Motherhood, Outsourcing, and the Damaging Notion of “Togetherness”

I recently read an article on one of the many mom-related Instagram accounts I follow where the author — a working mother of two, married to a working father — conducted an “experiment” to see if she could, in fact, appear like she is a mom who “has it all together.” To do this, she outsourced her “parenting duties” for a week, which included laundry, cooking, and carpooling. While the article had some salient points — namely the value and necessity of asking for help and the advantage of having a “village” for such help — I found my…