Another Great Substack

On the topic of great confessional Substacks (I’m still Team Blogging, but I let a few Substacks into my inbox to go along with my blog reading), this one on envy was also thought-provoking. It begins:

I turn thirty-five in a couple of months, and it’s absolutely true that children come to define your social landscape at this stage of life – even if you don’t have them. Not being a parent feels like an identity I acquired at some point in the past few years, increasingly cited as a justification for my lifestyle and choices being different to many of my contemporaries.

That quote, “Not being a parent feels like an identity I acquired at some point,” — except it is only women. I don’t think most men feel defined by not being a parent before (if ever) they’re a parent in the same way that women are handed this identity like we’re moving off a conveyor belt.

She unpacks the envy she feels as she sometimes listens to younger friends experience those earlier stages of life — unconnected to the parenting thing — and she reminds herself that envy doesn’t need to be negative. It can be illuminating.