 As Susman notes, rather than an unproblematic dyad of mother and child, the woman finds in pregnancy and birth “the Other, the Alien, Life” (1912: 109). Rather than pure bliss, motherhood is a difficult and conflicted experience: the woman finds her life entangled with another being’s life, but, once she gives birth, this life is no longer hers but one she has to allow to be its own (1912: 110). Susman argues a resolute departure from a Christian-inflected discourse on birthing, motherhood, and family. Her move to demythologize motherhood and expose the strange and challenging experiences that come with it discards the theologically committed register of sacredness and transcendence, replacing it with a metaphysics of life that is pointedly immanent. Her disenchanted approach to motherhood, which operates as a critique of traditional notions of gender roles, resonates with Derrida’s exposure of the assumed wholesomeness and sanctity of the mother-child relation as profoundly problematic (Derrida, Circumfessions).