Nightbitch feels like it was made for me

Because all I really want is to be fully animal again

Since we have been on holiday break I have watched only two things: the movie Nightbitch and about a thousand hours of National Geographic animal documentaries. Since becoming a mother five years ago, I have been totally obsessed with learning about motherhood in hunter-gatherer societies and with mammalian motherhood more broadly. I can’t even fully explain why. Every podcast where I have ever been a guest starts out with the same question: why did you get interested in this subject? My answer to this question is usually very technical. I am interested in the concept of evolutionary mismatch and, to the extent that primatology and anthropology can provide an imperfect window into our evolutionary past, I want to understand how discrepancies between the context in which we evolved and the modern one can explain the high rates of postpartum depression (and general maternal unhappiness).

This is partially true, but as I watched Nightbitch last night, I realized it was both simpler and deeper than that: I want to know how to be a maternal animal.

Any mother who has screamed a new baby into this world knows just how primal the maternal experience is. As Adams puts it (reading author Rachel Yoder’s words), “I always thought motherhood was sort of a weak state of being, but motherhood is a far more primal, active thing than that. It is probably the most violent experience a human can have aside from death itself. Motherhood is not sunshine and baby powder or pastel mints and lacy frocks. Motherhood is fucking brutal.” She’s spot on. The passage between maidenhood and motherhood is one of extreme pain and violence - a passage that has claimed many a woman’s life. I’ve spoken about how birth was probably safer in the Paleolithic than it was through most of the industrial revolution, but there is no sugarcoating the fact that at least 1 in 150 mothers died in the process (not to mention the fact that only half of our babies would have made it to adulthood).

The thing is, nature doesn’t give a shit. I think that’s the key take-away from my 1000+ hours of animal documentaries. Evolution cares about how many copies of your genes you pass on to the next generation, and it doesn’t matter how you get there. It does not give shit about gender equity. It does not give a shit about happiness. And it certainly doesn’t give a shit about pain. And yet what Nightbitch captures so well, and what made me identify so intensely with the narrative, is that leaning into our animal nature (rather than away) might just be the only thing that can save us.

I particularly love that Amy Adams’ character transforms into a dog. Wild dogs - the kind that live on the open plains of Botswana - are super social and matriarchal. The alpha female leads the pack on every hunt. When she is pregnant, she continues to lead the hunt right up until she is about to pop, at which point she digs a den to birth her pups in. Her partner leads the pack in her absence and they bring her back pieces of meat from every kill for as long as the pups are exclusively nursing. As soon as her pups are old enough to eat solid food, she reclaims her place at the head of the pack and resumes leading hunts while the other dogs take turns babysitting. It has been suggested that wild dogs might provide a closer analogue to human social structure “in the wild” than most of the great apes, since “cooperative breeding” may well have been the secret to our evolutionary success.

In the movie, as Adams slowly transforms into a dog (first a bit of extra hair on her back, then sharper canines, and eventually a tail) she resists the transformation. She still has one foot in her art career, in her former identity, in her former friend group. But as the film progresses and she becomes increasingly wild, she begins to embrace the metamorphosis. Her and her son eat raw meat from dog bowls. She runs outside in her pajamas in the middle of the night and howls at the moon. She has wild sex with her husband and tells him to bite her on the neck. The more she accepts the transformation, the more she is free. But it’s not enough to save her, and that’s what I like best about the film.

Because it’s not enough for mothers, in the modern context, to just return to our animal selves. Yes, it helps. It helps to free us from shame, from the shackles of “expert parenting advice” that run deeply counter to our instincts, from judgy friends and social values that rank mothering at the very bottom of the career totem pole. But it’s not enough, because to make motherhood animal again, we need a social revolution. The film insists heavily on the loneliness and extreme isolation of being a stay-at-home-parent. This is something I have felt keenly. It is nearly impossible to have your social needs met as a stay-at-home mom in modern America. It is also nearly impossible for your children to have their social needs met. I have written a lot about the loss of multi-age playgroups in contemporary society and watching Amy Adams play day-in-day-out on the floor of her home or at the playground with her son throws this absence into obvious relief. It almost makes me want to create a remix, with footage flitting back and forth between the drudgery of Adams’ day and the vibrant buzz of a multi-age playgroup in the Congolese rainforest. If motherhood seems dreary and degrading in the modern context, maybe that’s because it is. The truth is, spending your day playing on the floor with your toddler means you are doing the work that would most likely have been delegated to a six-year-old in hunter-gatherer society. This is not to say that it’s a poor choice to stay home with your children. As Adams’ husband quips at one point during the film, “it’s better than leaving him at that horrible daycare.” Many mothers feel caught between the desire to exist more fully in the world - to have more adult interactions and a role beyond housework and childcare - and the equally strong tug to stay close to our babies. For most of evolutionary history, these things were not incompatible. Today they are.

In the film, the solution for Adams is simply to get her husband more involved in caring for their son so that she can make time for her artwork. The narrative structure actually reminds me a lot of the 2018 film Tully. Mom is left alone to do all of the childcare. Mom has psychotic break. Husband wakes up and realizes he needs to do more. Problem solved. I’m not opposed to this conclusion. The data unequivocally show that men do less than women in the home, even when women work full time, and men do need to step up to the plate when it comes to domestic work and childcare (as I discussed in this post), but it’s far from being a silver-bullet solution. For many couples, the sudden de-programming and open-armed acceptance of equal partnership that Adams’ husband embraces by the end of the film is just not in the cards. For others, no matter how equally the labor is shared, the total amount of work is just too much. I often talk about how hunter-gatherers were able to meet their caloric needs with only about 4 hours of work per day. That leaves the rest of the time for domestic work, childcare, and rest - and in a context where the ratio of available caregivers to children was roughly 5 to 1, there was plenty of rest to be had. So hurray for equal partnerships - let’s fight that fight - but let’s also talk about how to restructure society in a way that truly works for all parents.

Towards the end of the film, Adams’ husband asks if she regrets having had a child. She thinks for a minute before answering no, and doesn’t that really sum it up? Becoming a mother can make us miserable to the point that we wake up in the middle of the night and, hallucinating that we are a wild animal, savagely kill the house cat. And yet, we wouldn’t give it up, because we cannot possibly imagine a life without our children. They are the greatest and worst thing to ever happen to us. I don’t think motherhood can ever be 100% great, and I don’t think we should set that as our goal, but I do think it can be a whole lot more beautiful than what we see throughout the majority of Nightbitch. In order to get there, we need a social revolution, and films like this make me hopeful that perhaps one is already underway.