Given the title’s naughty irreverence, I bet it was the brassy, London Hackney-born 42-year-old singer-songwriter turned iconoclastic author, Paloma Faith, who had the Eureka! satisfaction of landing such a memorably apt name for her first book.
“MILF”: go Google if the acronym has evaded you till now. As a descriptive subtitle, Motherhood Identity Love F*ckery nails it for this raw, genre-hopping romp through the styles of personal memoir, celebrity Confession, parenting and relationships manual, self-help, comedy, tragedy and feminist manifesto. Oh, how I wish I’d had this book to read while I was pregnant with my firstborn, 25 years ago. The confusion and self-beratement that I might have been spared...
The dark joke is that, like most new mothers, MILF is the last status Faith would have accorded herself in the first throes – make that, years – of motherhood. As her outrageously frank and visceral anecdotes attest, Faith picked greedily from the menu of potential horrors when it came to conception, pregnancy, birth and post-birth; not just for one, but for both of her two children (the daughters – hers and yours – to whom she dedicates this book).
IVF rounds; miscarriage; disillusioned dreams of “natural” birth; emergency C-sections; post-partum psychosis followed by depression; endless antibiotic-requiring infections; breastfeeding nightmares; cystitis; thrush; mastitis; agonising humiliating piles (which her non-vaginal birthing didn’t spare her from) that required surgery 12 months later; lacerating pain from sex even two years on; not to mention “poor sleeper” babies – all of it conspired to kill off Faith and her partner of 10 years’ sex life and romantic relationship (leading to separation).
It also demolished the hugely successful, award-winning star’s former identity, throwing her world into chaos, and making her bully herself incessantly about “not being a good enough mother”, despite the terrifying, all-encompassing love and concomitant anxiety that grew and grew for her children (once she’d got through the “bonding isn’t happening” stage).
(Having summarised Faith’s troubles, I’ve changed my mind about the benefits of reading MILF during a first-child pregnancy – give it as a gift soon after the baby arrives instead.)
Laced throughout MILF’s brutally honest, taboo-breaking pages are belly laughs; beautiful tenderness; and sharp polemical critique of where we are at, feminism-wise, in our part of the world.
For a self-made woman as independent as Faith, motherhood has brought with it a whole new slew of observations on how the patriarchy continues to try to gaslight women into believing that less-than-equality is equality.
I admit I was confused, however, by several instances – especially during the first half of the book – where Faith seems to blame feminism for the fact that women are stretched so dangerously thin, bringing home the bacon while still shouldering the bulk of not only the menial work involved in child rearing but also those invisible, desperately tedious and/or draining, never-ending mental and emotional loads related to CEOing children – exhausting, inner freedom-destroying burdens that most fathers Faith observes (unless they’re parenting solo for real) remain barely aware of.
My hackles rose several times at what appeared to be Faith’s malapportioned blame of feminism for the patriarchy’s ongoing unfair division of labour in its “myth of co-parenting”; until I understood that the “blame” was in fact an infelicity of phrasing, and what Faith intends to say – which she asserts several times later – is that feminism has a long way to go yet.
She is gratifyingly loud and proud in identifying as a feminist. My only other criticism of what is a powerfully liberating, highly entertaining and thought-provoking read, is this: Layman Lahcine – Faith’s former long-term partner and father of their children (she left him due to “dissatisfaction” when their kids were one and six, but they still have a strong friendship, sharing day-trips with their girls, etc) – takes the children for two overnights every week, but we only discover this in the very last pages of the book.
While MILF offers much-needed reassurance to mothers and all nurturing women that “it’s okay to be selfish”, alongside crucial perspectives for fathers who want to protect their romantic relationships, the book is also fascinating on women and ageing. And the provokingly titled chapter Are Men Redundant? introduces a subject asked increasingly by heterosexual women: is singlehood more fulfilling than long-term relationships?
Faith chooses to exit MILF with the revelation that, after decades of serial monogamy and a baptism by fire into motherhood, it may be time for her to remain single; to claim her new identity, fall in love with her new self.
