6 percent bump. A 2019 study found that 21 percent of working moms are nervous to tell their bosses they are pregnant. Per a rather blunt summary of the gendered penalty from the New York Times: “One of the worst career moves a woman can make is to have children.”
While it’s difficult to calculate the financial losses for female artists who have kids, the music business’s fast-fluctuating and project-driven nature means that the motherhood penalty can be especially swift and severe.
“Everyone works so hard and it’s so rare to have the kind of momentum and income that you need to equal the amount of effort that goes into making a career in music viable, so for me to introduce another complication — ” says Lynn, pausing to take a breath, “I had a lot of guilt around it and I still do.”
IN THIS PHOTO: Oh Land (Nanna Øland Fabricius)/PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez for Elle
Whether female artists bring children on the road, ask friends or family watch kids at home, pause their careers, or choose not to have children for the sake of their careers, the decisions in every circumstance are difficult and require endless resilience. This is partly due to the nature of the work, living and dying by erratic tour schedules and unstructured work hours — but it doesn’t help that the vast majority of contemporary record executives, tour managers, or other decision-makers of artist careers are male. Artists from varying backgrounds, success, genre and recognizability agree that there is little support in the industry for female musicians who become mothers.
When Danish musician Oh Land got pregnant five years ago with her first son, Svend, she, like Lynn, worried how it would change her image within the industry. The “youth-focused” music industry can feel totally at odds with parenthood or the idea of mothers, she says: “So I was definitely scared that people will be like, ‘Oh, now she’s done.’” Oh Land toured up until week 38 of her pregnancy. “My pregnancy was very, very easy the first time,” says Oh Land, whose son would kick her belly when she got off stage because he was so accustomed to the noise and movement. “And I think because the pregnancy was so easy it kind of gave me a little bit of a false impression of what it is to be a parent.”
After having their child, she and her then-husband, artist Eske Kath, moved from Brooklyn back home to Copenhagen, largely because Denmark offers tremendously more institutional support to parents. “I don’t need to talk too much about the American healthcare system and all that,” says Oh Land. “Also, being an independent musician where you don’t have a nine to five job, you have to make your own existence every day… It was very hard in the beginning and very overwhelming because I wasn’t prepared on how full-on it was to become a parent for the first time. It takes over your world like it’s a tsunami.” Oh Land is currently a judge on the Danish X Factor and her most recent album, Family Tree, chronicles her family journey”.
Ray Sang wrote for gal-dem in 2021. She also looked at how the industry is not set up to accommodate and support new mothers. Also, that idea that pregnant female artists or mothers are not marketable and they have passed their time. In an industry that is still ageist and places so much stock in promoting young and ‘trendy’ female artists, there is that lack of respect and value placed towards maternity and women with children in music. I think more conversation has opened up incentive and some small changes since 2021 but, as Pitchfork have shown, there is still a long way to go. Are many women going to avoid having children because they feel like their star will wane or they will be pushed aside when they return to their career? Can women realistically go on tour and record like they did before having children? There are artists like Beyonce or Cardi B who have had children and determinedly have continued strong with their career arc trending upwards, that is not to say this is a common experience:
“Speaking to 20 women working across the UK industry, it became clear many of the challenges mothers in music face are structural and will require a complete overhaul of the systems that have lost their ability to function adequately – or, as with every other industry dominated by men, systems that were never built to accommodate women in the first place. These include – but are not limited to – the cost of childcare, low pay in the industry (particularly for artists) and setting realistic expectations around touring and working hours.
Some artists have successfully been able to find workarounds as singer-songwriter Cilla Rae explains, “I remember asking Rebecca Ferguson, ‘how do you manage going on tour and having kids at the same time when they’re all of school age?’ And she just said that she schedules all her tours around half-term and brings a nanny with her.” But this course of action is only viable for those who have the financial means to do so, not everyone.
IN THIS PHOTO: Satnam Galsian/PHOTO CREDIT: Nathan Robinson
Then there are the actual attitudes and views held towards mothers themselves. In addition to adverse feelings towards pregnancy in the industry, there is a tendency to believe that, due to the inability to be always readily available, mothers who work in music are somehow less dedicated to the cause.
But why is this? For artists, motherhood and responsibility isn’t looked upon as marketable, especially for those who already have children. Singer Alika shares that she was told “men have to want to fuck you and women have to want to be like you”. Women in the industry – especially Black women and women of colour – are sold the idea that they need to be sex symbols to sell their records, and anything that deviates from that mould is less than desirable. Across my conversations, it becomes clear that the music industry perception is that becoming a mother suddenly means you can no longer like hip-hop, relate to an under-25 audience or leave your child at home to go and work; ideas that are laughable at best.
As a result, many mothers in the industry are not afforded the privilege of being themselves, with many subsequently hiding the fact that they have children.
Structural changes may take a while to happen, but there’s no reason why a shift in attitude cannot begin now. Women shouldn’t have to base such life-changing decisions around work schedules, yet when talking to gal-dem, several interviewees mentioned women who had ended up having to leave the music industry to focus on raising their children; though understandably no one wanted to give names.
While the decision to do so is admirable, it’s likely that also seeing women do the opposite and balancing both would normalise the idea that women can in fact have successful careers in the music industry whilst being parents. Lead vocalist of Kinaara, Satnam Galsian says, “Mainstream representation would show that it’s possible; the potential impact of which shouldn’t be underestimated.” Visibility is absolutely key. People need to see others successfully balancing being a mother and working within the industry reflected back at them enough to know that, if they are then in that position, the support and lack of judgement exists for them to do the same”.
I was struck by Allison Hussey’s longform feature for Pitchfork. Titled ‘The Invisible Work of Mothers in Music’, it spotlights Sharon Van Etten, Rico Nasty, Corin Tucker, who say how new motherhood can make touring even tougher. At a time when so many artists are either pushing too hard on the road or they are suffering mental-health issues, there does need to be more protection in general across the live sector. Do we discuss women and the fact that women are becoming mothers but are having to make huge sacrifices. Maybe only touring or recording at certain times – so that they can be at home with their children -, or it is a case that they hold off having children until their career has reached a certain point. The Pitchfork feature does have that hopeful message: there is huge fulfilment in becoming a mother, which can inspire new work. The art is always a driving force. That energy and catharsis from music. The industry needs to make it easier for women to become mothers and continue their careers knowing they are supported and appreciated. Let’s hope that we…
WILL see some changes soon.