Spoilers for Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason.
There are a lot of blog posts that I’ve been wanting to write, but the one I’ve been fixating on for months now is this one: how the world sees women who don’t have or want children. It is a pillar of patriarchy since time immemorial, this pigeonholing of women. And we are treated accordingly depending on how we react to it. If we have children, we’re rewarded for it. But if we say we don’t want children, oh heavens save us, we are looked down upon. Society (even people we know) makes sure to tell us that we are the embodiment of the devil himself. Just go watch the pro-lifers and you’ll see what I’m saying.
Women who don’t want children are seen as unnatural, as being out of our minds, because ‘motherhood is such a beautiful thing, why don’t you try?’ Look, I never said motherhood isn’t beautiful! I just don’t want it shoved down my throat, is all I’m saying. But this never goes down well because more often than not, I’m branded as disrespectful and irrational when I say this. Even the fact that the world is going to shite, that it is so visibly burning around us, isn’t enough for people to understand me.
Put all other arguments aside. They say it is our duty to have children. Fine. But is it not also our duty to think of the best for our children? Do you think the world as it is in this moment is the best it ever was? Oh hell no. I am old enough to remember how life was before technology. I am old enough to remember air the way it was without all this pollution clogging our nostrils every time we step outside. I am old enough to remember the price of chocolate candies way back when. I am old enough to see the difference between housing costs back then and now, and it is pennies when compared to today’s tens of dollars. And yet, we’re supposed to give birth because apparently ‘everything will work out.’ My question is: HOW?
Then again, one question doesn’t sum up all the chaos inside me. It is an amalgamation, a swirling pit that rises up and consumes me. For example: What kind of a world are we leaving for our children? Is it fair for us to see the world burning around us and then expect the next generation to clean it up? To top it off, the question, ‘Who will take care of you in your old age?’ is an evergreen classic in their bouquet. First of all, that’s a selfish reason to bring a child into the world. Second of all, on top of all the work that we’re piling on the shoulders of the next generation, are we really going to expect them to take care of us as well? Where is the concern, the consideration for them?
Anyway, to get to this year’s trigger that set off all these thoughts, we’ll have to travel back in time to last year when I wrote a long blog post called I’m Exhausted… in which I narrated everything that was weighing down upon me post my life slump. I talked about how during a time in my life, I had people come to me saying things like, ‘Have a child and all your problems will disappear,’ as if they had no idea about what it takes to raise a child, as if being childless was my biggest problem at that moment. What’s worse is the fact that they said these things with utter sincerity because they truly believed them, while showing no concern for my chronic pain (rheumatoid arthritis).
I read Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss earlier this year and though a large portion of the book was either fabulous or an okay read at worst, the end had my head and blood boiling with rage and betrayal. You see, the book is about a woman who spends a majority of the book convincing us that she doesn’t want to have children. She takes us through her life and how she sees the world through this lens. But it turns out that she has wanted children all along and that is revealed only towards the end, as if wanting children is the only thing that will ‘redeem’ the story for her.
Don’t get me wrong, I have full sympathy for people who really want children but are childless. I believe that everyone should have what they want. But that sympathy ends when having children is seen as the only way to be. Someone says, ‘I want children and I want that for you too,’ and it translates to, ‘I want children and I don’t care what you want but I wish that you will have them too.’ It is utterly backhanded and disrespectful, because by saying this, they don’t see me as someone with agency over my own desires. They play right into the stereotypical roles that patriarchy has written out, irrespective of gender.
I even used to get mildly annoyed when people said, ‘Being a mother is the best thing I have ever been,’ or ‘being a father is my greatest achievement.’ But I am truly happy for them. I just wish and hope they stop being salespeople for that cause. Because if they start hawking that cause with those words, they perpetrate the notion that becoming a parent is what you should aim for over all else. That if you’re not a parent, then you fall well below that arbitrary social bar and will automatically become a walking target for any and all social shaming.
Oh, and how they shame!
“You’re already in your thirties and you’re still childless. When will you have children? Time is running out because, you know, biological clock. Did I ask you when you’ll have children? What do you mean, ‘no’?! Are you insane? Are you going to deprive us of a baby? That’s not natural. What you’re saying is wrong. No, you don’t understand. Don’t be so stubborn! Oh, you think you’ll be the first to have a baby? But have one and see, all your problems will disappear! Pain? What pain? Arthritis will always be there. Why don’t you just try?”
It’s as if I’d be giving birth to a magic eraser that will start erasing every one of my problems with its first cry. They speak as if they don’t know the size of the responsibility that comes with having a child. Sometimes it feels like time and space have blinded them to the pain, the sleep deprivation, the headaches, the postpartum blues, and the body aches to the point where they now glorify it all. And at all times, it feels like they’re blinded to the present, living instead in the future where they get what they want, other pained lives be damned.
These are the very people who demand understanding from the world when they are out in public with their kids. I do understand them and I do give them leeway. What I don’t understand is how they can go around saying, “I don’t understand why you don’t want kids,” or “I don’t understand why you don’t have kids.” If they expect people to understand them when they have kids, then they should at least try to understand people who don’t. It’s not that difficult. But I guess society and its claws are in so deep that even this simple give-and-take relationship is turned into a screaming match with one side having a holier-than-thou attitude that can fell lives by considering childless people as worthless and any time they spend on anything other than making babies as ‘frittered away.’
The other thing that gets to me every time is that society has no qualms in doing the social shaming and blowing their heads off when they hear that people don’t want to have kids. But apparently it’s not overreaction until someone who doesn’t want kids talks back. Then it’s all, “Oh wow, you really hate children, don’t you? You wouldn’t be saying you don’t want them if you didn’t hate them! You’re a demon, my goodness!” First of all, Janus, simmer down, alright? Second of all, look in the mirror and tell me what you see. No, it’s not just your reflection, babe, it’s also the face of irony and hypocrisy.
Things are a lot better now, with people at least trying to understand without dismissing the thought outright. But there was a time when society was built on these ideals: study, job, get married, serve husband, have children, die. If that’s what people want to do, fine. But don’t push it on everyone else. Don’t behave like humanity is so one-dimensional, all it can aspire to is this one direction that someone laid down millennia ago. ‘Humanity’ isn’t just a word; it’s the action of being a human, of being humane. And ‘childless’ is not a synonym for ‘inhuman’. It won’t hurt you to have some compassion, to see that ‘my way or the highway’ doesn’t always elicit a smile; most times, it is nothing but arrogance.
I don’t claim to be perfect. I have made mistakes in my life and will make more. Hell, I’m probably making a mistake right now. But I will always stick by my opinion about procreation. The only procreating I will always stand by is the Procreate app on my iPad. Hah.
Be kind, people. Just be kind. It doesn’t take much.
The Melodramatic Bookworm 