Today, Jill touched on a battle that Amanda’s had to fight repeatedly (see Jill’s links to Pandagon for the proof):
Now, I’m not a mother. But as I understand it, having kids is no walk in the park, and parenthood is hard work — and a life-long committment. It’s probably not something that one should jump into simply because the people who love you think you should. And it’s probably not something that people should do just because it’s the “typical” life choice — children should be wanted, and parenthood should be voluntary.
And yet that simple concept seems to get people incredibly up in arms.
Jill ends her post asking why the parentonormative meddlers care at all whether anyone else has babies (especially cool radical feminist moonbat lawyers, I’m sure). Good question.
The Slate article that Jill rightly takes to task asserts that the reason some people pressure you are because “they love you the most” and thus only have your best interests at heart, implying they know something you don’t about your own happiness.
Now, I’m sure some of you have perfect parents, the kind who never once tried to make you do something to make them look good or pressured you into living the dreams they failed or tried to pretend like having babies was the only thing in life you were missing for completeness. Not everyone is so lucky. Lots of folks face parents who are constantly manipulating them for purposes of grandkiddery. Indeed, it may be the only reason they could stomach you dating/marrying that lout/floozy in the first place. They want to tote their genes around in a onesie so they feel young again. Or maybe they’re just bored. Whatever the case, parents can’t always be trusted.
And what about friends? Once the people you spend the most time with in life start producing little mommy/daddy swirlcones, oftentimes they begin to relentlessly recruit you to join in the fun.
“You won’t BELIEVE how much happier we are!”
“Sure, it’s a lot of work, but every day’s a new reward!”
“You don’t know the meaning of life till you have your own child.”
[Insert the ones you've heard before here.]
Oftentimes, your friend will be bitching about the parental experience — until you express relief that you’re not the one stuck with child. At that point they immediately revert to one of the tropes above, often with an overreactive, defensive, excessively effusive tone that suggests they’re talking more to themselves than to you.
I’ve seen this kind of behavior with friends before…
“God, I have to go to this awful wedding. Any chance you’d mind coming with? No no, actually, it should be a lot of fun, maybe an open bar (don’tholdyourbreath), and Luke and Janie might be there.”
“This party is going to suck SO BAD but I totally have to make an appearance. Be my date? Come on. Please? They could have a keg (don’tholdyourbreath) and I promise we’ll be out of there in an hour.”
“Dude. You would not believe the amount of money I’m making on these Amway products. You sure I can’t hook you up with a distribution membership? You’ll be raking it in.”
Face it. Lots of times friends just want you to share the same trials and tribulations they face so you all have them in common. That way, you guys can talk about the same things, bitch and moan about your life without anyone around you drawing attention to the fact that you brought this on yourself, and, frankly, reducing the jealousy they might feel over the freedom you have that they lost.
What about “society?” Why should random commenters assault Amanda for her choice, or Jill for contemplating the same one? Well, I have to assume it’s part of the same disease.
When you’re truly content with your life and its limitations, seeing someone disagree with a choice you made — maybe someone bitches about the town you love living in, or your choice to get married or not get married, or your choice to have kids — may cause you to offer the other side of the issue, but you tend not to get shrill about it.
If someone posted about Austin, TX sucking a nut, I’d probably tease them and move on. No one’s going to make me feel bad about living here, and I could care less about making anyone else want to come here.
Sometimes, though, when a person sees or hears someone arguing vociferously against a position or life choice s/he made that s/he’s conflicted about, that extra level of defensiveness kicks in. S/he’s already on edge, maybe internally stewing over the frustrations resulting from that choice, and even if that person doesn’t wholly regret the choice, hearing someone stand firm for the other side can make them snappish and bring out an ugly streak.
Surely you’ve seen this in a friend, maybe one in a bad relationship. You try to mention it and they bite back at you. They’re already spikey and you “judge” them simply by implying you would or have made a different choice than they have/are. It makes them jealous (that you aren’t saddled with this baggage) and defensive (that you think you’re “better than them” because you aren’t stuck with it) all at once, a bad concoction.
I hope every parent loves being a parent and treats her/his kids fairly and lovingly. I have no problem with you raising as many as you please. In fact, I respect the daunting, selfless task of parenting so much I can’t imagine taking on its myriad responsibilities myself. But if the title of my post rankled you, and you want to scream and kick and shout at me for not wanting to take on what you have, perhaps you should ask yourself why you’re so upset. It might have nothing to do with me.
It’s so true, seriously. Though that’s not always the reason. I’ve had some people cajole me about marriage and kids because they actually think that these things would get me under control, possibly even make me more conservative politically. This strikes me as one more argument against having kids.
I gotta say, as an affluent white dude, there are a lot of self-interest points for me on the political right. I was always left-of-center, but now that I have a little one whose future I worry about, I’m only moving lefterer.
Get you under control? You? What makes them think you wouldn’t just turn them into your own personal feminist army? Think about those couple of years where kids just indiscriminatly repeat whatever they’ve heard to the exact wrong person-the fun you could have!
“My mommy says your car is bigger than our car because yoy have a small peenee.”
Isn’t that worth a lifetime of obligation to your little genebag? No? Well, OK then.
Of course, the assumption is that you’d give up your dangerous urban lifestyle for the whitebread suburbs if you had kids, and then of course lonliness alone would force you to mindmeld with the locals.
I know for a fact that I would be the worst mother possible-if I had kids right now, they’d be getting hit way too often. Now say that outloud to someone if you want to see whole new levels of shocked and offended.
My feelings about having kids ever have changed in the last year or two, but only because I got involved with a guy who knows me well enough to know that in the event of children, he’s going to have to be the primary caretaker. (I know, yeah, right, don’t bet on it. Hey, I wouldn’t have gotten engaged to him if I didn’t trust him) Still, my feelings about gestation haven’t changed, and I would find the expense of an adoption well worth it to avoid such a nightmare.
Why is it considered such a horrible thing to admit to such thoughts? I say this to some people and you’d think I’d admitted that on weekends, for fun, I torture and kill kittens.
I don’t know if I totally agree that if someone gets snappy about disagreeing with you, it’s because they’re unhappy with their own situation. Sometimes it might just be they’re so freaking tired of hearing how their choice was wrong or questionable, they finally snap.
For example, I didn’t change my last name … this is apparently STILL a big fucking deal for some people. I am perfectly happy with my decision to not change my name, but after the zillionth time hearing I’m a bad wife and will likely be a bad mother for not changing it, I start to get a little touchy. As another example, I’m from New Jersey, I loved New Jersey (moved to CA though, for loooooove), and I get really flippin’ tired of people harping on what a shithole a state they’ve never been to is (I can’t imagine some Texans don’t start to at least get a LITTLE tweaked about the same thing).
So while I don’t think childless feminist writers are nearly obnoxious when discussing their decision to remain childless, but it’s possible that some of the feminist moms are tired of hearing about how much awesomer their life might be without babies. Or married feminists get tired of hearing how they’re helping uphold the Patriarchy by being married. And so on.
There’s no doubt that out and about in the world, it’s the women who choose to not get married or have babies that have to do the defending of their lifestyle, and I fully expect them to get pissed about it the zillionth time they’re tutted at for it, and to have it come out in their blog posts when there’s such a flood of crap about how they’re Denying Their Womanhood, but the side effect of this can sometimes be that the readers and commenters who ARE married or have kids feel that now THEY have to defend their choices, and I think it’s kinda understandable to get irritated about it after a while.
I guess what I’m saying is that because this shit is still a debate, people who otherwise agree in principle (that getting married or having kids is not the Main Goal of Womanhood and should be choices) are occassionally going to growl at each other because they think their own choice is being questioned AGAIN.
Your post resonated. Been with my honey for ten years. We treat each other as if we were married. We own a house together, we’re in each other’s will, on each other’s life insurance, etc. But? Not married. Not planning to get married. Occasionally we’ll call each other husband or wife in public because apparantly rural New England can’t wrap its mind around the concept like California could when we lived there.
All of our friends and family constantly try to get us married. The kids thing comes up but is shut down by both of us in unison so fast it usually goes away. Until, that is, i blog about stopping Depo Provera to try to lose weight, apparantly. THEN, oh then, the emails come pouring in. A veritable deluge of baby-making wishes, cries, curses and pleas. Back off my uterus, people!
sheesh!