[TW for severe gender essentialism and sarcastic violent imagery]
Actually, that's not 100% true. I'm about 95% sure that I don't want to be a mother. The other 5% is telling me that I will change my mind someday, but I can never be sure that it's my actual instincts telling me this or if it's the patriarchal idea that's been drilled into my head since day one that all women MUST WANT to become mothers or else they fail as women. Almost any time I find myself in a conversation about parenthood and my lack of desire to become a parent, I am made to justify my decision. It's interesting to note that, in the same conversation, any woman who expresses a positive attitude towards, and a desire for, motherhood is not made to justify her decision.
Most misogynists and gender essentialists seem to think that nurturing a child is the ultimate thing a woman can do with her life. Forget a career, forget traveling the world, forget everything else you've ever wanted to do with your life; unless you have a child, you're nothing. And gods forbid you ever express your complete non-desire to have children. At best, you will be told that you will change your mind in the future. At worst, you will be told that you are a selfish freak of nature and that you're not a "real woman." I actually had a woman in an online Pagan forum tell me that I was sick in the head and that I deserved to die alone and unhappy because I didn't want to have children.
Is choosing not to have children selfish? Yes. And I'm not saying that choosing not to have children is selfish as a bad thing; I think it's fucking great to be able to look at your life and what you want to do with it and realize that having children is truly not something you want. For example, there are so many things that I want to do with my life where children would just not fit. I want to be a college professor and write research papers for a living, which is going to take up a HUGE chunk of my time. I also want to travel the world, go out with friends on a regular basis, take in shows, go to a week-long Pagan festival in the woods, pick up and go to the beach on an arbitrary sunny day just because, spend a weekend doing nothing but relaxing in a bubble bath and reading, etc. etc. If I were to have children, I would never be able to do any of these things. I just wouldn't have the time. And, simply put, I just don't have the patience for it. Crying children, rather than warming the cockles of my ovaries, make me want to shoot myself in the face just to end the suffering.
Although I suppose there is an altruistic aspect to choosing not to become a parent; there's that whole "not having a child you don't want and fucking up all of your lives because of it" thing.
What it boils down to is this: parenthood is a deeply personal choice, a choice that nobody but the person and/or people involved in the process of creating (or not creating) the child can make. It is not a decision that anyone has to justify to anyone else. Do I have an agenda against women who want to become mothers? Not at all. I give the utmost credit to and absolutely applaud the women who are ready and willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary in order to take on motherhood. Notice the key words there: "ready and willing." These women made a choice to become mothers, and that is what feminism is all about: CHOICE. If you want to be a stay-at-home mom, great. If you want to be a working mother, fantastic. If you don't want to be a mother at all, more power to you! You are not any less of a woman because you have chosen not to make use of your ovaries. So many people seem to think that wanting children is this inborn, biological force of nature that nobody can escape, but the fact of the matter is, ever since I was a child, whenever I envisioned my future, it never had children in it.
I feel like I don't really belong in this post, because I'm fairly conservative and am about to pop out my 4th kid. >.> I will echo the "you may change your mind" sentiment - not because I think it's a ~divine calling~ for you, but because I've seen weird things happen to my friends as they've gotten older. One who swore that she'd never have children called me up spazzing last week that she randomly got pregnant; another who swore the same thing is now a stay-at-home mom who's expecting her second. Not saying this to change your mind, just advising against surgical sterilization because you just don't know what will happen over the next ten years. ;)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I will say that having a child is awesome, and pregnancy and birth is a pretty amazing experience that no man will ever personally know. But it no longer has to be our DEFINING experience. It's just another facet we can choose to add to our lives.
You hit the nail on the head when you said that feminism is about choice. I have no problem with women deciding not to have children. That's your own business. I would put out a plea to the child-free, though - just as not having kids was your choice, having kids was my choice, and just like I'm not putting you down and calling you a selfish monster or whatever for opting out of parenthood, I'd expect you to refrain from putting ME down as a disgusting breeder. Choice runs both ways.
OK, I swear I was going to write something else clever here, but it's super late and my brain has checked out already. ANYWAY. I AGREE WITH YOU MOSTLY. THE END.
haha I'm not looking at surgical sterilization just yet, but birth control is definitely something that I am super super anal about. xD
ReplyDelete"But it no longer has to be our DEFINING experience. It's just another facet we can choose to add to our lives." <- 100% YES. That is exactly what I was going for here, but you said it much more clearly! haha
"I'd expect you to refrain from putting ME down as a disgusting breeder. Choice runs both ways." <- I agree 100%. It absolutely sickens me when I see child-free people bullying parents for choosing to become parents. And then they expect respect from the parents! Yikes. T_T I would love it if we could all just look at the issue of parenting from the perspective of individual choice and leave it be!
For someone whose brain has checked out already, you wrote an awesome response. :) Thank you for taking the time to read and respond! :D
Part one:
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this Ilyssa. As you know, I am 39, well along my career path, and do not intend on having children. When I was in my early 20s and then again in my early 30s (this corresponds to my marriages) I certainly felt pressured to have children for a number of reasons. In my 20s I felt the push from society to conceive. In response, I went to grad school and kept saying, "Women can have babies later and later." In my early 30s I felt the push from our families. I've been asking time and time again by nosey family members when I am going to have kids. The real pressure came from knowing that Ed's parents might never be grandparents (his brothers aren't rushing to get married, move out, or conceive any time soon and both are in their 40s and 30s respectively). Ed and I really felt like it was up to us ...
Until it dawned on me that I absolutely don't want children and that I can not tolerate children. Sure, I can play with other people's kids and enjoy it. People always tell me, "Mary, you're so good with kids!" BUT, that doesn't mean I want to do this all day, every day! The scary part about this is that Ed and I were trying to conceive for years and nothing happened. We didn't go as far as to do the shots or anything like that. We just timed my ovulation ... thank Goddess I'm bad at math and that my body isn't too healthy. It just won't happen and the more it didn't happen the more I realized that I didn't really want to be a Mom. It gave me a chance to ask myself the important questions: Do I really want to be a Mom? Do I want to share my life (and my space) with this little person? Do I want to dedicate time to this little person? Do I want to spend the money on this little person? Etc. When Ed and I actually talked about it I was amazed that our answers were resounding NOs. Huh. Thank Goddess for the miracle of not being about to conceive!
Part Two:
ReplyDeleteWhat I did realize in this process is that society and families put way too much emphasis on children and getting pregnant. Sure, that's wonderful if that's what you want to do and that's what your body can do. Some people are incapable of conceiving. However, the pressure is so intense that these poor women go through all of this insanity just to carry a baby, putting themselves and the baby at risk for all sorts of disorders and death. The pressure from the outside to be a "mom" is so incredible that people like me, who would never even considered kids and never wanted them at all, tried to conceive "for them." I would have changed my entire life and liberty "for them." THAT is a societal disease. It should be mandatory teaching along side of sex ed that girls have a choice and not everyone needs to be a mom, even if you do get married. If I heard that said in high school, boy! I would have ran with that. Luckily, my mom always said it was my choice ... but I know deep down she would have liked to have seen me as a mother. She knows better than to push and has embraced my child-free lifestyle.
Being child-free is a very serious choice, just like having children. Yes, you do have to take into consideration that once your immediate family dies off you are pretty much by yourself. However, there is no guarantee that you aren't going to be alone when you do have kids. How many parents never see their children or their grandchildren (as my Mom about this)? How many elderly are stuck in old age homes ALONE with no one visiting them? Children are not a instant family and one needs to be reminded that they could become adults that you don't like very much.
I've chosen this route. I've chosen not to adopt. I've chosen to finally come to grips with what I REALLY want. In doing so I am much happier -- I have a career, tons of friends, and a life I love that I share with the man I love. I am also the primary caretaker for my Mom. Some of us aren't meant to take care of children. However, some of us are meant to see that our parents age gracefully, comfortably and with dignity. I've always said, I would rather take care of an aging adult than a slobbering baby. I would rather help an elderly person live with dignity and die with dignity than make sure some kid is doing their homework. But that's my choice.
Mind my typos ... I'm only on one cup o' joe! It's too early for me to think. hehehehe ... and sorry that I had to post twice -- blogger wouldn't allow one big post. Ah well. MUAH!
ReplyDeleteHiya Mary! :D Now that I'm home and decompressing, I can give you the longer version of my response! haha
ReplyDelete"People always tell me, "Mary, you're so good with kids!" BUT, that doesn't mean I want to do this all day, every day!" <- YES. THANK YOU. I do get along with kids for the most part and kids seem to love me, but that doesn't mean I want to turn it into a 24/7/365 job for the next 18 or more years of my life! I'd rather be the cool auntie that gets to give the kids back at the end of the day!
"The pressure from the outside to be a "mom" is so incredible that people like me, who would never even considered kids and never wanted them at all, tried to conceive "for them." I would have changed my entire life and liberty "for them."" <- You've absolutely hit the nail on the head with this. This is exactly what I was referencing when I said that I could never be sure that that 5% of me that thinks I might want kids someday is actually me talking or if it's all the pressure I face from outside forces. If society and my family were to sit me down and say "It's perfectly okay if you don't want kids," I would pack all my shit and travel as far away from children as I possibly could. I think I just have to realize that pleasing my family and society at large is not a good enough reason to have children because it's only going to hurt me and whatever children I have. I have to make life decisions that I can live with.
"It should be mandatory teaching along side of sex ed that girls have a choice and not everyone needs to be a mom, even if you do get married." <- I agree with this a thousand million bajillion percent. I can't add anything more.
OK, I remember a couple more things that I couldn't get to gel into words last night. :)
ReplyDeleteThe over-emphasis of reproduction is just another side of the sexual objectification coin. You might say it's the conservative version of it - it's a sin to lust after a woman, but it's totally fine to let her know that her main purpose is to be a baby machine. You see this to a lesser extent in the LDS church and to a much greater extent in its polygamous offshoots. Just because it's not "sinful," though, doesn't mean it's not harmful - you are still reducing women to a body part instead of acknowledging the whole person, both above and below the neck. We are not walking wombs any more than we are walking pairs of boobs and we deserve to be treated as people. It might not be as institutionalized as within these organizations, but I'd say that someone making you out to be a bad person because you choose not to reproduce falls within these lines.
Tangentially related - everyone from federal laws to in-laws want to be in our business about creating a child, but once the actual kid gets here, no one cares. Day care is prohibitively expensive in a lot of cases. Jobs are, more often than not, hostile towards motherhood (particularly in academia). Most mothers work outside the home these days, but American society is still built around the stay-at-home model. Fighting for support for mothers would go a long way towards preserving our choices instead of forcing women to choose one way or another because it's the only viable option.
"The over-emphasis of reproduction is just another side of the sexual objectification coin. You might say it's the conservative version of it - it's a sin to lust after a woman, but it's totally fine to let her know that her main purpose is to be a baby machine." <- You make a really great point here. I honestly don't think I can add anything more. xD
ReplyDelete"Tangentially related - everyone from federal laws to in-laws want to be in our business about creating a child, but once the actual kid gets here, no one cares." <- 100% THIS. George Carlin said it best (and rather crudely haha) when he said "If you're preborn, you're ok, if you're pre-school, you're f***ed!"
"Fighting for support for mothers would go a long way towards preserving our choices instead of forcing women to choose one way or another because it's the only viable option." <- Once again, I really can't say much else except that I agree completely!