The Problem of Infinite Devotion

Sor Juana's renunciation of her writing was demanded as an ultimate proof of devotion to God, just as parents are culturally pressured to prove love through infinite self-erasure. The ideology of motherhood and parenthood often frames limits as betrayal, rest as negligence, and self-preservation as moral failure. Sor Juana ultimately resisted this logic, and her example offers parents permission to do the same: love does not require infinite devotion. A parent can deeply love their child and still need sleep, solitude, intellectual engagement, and boundaries. This concept reframes devotion not as an endless giving but as a sustainable commitment that honors both the child's and the parent's humanity. It examines how the demand for infinite devotion actually harms parenting by depleting the parent and modeling unhealthy relational patterns. True parental love, in Sor Juana's tradition, looks like a parent who maintains her own life, her own questions, her own becoming—and teaches her children to do the same.