Some people will be like “single people” can’t have solid opinions about parenthood, and then act like Parenthood is this nihilistic journey with no answers and no solutions, just a really difficult path everyone has to do alone without guidance. There’s no way to prepare for parenthood. Everything about it is designed to humiliate you and destroy you. You will be overwhelmed. You will hate your children sometimes. The only people who try to tell you it doesn’t need to be this way are idealists who don’t have kids. Laugh at them. They will learn their lesson someday.

This is ridiculous rhetoric.

Sure, parenting is not free of its hard moments. But it is harder if you’ve never held a baby or changed a diaper. To pretend like only those physically give birth can unlock the secrets of motherhood is not only ignorant, it’s offensive to women who enter motherhood prepared. You don’t become magically smarter when you have children of your own. You aren’t incapable of loving children or of having correct views if you’re single.

We see proof of this in traditional communities. Motherhood is easier for Amish girls from large families than women fresh out of college. Because they are more exposed to babies and birth, they are not as terrified at the prospect of being a mother. They relish it and often succeed with little grumbling at higher rates. And they weren’t led to believe that they need to first pursue “self” through a career that would have to be laid aside once they had babies.

Likewise, I was raised, bred, and cookie fed to become a mother. I didn’t have to go through an identity crisis when I had my baby — instead my identity was completed by the child I had prepared to embrace all my life.

Even now, when I look for solace and advice, I don’t automatically go to married friends, but friends who I know have had a lot of experience with children — some of them are single, some of them have children.

My midwife is single, but knows more about infants than most women I know. Same with one of my best friends. This is true of nuns, many nurses, educators, etc.

To undermine the experience of single women by telling them their experiences doesn’t matter until they undergo the correct hormonal challenges not only discredits the beauty of adoption, it is also biblical —

1 Timothy 4:12: The Apostle Paul tells Timothy, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young [or inexperienced], but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity"

All women are born mothers.

Society either prepares women for this role or makes it more difficult for them, but all women have the potential to be loving, sacrificial, and nourishing before they give birth, especially if their instincts have been fostered and cultivated by those around them.

Those who tell single women to shut up, or to “just wait and see” are not doing the Lord’s work. If you feel a single woman has unsound values, invite her over to hold your baby. Encourage her to become a mother to the children in her community. Don’t try to stifle the spirit of motherhood in her by telling her that her voice has no merit. But if a woman speaks things that are actually true, don’t try to silence her because of her current station. Remember that truth is truth no matter who it comes from. Motherhood is for all women, even those who do not yet have biological children.