Abstract
Through personal narrative, the author shows the experience of new motherhood by juxtaposing a social science relationship researcher role with middle-class cultural expectations of mothers. Autoethnographic scenes of the exhaustion of juggling expanding roles and cultural advice about what being a good mommy means with anxiety about being a bad mother help the author question (spank) entrenched mommy myths. The author uses poetic inquiry and personal narrative as forms to acknowledge, examine, and potentially alter the complex reality that although a mom might like and love her child, she might be anxious and abhor the prescribed role of being mommy.
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