The Lindsay Clancy case is horrifying enough on its own. More concerning still is how the public conversation surrounding it fits into a decades-long effort on the left to degrade motherhood from a noble calling to a burden from which women must be liberated.
Clancy was charged with killing her three young children in 2023. Her defense argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible. Prosecutors argued that she knew what she was doing. After a seven-week trial, 11 jurors reportedly favored finding her not guilty by reason of insanity. One did not, resulting in a mistrial.
The legal questions are real, as are the dangers of postpartum mental illness. Neither should be minimized. Moreover, neither should a shocking tragedy become another reason to portray motherhood itself as a kind of pathology.
For years, parts of the left have talked about motherhood through the language of forfeiture: lost income, lost independence, lost professional advancement, lost freedom. Yet there is truth buried inside that critique. Motherhood does cost women something—sometimes an enormous amount. The mistake is assuming that whatever costs us must diminish us. Actual experience tells us the opposite.
Americans still instinctively understand the dignity of mothers. We see it whenever someone reaches the pinnacle of success and immediately points backward to the woman whose sacrifices helped put him there.
As a man, I’m not the person to explain motherhood to women. I’ve never carried a child or given birth. I have, however, been the beneficiary of motherhood my entire life. And there is something men probably don’t say often enough: We notice.
We notice what our mothers did for us. We notice what our wives do for our children. We notice the women quietly doing the work that makes everyone else’s achievements possible.
Deion Sanders once said it better than most of us could. When he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011, he stood on a stage representing one of the greatest athletic careers of his generation. And when the moment came to explain what drove him, he talked about his mother.
She worked multiple jobs and wore the same worn-out clothes while people mocked her. She kept working because she had a child to provide for. Sanders remembered sleeping among rats and roaches and dreaming of making enough money that his mother would never have to struggle again. “I did it for my mama,” he said.
This scene is deeply familiar to many. The extra shift because the electric bill was due. Dinner made while exhausted. A paycheck stretched. School drop-offs, practices, and doctors’ appointments. Sitting in the bleachers. Staying awake until a teenager arrives home. Remembering what everyone needs, worrying quietly, and getting up at the crack of dawn the next day and doing it again.
I know because I watched my own mother do it. For years, I was raised by a single mom before she met my wonderful stepdad. She didn’t have a college degree and worked different jobs to provide for me and my siblings. There were rough times, but we always had dinner and school clothes. We learned hard work because we watched her work hard.
Now I watch my wife do it for our eight children. She was valedictorian and planned to attend medical school and become a doctor like her father. Instead, after our first child was born, she chose to stay home. Her pregnancies have brought blood pressure problems, migraines, and kidney stones. That is the extraordinary grind that never appears on a résumé.
Our culture has become fluent at talking about what motherhood costs women. We are considerably less comfortable talking about what those sacrifices build. We increasingly measure a good life by autonomy, professional achievement, and freedom from obligation. Motherhood stubbornly insists on the older idea that meaning is found in duty, family and sacrifice.
We have confused sacrifice with indignity. Something costing you does not mean it is weakening or reducing you. Motherhood begins with the radical proposition that another person can be worth putting before yourself.
At the biggest moment of his career, with the spotlight fixed on him, Deion Sanders rightfully redirected it. Children may be the ones whose names appear on diplomas, trophies, business cards, books, and jerseys. But look more closely, and there’s almost always an invisible signature underneath.
To the mothers, we noticed, and we love you dearly for it all.
Shawn Carney is the president and CEO of 40 Days for Life, the world’s largest pro-life organization. Follow him on X: @CarneyShawn
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
