Kerry O'Connor

writer on motherhood

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

@valerie_reads I find this a really reflective piece. I’ve seen many man hating posts, instead of considering what both individuals could have done differently. Motherhood / parenthood is a learning curve for us all and requires us to second guess what we thought we knew and challenge it.

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

Perhaps the question isn’t simply whether we can afford to have children.

It’s whether the society we’ve built genuinely makes room for them.

A few thoughts from my latest piece, Mother, Dear. https://t.co/1edkqSiTej

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

We’ve pushed age, we’ve pushed careers, and now we’re pushing finances.

We’re increasingly talking about motherhood as a financial risk in the UK. But I think there’s a much bigger conversation we’re missing.

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

Individual adaptation shouldn’t become an excuse for collective inaction.

Having children requires change. But families shouldn’t have to compensate individually for every failure of public policy and workplace culture.

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

@America_1777 @grok where is this in the uk?

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

@RyanBtheSheezy @the_christnats Explain how?

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

@RyanBtheSheezy @the_christnats I think you’ll find they use us all.
The fact you are verbally attacking a gender shows that. There’s not a lot of meaning to your first point, other than to slander. Distracting you from the bigger issues at play.

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

@RyanBtheSheezy @the_christnats Lol when the people in power, allowing illegal immigration are mostly men… but ok women shouldn’t vote..

This is not about gender, it’s a bigger political issue around power, control and money.

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

We talk a lot about what motherhood takes from women.

But what if, in protecting women from the romanticised version, we’ve forgotten to talk about what it gives?

I knew the sacrifices.

I had no idea how much joy was coming.

New on Substack ↓
https://t.co/rCgvOX2YSE

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

The Mother Machine, a fully optimised brain and being driving the force of life. But is this really a natural part of the biological shift of a mother’s brain? Or is motherhood the calm we miss in 2026?
https://t.co/JMYUMXi5c4

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

Perhaps the question is not why motherhood is absent, but why the world struggles to look at it directly. Id love to hear your thoughts?

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

In my new post on motherhood, We Have Become Difficult to See, explores how motherhood is missing and represented. https://t.co/LT1MBF7iWY

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

Modern womanhood speaks of independence, autonomy, self-definition. And rightly so. But where does the mother sit within this? She is not easily packaged. She does not move cleanly through the world. She is interrupted, divided, stretched between roles that demand her entirely.

[Freya India @freyaindiaa]

Advance copies of my first book have arrived! Very surreal moment.

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

‘A culture that measures worth in productivity cannot tolerate a mother’s slow, hidden labor. Postpartum care is rationed, maternity leave is meagre or non-existent, and healing is privatised, left to the mother’s own time..’ https://t.co/vQ8wh8HaNs

[Kerry O'Connor @kerry0_]

Mother, Dear is my new blog on substack where the personal and political meet. A conversation about care, value, and the hidden work of mothers. An invitation to listen more closely to what motherhood really asks of us—and what it gives in return. https://t.co/btxwikeDZd