A Guide to Making Art as a Parent
How does a parent maintain a creative hobby? This was the question posed in a recent Care and Feeding column at Slate by an artist and first-time mother. She sketched the arc of her creative life: before motherhood, she supported herself through commissions and sales of her art; now, she was the mostly-solo parent of a toddler, with a husband “who works on remote sites for months at a time,” living in a northern climate that keeps her indoors and isolated with her child until late spring each year. She described trying to sit down at the end of the day to create, but finding her brain “mush,” what with the unrelenting demands of cleaning, meal prep, and other housework lapping at her conscience and executive function. “Even just being able to work on a project in stolen moments would be a relief,” she wrote, “but I give everything I have to keeping our life together and it’s still not enough.”
The response from Care and Feeding guest columnist Doyin Richards, framed as “tough love,” scolded, “All I’m hearing is a bunch of excuses.” Richards proceeded to rattle off a litany of suggestions (Have you tried sleeping less? Not doing housework? Hiring a nanny, or having a friend or family member babysit?). “Any successful person with young children… will share similar stories of the sacrifices they made to make it to where they are now,” he said. “If they can do it, why can’t you?”
“It truly comes down to how badly you want it,” he concluded. As if the burdens and resources of childcare are evenly distributed in our country, as if the artist-mother had simply dismissed the possibility of hiring a nanny due to a lack of desire. This is a familiar, Calvinist idea about who succeeds in making art, and a wrong one, based on a deep misunderstanding—common among not only the general public but also artists and many of those who teach them—about what it takes to sustain an artistic career through a lifetime that includes caregiving. It’s the artistic corollary to the myth of the American dream: that those who succeed in artistic careers are those who wanted, and thus deserved, it most.
But who writes to an advice column at their wit’s end because they have lukewarm desire? Wanting is not the issue here; the issue is resources—material, certainly, but also educational. The artist-mother had asked: “How does a parent maintain a creative hobby?” “How” is a question we ask when we want to learn something. What she wanted was to learn how to establish and maintain a creative practice in motherhood. That Richards did not know how to teach her this does not mean that it’s unteachable; it means he wasn’t equipped to do this kind of teaching.
Richards is far from alone in his lack of understanding of how mothers can be taught to make, and persist in making, art. In the U.S., both art-making and motherhood are largely viewed as solo endeavors, with success in either viewed as a confluence of talent and determination. The most prestigious writing program in the country reinforces this view, declaring on their program philosophy website, “We continue to look for the most promising talent in the country in our conviction that writing cannot be taught but that writers can be encouraged”—a bold claim for a program offering a graduate degree.
This belief in the primacy of talent in an artist’s success is predicated on a narrow understanding of what it means—and what is required—to support an artist’s growth. Contrast Iowa’s statement with ’s take on the role of talent in an artist’s development. Asked by the if he could “discern talent in someone,” he answered: “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love,
