Chappell Roan has sparked yet another round of discourse, and this time it’s about motherhood. During Roan’s appearance on Call Her Daddy last week, the pop star told host Alex Cooper that many of her hometown friends are parents and that they are all “in hell.” This set off several days’ worth of conversation on TikTok, where both moms and child-free women weighed in on whether motherhood is wonderful or the worst thing that can happen to a woman. Some people even managed to find a middle ground, if you can believe it.
“All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I don’t know anyone — I actually don’t know anyone — who’s, like, happy and has children at this age,” said Roan, who is 27, after Cooper asked if she wanted to start a family one day. She said the moms she knows all have kids who are under 5 years old, adding, “I literally have not met anyone who’s happy, anyone who has light in their eyes, anyone who has slept.”
Cooper then moved the discussion to whether Roan’s friends think it’s crazy that she’s famous, ending the motherhood talk there. But over on TikTok, Roan had opened the floodgates for both mothers and child-free people to react. Some moms called her a “negative person” and accused Roan of “misunderstanding hard work and hard days for ‘hell.’” Other mothers noted that the ages of the children Roan listed were particularly difficult and that the singer was talking about her friends specifically.
People without children offered their takes too. In a video that has 1.5 million views, podcast host Recho Omondi said, “The people who have made me most scared to become a mother are mothers … I’m afraid that what Chappell said is all I see.”
@tcrfff
Maren Morris — uniquely qualified for this conversation as a famous singer, single mom, and member of the LGBTQ+ community — also weighed in with a well-considered, nuanced opinion.
@marenmorris why don’t we have universal healthcare
“I don’t have any issue with what she said,” Morris explained in a TikTok video. “It’s very easy to internalize someone’s thoughts about motherhood or parenthood and take it as a personal attack because it’s really fucking hard to be a parent.” She added, “It’s also really hard to not be a parent and have that pushed on you all day every day, especially as a woman. Especially as a woman in an industry like music.”
Morris also took the opportunity to turn this into a conversation about the lack of social services for parents and children. “I think the bigger conversation should maybe be about why this country makes people feel like this at all,” she said. “Mothers are just so unsupported in this country … It doesn’t support children once they’re out of the womb. We don’t have health care, we don’t have child care.”
That’s probably something Roan could get behind, considering her Grammys speech railed against the music industry for failing to provide a living wage to developing artists. Maybe we can all meet in the middle and acknowledge that there is not enough institutional support for anyone in this country? Agreed! Glad we figured that one out.
