Diana | Motherhood Beyond Patriarchy

ParentingRegret

Dec 2

Written By Population Balance

Growing up in the Soviet Union, Diana felt intense pressure to both excel professionally and become a mother. As a young adult focused on her academic and professional path, her parents' unrelenting pressures for grandchildren left her feeling angry and betrayed. Her rebellion led her to create a multi-media project about regretful mothers titled Undo Motherhood. An accidental pregnancy followed by a miscarriage made her realize that it wasn't motherhood that she resisted, but rather the coercive pronatalist pressures. Today, she and her husband are joyfully raising their son with egalitarian values and shared care work, beyond patriarchy.

Diana Karklin (00:00):
I think this pressure started when I was in my mid-twenties, and the more time passed, the more my mom became obsessed with me not having children, and she saw it as her personal failure. But three months after we got married, I received a call from my father. He told me basically, okay, now, Diana, that you have played your children's games, now you have to do your real job. And if you don't bring us grandchildren, our lives didn't have a sense. And that was said in such a harsh and violent manner on the phone it felt like a betrayal, and I think it was a turning point in my personal journey regarding motherhood.
Nandita Bajaj (00:49):
That was today's guest, Diana. Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me. My name is Nandita Bajaj and I'm the host of Beyond Pronatalism, Finding Fulfillment With or Without Kids, an interview series in which through intimate conversations with women and men from diverse backgrounds, I explore how they are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the often unspoken pressures to have children, whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. In each episode, I dive into personal stories with people who are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them, whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological kids, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones. Hello and welcome to Beyond Pronatalism, Diana. It is such a delight to have you here with me.
Diana Karklin (01:47):
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Nandita Bajaj (01:49):
Yes, of course. And you have a story that is quite unique in that you started out challenging patriarchy and a lot of the prenatal list pressures that you were experiencing growing up, and then the work that you did through your multimedia project called Undo Motherhood to expose the more unseen realities of pronatalism, of motherhood that we don't often hear about, which is the regret that a lot of mothers experience. But then most importantly, how you ended up becoming better informed in where you went, which is that you decided to become a mother. And so again, I'm really excited about unpacking this journey that you've been on.
Diana Karklin (02:43):
Well, thank you so much for your thoughtful words. It means a lot to me.
Nandita Bajaj (02:46):
Yes, of course. So I'd love to have you introduce yourself briefly in terms of what you do, where you live, how old you are, but also tying into your background and your upbringing, the dominant messages that you were surrounded by around gender roles, parenthood, pronatalism, et cetera.
Diana Karklin (03:08):
Well, my name is Diana Karklin. I'm 44 years old. I'm a Spanish citizen. I live in Madrid and I have two professional lives. In one life I'm a photographer with published work, including Undo Motherhood, which was published in 2022 and was featured in all major media around the world. And my other professional life, I'm a film distributor working for one of the leading sales agencies for documentary films. Those two jobs are kind of intertwined, and I always hear stories, try to tell stories myself. I originally come from Soviet Russia, so I was born in '81 in the USSR to a Latvian father and a Russian mother, both of them had actually Ukrainian roots as well, and my childhood was very Soviet. We had portraits of Lenin hanging on the walls of my kindergarten. I had no access to foreign books or foreign cartoons, for instance.
(04:03):
But still I had a very, very happy childhood. And I was basically raised between Latvia and Russia, which back then was the same country. USSR had annexed the Baltic states, if you know, in 1940. And since then, those republics, they were considered Soviet republics. Growing up as a little girl, I think I received conflicting messages because Soviet women were required to work by law. So all of the women in my family, they all worked full time, but at the same time, they were expected to be mothers. So the state, this totalitarian state, it had made a pact with Soviet women in the sense that, okay, we have to be a working mother, and in turn, the state would provide universal free caregiving and education and health system and so on. But again, those were not choices made by women. It was just a role assigned to you by the state.
(04:53):
So you had to work, but you had to be mother at the same time. To be mother was kind of mandatory. They even had a attacks on childless women, and women basically grew up internalizing that their role in life was to be this working mother. But the funny thing when I reflect on that is it might sound quite progressive because at the same time, if you compare it with western countries in Germany and Switzerland, women had to ask for permission from their husbands to work, right? And many of them didn't work and were housewives, whereas in the Soviet Union, everyone worked, men and women. But if you think deeper about it, this mother role was really mandatory and women were judged on their success in the private life. So women were expected to get married soon in their twenties and get children for the state basically.
(05:42):
And if they did not get to do that job, then they were heavily criticized, shamed, they felt like outcasts and so on. So in that sense, it's very conflicting messages. And as a little girl when I was growing up, I constantly was given this message that you had to get a proper education, you had to get a profession and so on, but at the same time you had to get married. And that was, I think even more important than getting a job because ultimately unemployment did not exist in the Soviet Union. You were assigned a job after finished university. So I think women were not concerned about being unemployed because such a thing did not exist. But since the state did not provide a husband for you, and you had to look for it, that was considered your success in life as a woman, to get married to a nice man and become a mother.
(06:31):
And how it looked like in my case I remember my paternal grandmother, who by the way also had a university degree, people in general were highly educated in the Soviet Union. So my paternal grandmother would say to me things like, you have to learn how to cook because otherwise nobody would marry you. And I was six or seven back then, and I remember saying back like, okay, and who the hell has asked me if I want to get married? So I was already feminist back then. I just didn't know that it was called like that. Yeah. So when the Soviet Union collapsed in '91, I was 10 years old, and I have to say the things changed radically from one day to the next, the whole support system disappeared immediately. And most of the people I would say have become poor, extremely poor and had to make ends meet. And many people work three jobs just to have some food on the table and so on.
(07:24):
And at the same time, you had this group of people who became very extremely rich overnight making fortunes out of national resources and so on. So there was this sense of injustice all of a sudden. And women finally had a choice not to work anymore, but only if you could get married to a rich guy. So there was this phenomenon of the nineties - young, beautiful girls, highly educated as well, getting married to ugly old men with lots of money. Then all of a sudden we had soap operas on TV because a format of soap opera did not exist in the Soviet Union. And in the first years, the way this Latin American soap operas coming massively to national tv, and it was also huge phenomena. All the country was watching the soap operas for months, and they had also these images presented to them, poor girl getting married to a rich guy and live together happily ever after and things like that.
(08:18):
So again, this kind of double message of you have to get an education and get a career was still there. But I think the weight of the other part, you have to get married successfully and become a mother has actually increased in the nineties, and I can't actually say how it is today because I left Russia when I was 20. I never came back, only on short visits. But I have a feeling that the country has become extremely conservative, like ultraconservative. There's definitely pronatalism going on there heavily. Women's rights are being restricted. And again, the government is pushing this message that to be successful as a woman, I have to get married and have kids as early as possible. So it's like back to the old pattern, even worse than it was during the Soviet times. Yeah, this is how I grew up.
(09:04):
My childhood, like I said, was Soviet with these conflicting messages. And then my teenage years, when I was coming of age in the nineties, I saw a lot of weird things going on. Still my own family parents told me I have to get an education because then it meant I would get a good job. The state did not provide a job for you anymore, so you had to really fight for your education and everything. But on the other hand, this other message did not disappear at all, and it became heavier. And when I was 20, I won a scholarship and I went to Germany to study and I never came back. So my adult life has been in Europe between Germany and Spain. This cultural shift basically has widened a lot between me and my family. And I feel like an alien because things that I express or my ideas, my values are totally different to the stereotypical values of a post-Soviet family, so to say.
Nandita Bajaj (09:54):
There are so many things that you said that are worth exploring. I think one of the main ones being this idea that Soviet women being expected to work could be seen as a progressive thing, especially because in the rest of the western world, women were fighting for the right to work and get outside of the house. And some of the feminist movement came out of the middle class, white women just being dissatisfied with family life and wanting to have more expressions of creativity and productivity, et cetera. But as you said, with the double burden of working and motherhood, it's hardly a feminist concept. So what do you think is actually going on in the state that is not feminist?
Diana Karklin (10:47):
Well, basically I think women double shifted home. What I witnessed in my own families was that my both parents worked all day. So it was very, very normal that kids were in the kindergarten the whole day. Like I said, childcare was universal and free. And when my parents picked me up from kindergarten in the evening, there was my mother who cooked and cleaned the house, and that was her responsibility. So basically anything that had to do with raising a child was considered a woman's duty. So for instance, on paper, Soviet men actually were entitled to a parental leave. Can you imagine? But I doubt how many men, actually Soviet men in all those years had taken those leaves, probably something close to zero. So on paper, many things were progressive, sounded progressive at least, but in real life, I think it was still a form of patriarchy. It's just this totalitarian state assigned a role to each member. And women were told, you are a working mother, so you have to work and be a mother at the same time. But no one asked the women what they wanted. And the best thing is that women, they internalized all this so heavily. So what we see now 30 years later, it's still the consequences of that upbringing. And really a woman was judged on her success in her private life. And still today I think is the case.
Nandita Bajaj (12:04):
And the internalization piece I think is so important because women in every different country or nation-state have grown up with a different set of messages. But all of those messages kind of have this through line that motherhood is our ultimate destiny and that we owe it to society to pursue this pathway.
Diana Karklin (12:27):
It can be expressing in very violent ways, but also in subtle ways. And it's everywhere. That's true. I mean, take any country, even the most progressive ones, you will find probably something like to be mother is better than to be childless. It's kind of more valued or has kind of more prestige to it.
Nandita Bajaj (12:46):
Yes, agreed. And then you said you moved to Germany when you were 20. And in your work you talked about how really later in life you started experiencing strong pressures from your parents to have children, and that you went through a process of rejection and rebellion to uncover a lot of what was at the heart of these pressures. Could you take us through that journey?
Diana Karklin (13:15):
Well, I think this pressure started when I was in my mid twenties and I was already living in Germany for quite some time. And the more time passed, the more my mom became obsessed with me not having children, and she saw it as her personal failure or something like that. And I remember those conversations when I was on short visits on vacation in Russia visiting my parents. And she would always scold me even saying, how is it possible that you're 26 years old and you're still not married? And when I was your age, you were already four years old. And it was horrible because every time we had those family gatherings, she would start those conversations and I felt alone and harassed by the rest of the family because everyone was more or less on the same page except for me and I just wanted that they leave me alone with my own decisions.
(14:05):
I was really not even into thinking about it. I was totally busy with my studies and finding my own path in life. So that continued for quite some time. And I met my current husband, if I'm not mistaken, I was 30 years old, and we got married when I was 34. But all the time it just became worse and worse and worse. But we didn't get married to start a family. This is what I wanted to highlight. I mean, I still didn't know whether I wanted to become a mother or not. For a long, long time, I was on the fence. So I was not totally against this idea, but I was definitely not wishing with all my heart to become a mother. So we got married because for us it was a very kind of beautiful commitment to our relationship. And I really got angry when people told me like, okay, now that you're married, when are I going to start a family?
(14:53):
And I was like, we're already family. What do you want from me? And we just enjoyed ourselves and we traveled a lot. It was a really beautiful time, but I was aware that I was getting to the point where I could not postpone those decisions anymore. So I had to make my decision sooner or later. But three months after we got married, there came this turning point with my parents where I received a call from my father. I still remember that call with goosebumps somehow because there was all of a sudden out of the blue, he told me basically, okay, now Diana that you have played your children's games, now you have to do your real job. And if you don't bring us grandchildren, our lives didn't have a sense literally. And basically I was supposed to fulfill their life purpose with grandchildren. And it was said in such a harsh and violent manner on the phone.
(15:43):
And the worst thing, I didn't expect it coming really. I think it was my mom's idea, but since our communication was broken for a long time, and my dad was actually one of the closest people in my life back then after my husband probably. And so she sent my dad and my dad expressed on the phone was she was thinking, but in a very, very rude and impolite way. And for me it was a shock. It felt like a betrayal because basically they devalued all my professional work, all my ambitions, people who had supported all this along the way, my move to Germany and my studies and everything. And I felt betrayed by my father especially, that one of the closest people in my life says such a thing. It felt horrible. It hurt a lot, took me a long time to get together. I think my main emotion was anger, extreme anger, I would say rage.
(16:34):
I was really, I cannot put it into words. It was really a very hard moment for me. And I think it was a turning point in my personal journey regarding motherhood. Basically what happened is that it resulted in my wish to understand this pressure and why it was coming, why I was supposed to bring them grandchildren. Because back then I was not even a feminist. I mean, I didn't call myself consciously feminist, although I already lived by the principles. But I started digging. I started reading lots of books, and first of all, I started seeing the connections between the dots as a woman. And then a couple of books changed radically my way of thinking, well, in particular, I would say two books. One of them was The Conflict by Elisabeth Badinter, French philosopher and feminist. And she was basically saying that modern motherhood as it is, is undermining the status of women.
(17:23):
So it was an eyeopener for me. And in another book, maybe you know it, is by Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born. It's a classic. And first time I read that someone was explaining the difference between motherhood as an institution and motherhood as a human relationship. And that was also absolutely eye-opening for me to see and understand the difference Institution being meant a moral codex of rules, a tool to control women's behavior and all of those things. Right? And of course, Orna Donath came along with her book, Regretting Motherhood, and when I read it, I had this wow effect was like, I have never read such a courageous, such a brave book in my life and was absolutely mind-blowing. So I would say those three books, they clear things for me. They kind of shaped my way of thinking regarding parenthood. And that was the beginning of my own journey. Back then when it happened, I was finishing my master's in photography in Madrid, and I had to finish my master's with a photo work, and I was planning to do something completely different, but then I just Undo Motherhood powered me as a concept and I started to develop it. Then it's six years later it became a book.
Nandita Bajaj (18:32):
That's a powerful story, and I'm so encouraged that some of the same authors inspired both of us into our journeys to actually understanding pronatalism. And I'd also just love to get deeper into the project itself, Undo Motherhood. And you have covered the stories of several women about their experiences of motherhood, and you have different emotions that you've dedicated each chapter to that they experience in terms of the regret. Can you very quickly walk us through those stories and what were you learning as you were uncovering their stories?
Diana Karklin (19:15):
Well, first of all, when I read the Orna Donath's book, Regretting Motherhood, I was completely blown away. But I also thought that it stayed abstract because the women in the book are anonymous and we don't know who they are. We don't see their faces. And I think as a photographer, I believe in representation. I think that things that are not represented in images kind of do not exist in our collective imagination. So when I read that book, everything became clear to me and I said, I would like to go one step further. I would like to show real women regretting motherhood with their real names, saying things openly to my camera, showing their faces that they regret motherhood. For me it was also a political statement, I guess. It was a part of my fierce fight against this kind of normative notion of motherhood, that motherhood is always beautiful and sugarcoated and it's always happiness and blah, blah, blah.
(20:09):
And I wanted to show that this other kind of dark and unhappy side of motherhood exists, and it can destroy you as a person. It can destroy your life, and people should be aware of it. So that was my initial motivation. And I started doing research on the internet, and I contacted lots of writers who wrote about this topic, like asking them for help, if they could connect me with women who would be willing to participate in a project like that because one of my conditions was that I am looking for someone who would be willing to open their face and not hide behind something.
Nandita Bajaj (20:39):
Which is a difficult task, right?
Diana Karklin (20:41):
It's interesting because when I found those women, they had an extreme need to talk and share their stories with others. So they were not afraid of the consequences. Actually, they were just waiting for someone like me to come with a camera and listen to them and share their stories with the world. So in that sense, I did not have to convince anyone, and they were immediately in the project and understanding all the risks and everything. But ultimately, I worked with nine women in nine different countries, only seven made it into the book for different reasons. The geographical span is from United States to Singapore, so really Latin America, United States, Europe, Israel, Middle East, and Asia. So of course you see also cultural differences. But what struck me was that when I lived with these women, when I interviewed them and everything, the essence of the regrets had to do with the same thing.
(21:32):
And it was the lack of shared care work, basically. Why? Because raising a child is a full-time job. It's 24/7, and if you're left alone to deal with it on your own, it's very likely that you will lose yourself. And this is what happened to the women. They lost themselves, they lost their identities. They were diminished to caregiving figures basically, and they lost their lives. And this is the core reason of regret, at least in my research. Also because I think it's important to make clear this difference between motherhood as a relationship to a person and motherhood as work because motherhood is care work. It's 24/7 care work like a literal sense of the word. And when I talk about regrets in my research, it had to do more with care work, with this work, unshared work that was thrown on one single person. And imagine if you had to work in an office 24/7, you would not have time or resources for your own life. This is what exactly happens to those women. So yeah, it's not an easy subject. There are no yes and no questions to it, unfortunately.
Nandita Bajaj (22:35):
Exactly. And so interesting that that was a theme that you were uncovering in your work was the lack of shared work. But I also know just from other research, that there are just a lot of people who simply do not want to become parents, and it's a very clear thing for them. And then there are others who went into the decision of parenthood and end up regretting it, whether it's lack of shared work or it's simply losing their identity or for any number of reasons. Because if you just did not want a child and you were compelled into having a child without thinking through it, that's enough reason to regret that. But for the ones that you explored, I think it's really important what you're finding that it's a common theme for a lot of people who actually want to embark on parenthood, that they would be so much more content if it was done properly and in a fair manner. And that's where we get to your own research post the Undo Motherhood project that let you make that decision. Can you walk us through how you went from exploring, say the least attractive part of parenthood, which was interviewing these women who really truly regretted it to then finding your own pathway?
Diana Karklin (23:59):
When I started this project, my initial motivation was this anger that I felt after the telephone talk with my dad and all the trauma that I had, and I had to express it in a way. So I was really angry. And actually, it's funny because one of the chapters in the book is called Anger, and it was the first mother I went to work with in Germany, and she was angry. I was angry and beautiful things came out as we work together. But then as the time passed, I kind of calmed down and I started seeing other things behind this overwhelming sense of anger, and I have to destroy patriarchy and in general and everything. And I started understanding that my initial kind of rejection of motherhood had more to do with the pressure that I felt from my family and also my other surrounding in Europe.
(24:43):
It's incredible. I heard the same famous question, your married so when I going to have a child? People I hardly knew in my professional environment, I was like, who are you to ask me these questions? But as I said, the anger kind of disappeared slowly and other things started to appear. And I realized that probably I was not able to make this decision for such a long time because I was blocked by this anger, by this kind of counter reaction to the pressure. And I was not hearing my own voice, which was not radically against becoming a mother. But I had to kind of find a reason or motivate myself to come to this decision, even if it wasn't like a no decision, but I had to find arguments for it and say, okay, I'm not going to be a mother because this and that.
(25:25):
So it was a complicated process. And we started also a lot of conversations with my partner. He is a wonderful pro-feminist man. So for him, it was just a natural thing. When I talked about sharing care work, he said, of course, I mean, the child comes from two parents from two people who are equally responsible for the child. So of course I'm going to do my half of the job, so what's the problem? So I didn't have to convince him, he was all for it. So it was already a relief for me. I knew that if I was going to become a mother, so that would be equally shared parenting from day one. And I also made sure that I expressed my conditions. I said, I'm not going to reduce my working hours. I need to keep my job. I need to keep my projects going.
(26:05):
Can you guarantee that I would keep all that? I knew that I had to sacrifice certain freedoms and extensive traveling and other things. But since I was already in my late thirties, I was kind of ready for that because I had traveled a lot before that decision and had satisfied my need for traveling. But I still had this very, very strong fear that I would be making a wrong decision and that I would end up like those regretting mothers. So it was really fear that held me back really from making this ultimate decision. And then something happened, and I think it's the first time that I say it publicly, but I got accidentally pregnant when I was 37. It was a shock because I didn't plan it. And the next day I had to fly to Singapore to work on the last chapter of the project with a regretful mother.
(26:53):
So it was very funny because I still knew I had time because in Europe we have abortion rights until the 12th week. So I knew that I still had time to decide, and it was very good that I could stay on my own. And also the mother in Singapore, she was in a very kind of vulnerable situation with the abusive husband. So I was not able to work for her as much as I would have wanted to, which meant that I had a lot of free time to myself. And I stayed there for two weeks. And that gave me time and space to think about it in real depth. And I kind of started accepting my new situation. And there I started seeing myself in this role for the first time, really. I still kept this kind of possibility of getting abortion in the back of my mind as a emergency exit, so to say.
(27:39):
But honestly, deep inside I started this process of seeing myself. I was confronted with my biggest fear and okay, now what do you do with it? And when I came back on my second checkup, doctor said, there's no heartbeat. So it was a miscarriage, and I wouldn't like to talk in detail about it. It was a very painful, traumatic experience for me. I went through this mourning process and everything, but the outcome of this was that all of a sudden I knew that I wanted to repeat this experience. I wanted to go this journey until the end. It was a abruptly finished as surprisingly as it started. It all happened in one month, basically. So definitely one of the outcomes of that horrible experience was that I confirmed my wish in becoming a mother.
Nandita Bajaj (28:26):
Wow. Well, first of all, thank you for sharing that very personal story and also a difficult one, and also just illuminating how important that experience was for you, from first finding out about the pregnancy, having the chance to actually confront the reality of being a parent, see how you truly feel about it outside of the theoretical framework of feminism that you were exploring, and then having to be then confronted with the sadness of losing that pregnancy and processing those feelings to finally arrive at a much more informed decision to realize that you actually did have a strong desire to want to be a parent, and that you were kind of going into it with a lot of information at your fingertips of the possibilities of experiences that parents have. It's the whole spectrum from incredible to terrible. And you obviously are a mother now, and can you talk about what that looks like?
Diana Karklin (29:35):
Well, my son is five years old. He is the person I love the most in my life. He is just such a light in our lives and also my husband's life. For me, motherhood has become a political act, I would say for different reasons. Also, the way we raise our boy, our future man, the way we raise him in the family, I think it's against the stream. We keep him very far away from violence, and I mean not normalizing violence. So at five years old, he doesn't know what a soldier means. He doesn't know what war means, and I have filtered all the books. It's incredible how much violence like normal children's books contain. It doesn't mean that we are hiding this information from him, but he's just too young to understand that. And the moment when I tell him that people kill each other, I want him to be shocked.
(30:17):
So when trying not to normalize all of these things, and I think it's quite radical and it's quite political because I'm not going to change the world with this, but I can change at least my son and give him this very solid foundation for his further maybe values and perspectives in life. But back to your question about how we do it at home. Well, that's very easy because like I said, my husband and I, we share all the care work equally from day one. In Spain, we have a wonderful law that means that father and mother, they are entitled to four months of parental leave, a hundred percent paid, and you can't transfer that time to another parent, which means if the father doesn't take the time off, it just disappears. And it was amazing. I mean, that permitted my husband to be home with a child and create that strong bond with the baby from the first month.
(31:04):
And scientists say also, it's crucial to forge this connection in those very early years because then it might be too late and it just becomes and strong over time, and it goes in both direction. Attachment of the child to the father, but also the father to the child. And it's intertwined. And now five years later, it's incredible to watch those two really, I'm taking a lot of pictures because I'm actually planning a new project about engaged fatherhood. I feel we are a team. We support each other in all aspects of parenting. We're both exhausted and tired as everyone else, but at least it's kind of this strong team spirit. And I do not feel any resentment towards him or he towards me that he's doing more or me doing more about our son. But I think the most positive outcome of that is this incredible relationship that he has with his son. It's just absolutely incredible. Yes, I would encourage you, if there are listeners, fathers who are making this decision today, please make sure that you're present in the life of your child and the real sense of the word.
Nandita Bajaj (32:10):
That's a really beautiful message to end this conversation on. Thank you so much for joining me today, but also the incredible work that you've done in helping to shine a light on the full experience of parenthood, non- parenthood, patriarchy, and how to arrive at this decision while still living within a patriarchal world and changing things from within in your own life. It was an incredible conversation. Diana.
Diana Karklin (32:41):
Thank you so much, sand. It was also a pleasure for me to talk about all of these things that are very, very essential to me as well.
Nandita Bajaj (32:47):
That's all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Do you have your own story you'd like to share? Check out the show notes to see how you can get in touch with me. Whether you'd like to share feedback about the show or a particular episode, or whether you'd like to join me on the show to share your own story, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much again for joining me today as we collectively discover and celebrate the many different pathways to fulfillment beyond pronatalism. Beyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only nonprofit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Nandita Bajaj, with the support of my production team, Josh Wild and Alan Ware.