"Nightbitch" is not the mother of the year, but she's got a point

Imagine a family where the mother of a two-year-old has put her artistic ambitions on hold to start a family and then, because her husband makes more money than she does, finds herself ensconced in the role of primary caregiver until further notice.

It’s not hard. It happens all the time. As sociologist Jessica Calarco said in an interview with Anne Helen Petersen, “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Women in the U.S. have long done a disproportionate share of the unpaid service work in institutions and at home.”

In Rachel Yoder’s novel on what happens when the mounting pressure on mothers to take care of their kids, keep up with their friends, and pursue personal goals in the nonexistent time left over, we meet Nightbitch: a young mom who might be turning into a “raving, roaming bitch who want[s] to kill animals with its mouth.” Sure, there’s metaphor there, but fair warning that a few bunnies in the neighborhood go missing, too.

Nightbitch is a strange ride whose satirical flirtation with the supernatural might turn some off as the mother in question finds her hair thicken and canines sharpen, but for anyone who’s felt the desire to let loose a howl at the frustration of gender and power dynamics, you might find yourself rooting for her.

For when a pandemic-induced female recession  is dovetailing with the supreme court’s shrug at Texas’s six week abortion ban, there are no more moral victories to be celebrated with RBG’s silhouette on a coffee cup. 

Women will die, and children will suffer, and it is wholly unsurprising that mothers will scratch and claw for themselves and their families the way that Nightbitch does:

At times she terrified herself, wondering if she was a god, if being a mother was one way of being a god…How were mothers even a thing? How had they not been outlawed? They were divine, beyond horrifying.