Input request - feedback about a pro-natalist 'career coach'

Dear fellow antinatalists and/or childfree people!

This forum has helped me a lot in the past, with lots of great and encouraging input - now, if you like, I'd love to ask you for advice in formulating feedback mail to a 'leadership-management-career' coach. I would be very happy to hear suggestions, on how to approach the situation delicately and productively, without going on a rant. Which is what's gonna happen now..

I work at university, and the employees were invited to join this coaching lecture. So far so good.
Just a bunch of common knowledge, and basic-psychology hoo-hah jumbled together.

But then something happened that was really upsetting to me as a CF/AN person.
The coach was some boomer lady (! internalized misogyny, much!) with excessively painted-on eyebrows and very dyed, very fake-blond hair, you know the kind...it may be superficial to connect agenda and looks, but in that case it was rather accurate.

She soon started babbling about having 'coached' a 35-something year-old woman, who was 'too keen' on her career.
This 'coach' then started to spew on stuff that was really concerning. She proudly told that woman to cut down on the career ambitions, after all she 'Didn't have a kid yet', and would 'ruin her life' by not 'having' them, after all, she would 'also be too old to adopt'.
No word of tuning it down to prevent burn-out or other health problems for the woman - nooope, all about non-existent kids.

She emphasized heavily on 'having' and 'suddenly needing to have' kids, this selfish stuff, and acting as if the kid is basically an accessory, possession, or checklist point on the life script.
No word or question, if the woman did even want them in the first place, since one would assume, that a 35+ year old person would know what they want from life in that aspect.

I mean, what the actual fuck! A career coach lady, wanting other women barefoot and pregnant?
It should slowly be clear, that not every AFAB person wants kids, or would be happy about them and make them happy too.
And still, this heteronormative conservative breeder-ganda bogus gets pushed. In academia! Where people are supposed to be rather clear on environmental destruction, overpopulation, (e.g. immigration-based) racism, sexism, political disasters, and other awful things that make this world not exactly 'a nice place to be for additional sentient beings'.

Its so damn infuriating to me, cause a coach or psychologist, basically a person many people may trust, may likely have leverage on less determined people or CF-leaning fence-sitters. This talk, if convincing enough for these people, may lead to them deciding to breed more carelessly, as pro-natalism is presented as 'normal' or even desirable, and being CF is not even talked about as an equally valid option.

Then, multiple lives may really be ruined, since kids sure as hell notice, if they are regretted.
Not even going to talk about the social stigma that parental regret puts on people, forcing them to bottle it up and, maybe even only subconsciously, traumatizing the kids with that inner resentment.

Now, I don't like confrontation and I may not even change much with this stuck-up boomer. But I feel trying to write a personal feedback is at least my responsibility as an antinatalist. Pointing out, that this is a dangerous, toxic and damaging message towards potentially undecided or openly CF AFAB people (disrespectful bingo for them, basically), and that CF should be presented as an equal choice. After all, if nobody says anything, nothing would ever change.

What are your thoughts? How would you approach that?

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bastet-the-bass-cat

What are your thoughts? How would you approach that?

This will become much more common in the Fascist Republican Pro-Life USA.

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

I think you MUST write a letter or memo of objection! This is terrible. I'm sure, like most of us, you can edit and re-edit any written statement before presenting it. So, you can state things forcefully but logically, and as diplomatically as they deserve! Please do speak up.What a disgusting message.

Definitely go for it!! Like you said, if nobody says anything, nothing will ever change. As for how to approach it? Don't bite your tongue regarding any aspect of this.

I'd say if you're a career coach who is coaching someone to not have a career for any reason, then you shouldn't be a career coach. Like isn't that entirely counter-productive? Would she tell a man in his thirties to pursue reproduction instead of a career? That's like telling a depressed person not to seek treatment or medication and to "just be happy."

If you want to be professional about it, I'd bring up concerns that this so-called career coach is incompetent and sexist if her only career advice to a woman is to hunker down and have babies instead of a career because SHE felt the woman was at an age where she had to have children. It is not her job or her place to tell people what to do or not to do with their reproductive organs, and I might say she is trying to give advice in areas in which she is not qualified to advise, unless she also happens to be an OB/GYN or family/couples counselor.

Advising a woman to have kids instead of a job is contradictory to her job title, it's not helpful for her to suggest that because it's not career advice, and you could probably throw something in there about it being insensitive for good measure because she might pull the "bawww u need babbies" crap with an infertile woman or a woman with multiple failed pregnancies. Not that you care or anyone here cares about someone's failed breeding attempts, but in case the person to whom the complaint is sent is a breeder pleaser, it could pique their interest.

If I went to a career counselor or job coach or employment center and was told to go home and crap out babies instead of getting actual advice on my professional future, I'd be pissed right off. This woman is giving horrible, useless and discriminatory advice. If she truly is a boomer age-wise, I wonder when was the last time she herself had a real job? Is she even current on job trends and what employers are looking for? Because it sounds to me like her ass is still in the 1950s and such outdated "expertise" has no place in a modern world.

What Cambiom said, and I’d focus on:

1. Scope: the woman is there to give career advice, not personal advice.

2. In the story of the woman who didn’t have kids, it is not even clear if she wanted them. It’s a very good point whether she would give the same advice to a man.

3. Know your audience. Not everyone wants kids and she needs to remember that.

You get what this "career coach" is doing, don't you? To her the proper "career" for younger women is to be a moo. In her mind there's no contradiction. Moo is a career, she believes.

Cambion hit on my major points. This woman is in the wrong biz and sounds like an anti-career coach. If she was hired by the university, I would contact them with a complaint post-haste.

I agree with the posts here but depending on the environment you might want to limit it to facts only as some environments are ridiculously pro-natalist. With these arguments no one can attack/accuse you for lack of objectivity:

1. Stick to career advice only as a career coach
2. Personal advice is to be avoided under all circumstances as this would fall under the domain of a mental health professional

Personally, I'm infuriated to hear such bad advice given to a woman who is 35. It is incredibly insulting for a 35-year-old woman to be treated as if she is a minor incapable of making personal decisions on her own.

I do hope you raised the issue with whoever hired her, or HR. This seems wildly inappropriate to me for someone who was hired to help employees in their career goals. There's more than a whiff of sexism about it, and it deviates from the purpose for which she was hired. Is this really a position that the university wants to endorse? I'd make it clear that if they don't react to this, they are essentially condoning it, and what kind of a message does that send to female employees, or to anyone who thinks their personal life is their own business?

Thank you ever so much for your advice, everyone! Your words are most helpful and I fully agree.

Unfortunately, that "coach" was a freelancer, so she doesn't have any HR to complain to, but I did send her a personal mail, being as friendly and neutral as possible, pointing out all the things you folks said, on diversity, knowing your audience, sexist remarks, insensitivity and pro-natalist discrimination of CF people.

And darn, Cambion, the thing you said about the Failed Breeding Attempts is so darn right.. I'm really thankful for this place, where shovels are called shovels. It makes me really depressed, how twisted society is - one is kinda forced to mourn IVF 'losses' and said failed attempts, although its really just a lucky not-yet-sentient being escaping the getting-forced-into-fucked-up-existence, and ultimately, into a potentially messy death, in this fucked up world. Which, in my book, is a good thing. Rigged gambles are won by not playing.
But hey, tell it to 'normal' people, and you get proverbially crucified. Sigh.

Anyways. I tried talking to the university person who organized this event, too, but I don't think she understood much, since she's a breeder herself, just like most of my colleagues (I know of only one openly CF colleague, and she was not present there).

About the advice of the coach towards AMAB people, in fact, on the second day of the lecture (it went on for 2 days in total), she was gushing over all the duhs present (practically all male people there were duhs), especially when they took off or offered to take off time off work to take care of loaves. So I suppose she was just an overall breeder-brain, not only towards AFAB people.

Thank you ever so much for your support!