Losing best friend to the trappings of motherhood

In the San Francisco Chronicle, a freelance writer authored a piece about the loss of a close friend to mommyhood:

OFF THE MOMMY TRACK

OK, I won't argue. I know you accidentally got pregnant. But when I asked why you wanted to have a child, you told me it was because you didn't feel complete as a woman.

I never told you then, but it made me want to cry. You were always complete to me. You were always so confident, smart, bright and such a great friend. But that seems gone now, and in your place is this strange Stepford creature who tells me she's happier as a mother than she's ever been. Maybe if you say it enough, it becomes true.

This article apparently hit a little too close to home for one Salon author, who felt compelled to trash the piece in her own article:

Friends and mothers

Taken as a whole, this piece is a startling reminder of the level of rage that so many of us -- men and women, but mostly women -- attach to every issue surrounding motherhood. Motherhood has become so charged, thanks in large part to regressive forces that would have us think of it, as Gonzalez Clark rightly complains, as the be-all and end-all identity for American women. In this case, mommies may be taking the heat for the author's grief over friendships that have gradually grown distant for other reasons.

As many of the letters from readers point out, a large part of the Salon trash-talk is actually a mischaracterization of the other piece, which is a lot more about personal grief over losing a friend than it is "rage". Interestingly, Salon's "Editor's Choice" letters all seem to side with the author, even though many of the un-selected letters defend the original author. Where is the Salon.com of Hip to Snip? and the book Maybe Baby perhaps, like the original author, we have lost an ally.

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