Today's "hyperfix bit I'm chewing on in my brain" is the framing of motherhood among the chosen girls in TPN as despair manifest, as a moment of resignation to the system that dictates you can either give birth to be useful or just die.
(Full TPN Spoilers Below.)
Isabella, of course, is a parallel to Emma. Someone who held the same fierce opposition to her place within a system made to victimize her and her family. Ultimately though, given what seemed like a choice to guarantee safety at the 'top' of the ladder, she took it. So tired of resisting was she.
But the Mothers are a means to an end. They are precious cultivators of cattle but nothing more. They're consistently made from the start to view each other as competition to push down, to never bond over their mutual victimhood because rocking the boat will ensure their demise.
The position of motherhood, then, is something of a bargaining chip. To be a mother is to be safe, guaranteed a place out of the way. All you have to do is raise children, right? (Raise them to be obedient food.) Accept this and you'll always have a place (unless you're outspoken.)
It is Emma's wholesale rejection, both of enabling this system to exist, as well as the skepticism of her fellow children (whether as hindrances OR competition) that allows her to view them not as burdens, but as allies. Shouldering the pain to tear down what causes it.
I think it's interesting then, and pertinent to the overall message, that while motherhood is spoken of so much, fatherhood is notably absent narratively until it's brought up by Peter. An arbitrary claim summed up only as "creation", the enabling thereof. An ownership over the children.
And Peter (beyond obviously being a reference to Pan, to endless childhood) is a character so centrally weighed down by this dichotomy of fatherhood, of "making the tough choices for the family", of being a "provider and protector". But he shackles himself with it, and everyone else.
But as is correctly pointed out by Oliver, Peter couldn't be further from real family. Even some reductive view of the domino effects couldn't possibly make him 'family' to the children in any real sense, his words mean nothing. They're hollow.
I think it's fitting then that where TPN lands with family is ultimately with the destruction of its traditional structure. The death of the Father, the defecting from the system of the Mother, and a village to raise itself. A sprawling community of mutual care where no one holds power over another.
Only in rejecting the comfortable illusions we're fed, about what places we should take, and which ones will only cause us pain can we build a world not contingent on it. It's so much more possible than people would like you to think.
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