Chappell Roan and those parenting comments

US popstar Chappell Roan has caused a stir with her statement that nobody she knows with children is happy.

The 27-year-old said she wasn't aware of "a single person who is happy and has children, at this age", adding that "all of my friends who have kids are in hell" and she had "not met anyone" who "has light in their eyes who has a child under five, at this age".

Mummy politics

There's "nothing like mummy politics" for "touching the maximum number of raw nerves in one go", said Sarah Ditum in The Times. I "wouldn't dispute" Roan's "general point" because having a baby is "tough".

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Remembering when she first had babies, Ditum said it wouldn't be "surprising" if "on some days you saw me and my eyes were less than glowing", but "when I remember their infancy", I'm "thinking about how their chunky little bodies sat perfectly on my hips", and "how good it felt to make them laugh".

It's "news to precisely no one" that babies are "hard work", wrote Melanie McDonagh in The Telegraph, but they're also "very good fun". So maybe Roan's "just empathising" with parents' challenges, but "there’s a line between sympathy and a put down".

Also, with birth rates already falling, if "childless celebs" like Roan make having children sound like "a threat to mental health, it's not going to help, is it"?

Writing in The Guardian about when she first became a mum, Molly Glassey remembered the "insane dichotomy that was my postpartum mental state", when most of all, she "needed to whinge".

So perhaps Roan is "simply a good friend" who has "listened to her friends" as they "navigate the perils of early parenthood". If she "assumed her friends were unhappy" that's "probably an understandable conclusion", even if "it might not be the right one".

Lightning rod

"Look at how quickly this lightning rod can divide two sets of women," observed Maddy Mussen in London's The Standard. Women who are "probably on the same side of many other political, social and economic arguments" get involved in "female infighting every day of the week", when it comes to parenting.

Every friend who "plans to be childfree forever" has "endured the crushing, needling criticism of her family, asking her every other month if she's 'changed her mind' yet", and many mothers "look at childfree women like they're unfeeling aliens".

Roan "made it incredibly clear" that she was "only speaking about the experience of people she knows in real life", wrote Stephanie Soteriou for BuzzFeed, so it is "pretty alarming" parents have "taken her quotes as an attack on them and their experiences".

Writing for MSNBC, Danielle Campoamor, said she was "too busy wiping faeces" off her "three-month-old's legs" to give "full attention" to the remarks, so why not assume "it's a given" that mothers love their children and instead "focus on the fact that no matter how loving they are", they're "still miserable".