She loves the phrase solo mum by choice but the implication of ‘by choice’ don’t seem to click for her. Oryn is a choice she bent over backwards to be inseminated with. Caring for him is not unjust labour that requires feminist discourse
I’ve said before I think the notion of ‘motherhood as labour’ is a valuable one, but it comes from the context of heterosexual parental dynamics and mainly impacts to middle and working class women who have to sacrifice paid labour to raise their families. Bryony doesn’t even scrape the edges of that social context but is cosplaying like she’s the centre of it.
Buying into this rhetoric is so effed because it allows her to think of interacting, playing and bonding with Oryn as ‘work’ that she doesn’t want or need to be doing.
This may sound strange but thinking about her life holistically - she has never been in love or had a deep, meaningful friendship. She has never invested any love or care into a
non-transactional relationship. Her experience of caregiving has only been paid foster care. I’m wondering if this ‘motherhood = labour’ rhetoric appeals to her because she fundamentally thinks caring for somebody is transactional, even her own baby. She doesn’t know what it is to love and invest energy in another person without compensation. I don’t think it’s something she even wants - her complete lack of interest in other people is the main reason I was open to the idea of her as slightly sociopathic tbh.