Personally, no one — not school, university, pop culture, or even my own mother — ever taught me that motherhood might become the most meaningful part of my life. Like many women, I had to discover that myself. Historically, that is a remarkable shift: for most of human history, motherhood and childbearing were understood as central to family and societal continuity. In much of the modern West, by contrast, motherhood is often treated as secondary to other forms of achievement and self-development.