Guardian series of articles on childfree women

Posted by yurble

Guardian series of articles on childfree women
July 07, 2020

Registered: 13 years ago
Posts: 12,431

The Guardian has started a series on childfree women. There are currently three articles, plus an article introducing the series.

From the introduction:

Quote
Summer
If I had a kid, it would check a box: “Oh, she’s a mom, done. We know what she is. Done for the next 25 years.”

Whenever people can put you in a box – this race, gender, this ethnicity, this sexual orientation – it makes everything less threatening to them. “Mom” is just one more of those boxes, one that is very safe. You know what they do, you know their roles, she’s safe over there in that box.

From the first article, which is about Kelly, a fencesitter. Although she seems to be falling on the breeding side of the fence (which makes me wonder why she was included in the series), she does get some good advice that she ignores:

Quote

A colleague recommends I talk to Frances Kissling, president of The Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy, former president of Catholics for Choice and an activist who has campaigned across reproductive rights, religion and women’s rights since the 1970s.

When we talk, she’s in Mexico co-teaching reproductive health ethics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has a class coming up on children and family that will explore all the questions I’m interested in: should you have children? Why should you have children? Do you need reasons? What rights do children who are going to be brought into the world have?

Kissling knew she never wanted to have children, and was sterilized at 33. At 76, it’s a choice she’s never regretted.

For her, it’s a mistake to ignore the world around us when thinking about starting a family. “Many friends and I feel a certain relief that we are not leaving behind, in this world, children to suffer with climate change, lack of water, some of the dystopian views of where the world will go in the future.”

The second article is about a woman who didn't want to be a mother because her own mother was so bad, but who had difficulty admitting it to herself:

Quote

I arrived very late to owning my lack of maternal desire. I was so anxious about the stigma associated with not wanting kids – so afraid of confronting further evidence that I was “selfish”, or garnering the pity and shame that had been foisted upon my older cousins who didn’t have them – that between the end of my first marriage at 26 and meeting my current husband at 38, I avoided even really asking myself whether I did want them.

Now and then, though, I would secretly entertain my biggest fears: If I were to make babies, might I feel trapped, as my mother seemed to? Would I perpetuate a family legacy of daughters feeling insufficiently mothered – as I had, as my mother had, and as her mother had – passing down to future generations the effects of trauma that began with my great-grandmother’s untimely death? Would I wind up burdening and traumatizing my children with my emotional needs in a parent-child role reversal, as both my parents did?

Then, ten years ago, as I was approaching 44, I underwent a hysterectomy that not only provided relief from a painful condition called adenomyosis; it also helped me come to terms with my lack of interest in motherhood. Ironically, my husband and I had been pursuing fertility treatment right up until my diagnosis. When we learned I needed an operation that would effectively obliterate the possibility of child-bearing, I was relieved. My husband was, too.

Article three is about a woman with a brain injury who can't handle the noise children make.

Quote

“I want six kids,” my sister said once while holding my brother. I remember thinking, “Maybe I want none”.

While I hadn’t wavered much in my belief that kids weren’t right for me, there was always the possibility I’d change my mind. But after being injured two years ago, it didn’t feel like a choice anymore.

She's pretty pro-breeding though: "When I visited Sanjana a few weeks after her son was born, we talked about how the government should provide services for disabled and chronically ill people to help them parent and how she was lucky to have the means to pay for support and a great partner."

So I'm still waiting for the articles on (a) someone who doesn't have children because she can't stand them, and (b) the anti-natalist. Everyone wants to disavow the ideas of not liking kids, and of thinking that other people shouldn't breed, either, because neither is seen as likeable to the general public. I want to read about a woman who is unapologetic in her writing, even if she remains anonymous. I want to read about someone who is pissed off about the legal and workplace discrimination childfree women face.