"Do You Have Any Fucking Clue How Trapped I Feel?"

"Nightbitch" explores the monotony and rage of modern motherhood — and suggests a way out.

When my son was born 13 years ago, I thought I might like to be a stay-at-home mom. At the time, my husband and I both had successful journalism careers — he was an editor at a major science publication, and I was a freelancer for major science publications. I loved my job, but I thought I might like motherhood even more. It seemed to make sense for me to be the one to stay home, too, since I had the “flexible” job and could more easily “quit.”

From the getgo, though, I hated staying home with my son. I loved him; I didn’t love doing nothing but care for him. It was a constant merry-go-round of unpleasant feelings. I would show up to bookstore singalongs and my son would cry the entire time and I would feel like a failure, surrounded by moms with cooing babies who seemed so much more graceful and adept. I felt constantly bored, too, as well as angry and guilty. I missed working, and I resented that my husband got to go off into the world every day and engage with adults about interesting things while I read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom over and over and over again. Yet at the same time, I felt terrible that I wasn’t enjoying being a mother as much as I thought I would. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, I realized I would be much happier going back to work, and I was fortunate enough to be able to put my son in daycare in order to do it (I know many parents do not have that privilege!). Now that my kids are older, I don’t often think about these early days and how hard they were. But the memories came flooding back a few days ago when I watched Nightbitch, a movie directed by Marielle Heller that stars Amy Adams as a nameless artist who gives up her career to become a stay-at-home mom. Based on the novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder, it’s a powerful story that, to me, beautifully and painfully portrays the monotony, frustration and rage of early motherhood — and then tells the story of how a mother came to recognize her misery, speak out, and demand change.

Anne Marie Fox, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

In one scene I love, the mother walks into a library with her toddler son, only to discover she’s arrived just in time for the weekly children’s story hour. She immediately deflates: It’s clear that she hates these story hours. At the end of the hour, the man leading the singalong (expertly portrayed by the ponytailed composer Nate Heller) asks the kids their names as part of an annoying goodbye song, and when it is her son’s turn to say his name, he instead yells “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” because of course he does. The mother is mortified. Oh my god, did the humiliation of early motherhood ever come back when I watched this scene. I was always so self-conscious around other moms. Although I was surrounded in these moments by other women in the exact same situation as me, I always felt completely alone and ashamed of my inadequacy. (It probably didn’t help that I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, at the time, where motherhood was such an ordeal and performance.)

Amy Adams’s husband in the movie is a perfectly cast Scoot McNairy, who is also never given a name, and he’s a kind of typical clueless not-hugely-involved father — he’s not especially villainous, but over time we dislike him more and more as we observe the insidious patterns of their household dynamic. I actually really appreciate that he’s not portrayed from the beginning as a one-dimensional “bad guy,” because it makes the movie so much more real and relatable.¹ In one scene, he’s giving his son a bath but keeps asking his wife to get him things, and eventually she storms in and says, “when you’re gone, I do this by myself every day.” He is also blissfully unaware of what her life entails and how hard it is. “I would kill to stay home with him every day,” he says to her at one point, to which she responds, “you think that you would, but I assure you, you would not.”

Although a lot of the movie is dark and depressing, I found it totally riveting. And it does have a happy — albeit unrealistic, and, if I’m honest, somewhat disappointing — ending (though I won’t give away what happens at the very end). Slowly, throughout the movie, the mom begins to transform (or think she transforms?) into a wild animal. Then, every night, she escapes her home and runs free. Her feralness gives her not only a nightly escape but also a sense of clarity and courage, and she starts recognizing what she wants and speaking her mind.

Eventually, one night, she lets her husband have it. She tells him how angry she is that he was so quick to support her decision to give up her art career. “It’s a sweet deal for you,” she said. “You have your job and I have mine, only my job has no pay and no vacation days and no appreciation and includes washing your fucking underwear.” Her husband shoots back that what she’s saying feels like a trap, and she screams: “Do you have any fucking clue how trapped I feel? I have found myself in a fucking 1950s marriage where all I do is take care of our son and you and the fucking cat.”

Although the conceit of the movie may sound ridiculous — stay-at-home mom turns into wild dog? — it works. Amy Adams’s character, who has been socialized her whole life to sacrifice her needs and desires for others, can only see her situation for what it is once she has shed suffocating social norms. She is released from her domestic prison only after she embodies an animal that is ruled by instinct and desire, not enculturation. One of the characters in the movie — the sage librarian Norma — says to her at one point that “motherhood changes you; it connects you to some primal urges.” This may be true, but motherhood is also a cultural institution with rules and roles that women are expected to follow, and these often require women to quash their needs and desires in the process. Yet somehow, our protagonist finds and connects with her primal self, and it eventually sets her free.

I don’t mean to suggest, by the way, that all stay-at-home moms are unhappy or treated poorly by their partners — of course not. I also don’t mean to imply that working parents are somehow protected from any of these frustrating experiences. But I do think that there are a lot of parents — especially moms — like the protagonist in Nightbitch who yearn for more, but aren’t quite sure exactly what they want or how to get it. As Rachel Yoder, the author of Nightbitch, put it in an interview: “How do we escape that story? How do we write another story? It seems almost impossible.”

I’ve had a few surprising self-discoveries over the past year that have led to momentous life changes. I thought I was happy, I thought I was fine — and then I realized I wasn’t, and I was, thankfully, able to do something about it. Still, I find it hard to unlearn certain ways of being and doing. We’re all creatures of habit, and of socialization, and it’s difficult to free ourselves — but I think we should all try to tune into our instincts, feelings, and wild nature a little bit more. Nightbitch is a poignant reminder that the world often tells us to make certain kinds of choices and be certain kinds of people, and we may think we’re fine as we’re following the script — until, suddenly, we aren’t. And when we face those realizations, it’s an opportunity to reflect on what we want and, hopefully, start making different choices.

Did you see Nightbitch? What did you think of it? Share your thoughts in the comments!

1. One thing I did NOT find relatable was that Amy Adams’s character never once loses her temper with her kid. Not. Possible.