Amanda Palmer has written a fascinating insight into the stresses and worries of impending motherhood and becoming a working mum titled No, I Am Not Crowdfunding This Baby (an open letter to a worried fan).

In her essay, she describes how she’s built a new wave of funding for her artistic projects using the Patreon platform which enables long-term fans of artists to commit to funding or to donate a chosen amount of money to the artist monthly whilst they generate a new project or piece of work. It’s billed as ‘old-style patronage for the millennial age’ (Yes. we cringed at those buzzwords too).

But then she found out she was pregnant. When i say found out… it would appear to be intentional from the contents of the article, but still, she found out she was pregnant, that she was about to become a working mum and an artist and Amanda announced it to her followers.

Weirdly in this modern world where dissenting voices get equal or greater weighting than the sane majority – she received a massive push-back of sorts. Her fans were concerned that their patronage of her artistic projects was now going to be funding her maternity leave, and they were concerned that motherhood would somehow weaken or disturb the artist that they had come to know, love, and support financially.

It was as if their patronage had given them some sense of ownership over Amanda’s work, over Amanda herself, and as if these random supporters now felt they had some ownership and a say over Amanda’s body.

Amanda then goes through her thought process, her worries and concerns about pregnancy, motherhood and her future self. It’s well worth a read here: No, I Am Not Crowdfunding This Baby (an open letter to a worried fan).