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I’ve written often, during my unsuccessful attempts to have a baby, about the pressure women feel to become mothers, but what I’ve learned from friends who do have children is that the bullshit doesn’t end when you’ve finally given birth. Okay, you think, I’ve produced the heir or heiress to the throne, I’m done getting grilled at parties by my great-aunts about the contents of my uterus, right?
What we needed was a healthy baby.
When we learned our second bundle would be a boy, I admit I was silently relieved. “This I can do,” I thought. “I know boys.”
Yet strangers – and some people close to us – had a much different reaction.
“Another boy (insert shock/ pity/ confusion here)?! So, when will you go for a third?”
“You/ your husband must want/ need a girl.”
“But you have to have a girl!”
Some days, it was all I could do to not let loose on someone. We “have to have” a girl? Our family won’t be “complete” without a girl? “Clearly,” I thought, “you people need to work on your priorities.” And, by the way, are you planning to help us with the three kids you are convinced we need??
Right? I’ve come to understand that the people who are overwhelmingly anxious that you breed are a) usually the people whose own children act like monkeys on acid all time, like way to be a recruiting poster there, or b) live hundreds of miles away from you and really just want to cuddle a baby at Christmas and then hand it back to you when it starts screaming.
(I’ve often considered a rental service for women of childbearing age, so that we can present the adorable offspring at the appropriate time so as to placate the family, without having to deal with kidlets when the family isn’t around.)
I will never understand why we have to be so judgy about this shit. If you have one child oh, what a tragedy, breedbreedbreed for the Reich. Make like the Duggars and people call your vagina a clown car. Part of supporting reproductive rights is supporting the idea that nobody gets to tell anybody else how or when to have children, a point which is lost on these busybodies.
They want you to have a baby, and then, when you DO have a baby, they want you to have more babies, or different babies, or something. If you have girls, what about a brother for them? If you have boys, why don’t you give them a baby sister, like another human being is a live doll for them to dress up. A friend with two boys who stated she wasn’t interested in trying for a girl was then accused of “not wanting the perfect family.”
She’s much nicer than I am, so she didn’t respond, “Where exactly do you get off saying my family isn’t perfect ALREADY? By the way, your spawn is over there at the buffet filling your hat with bean dip, so let’s hope the Gifted and Talented Program has a money-back guarantee.”
A.
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I know that GoodMrsPuma continues to feel some remorse about not having children, although we have good (medical) reasons not to. It is unfortunate that we have this lingering belief that a woman is merely the sum of her uterus.
I think that sort of pressure is why a lot of my free thinking friends became religious after getting married and having kids. Path of least resistance and all that. They were under enormous pressure to have kids and immediately after giving birth, they were under even more pressure about how to raise them.
I guess I just don’t see why, barring evidence of abuse, these things should be regarded as anyone else’s damned business.
There is a part of me that regrets not having been capable of reproduction but it’s sort of like my cigarette cravings these days: It hits once in a blue moon and lasts for like three seconds.
Oh, you’ll get no argument from me! My older brother didn’t speak to our mother for the last thirty years of her life because of the pressure she put on him! And she refused to acknowledge her responsibility in that until the day she died. But that was the first thing she did any time she saw one of her grandchildren: began criticizing. Just because she put up with it from her mother, she seemed to feel entitled to do the same to my siblings.
I pretty much stopped watching Discovery Health just because of the ads for those people! My gosh! I wanted to shower every time I saw a commercial for that show.
One more reason why I won’t pay money for cable.
It’s a good one. Night!
Oya!
O.T. Anybody seen DrDick?
Thanks Allison, much appreciated.
Reading “about the pressure women feel to become mothers,” is one of those slap myself on the forehead moments.
Of course, how obvious, how did I miss the reality?
I read a lot of your stuff, but I missed those previous posts.
My family had 5 kids of which I am the oldest. They did not know and from what my mother told me, were not that concerned about gender.
How ever after having me and my two brothers, when they built their second house the interior was laid out so “the boys” had this large area in the back or rather side as their room. So when my mother became pregnant the assumed it would be another boy. (Of course statistically this was not as likely as they thought)
So when the first of my two sisters was born, a fairly large reconfiguration of the house internals was necessary.
That was the only snag in the plans.
I do not remember anyone saying or my mother saying that anyone said anything one way or another about the gender of the children on our family.
So what is it now that people need to put their noses in where they are not wanted or needed or appreciated.
For years I had exactly one piece of advice for parents: Toilet Training In One Day, this book that showed me how to handle that little mystery. It worked great on both my kids. And now even that is useless, because diapers are so much better than when my kids were babies. So, I now have one piece of advice: some days are like that. I don’t know what it means, but it seems not to bother anybody.
I can remember when our first daughter was born, there was a guy bragging about having a son. I’m not going into the details of his rant. It was too male chauvinistic. When he got to me, as a father of our first born, he told me that I was not man enough to have a boy. My only response was, “ïf I wanted a boy, I would have married one”.
Sorry for my rant.
you. need. to. chill! Its just small talk. Breed what you will – nobody, and I do mean nobody gives a fvck. In fact since most are infinitely abysmal parents, creating the cause of almost all of the world’s problems, the fewer psychopaths you spawn, the better.
You know, the best motivation for having a family is that you actually like babies and children. You get enormous joy from watching them grow, interacting with them, them interacting with you, and just being a family. It’s a wonderful feeling. I’m not sure from the tone of what you’ve written, which seems quite hysterical, that you’ve actually grasped that. But just to say, a large number of people who wish children on others do so simply because they found it such a joy having them.
Just calm down a bit.
We never had children. It’s not that we tried not to have any, but they were not a particularly high priority. My wife has seven brothers and sisters and 12 aunts and uncles, which leaves more than enough nephews and nieces to go around. Not having kids has been worth close to two million dollars to us, and in our advancing years it’s nice to have the money. My ex-colleagues are still working to leave bequests. Everyone’s different, but I see no moral imperative to have kids.
Allison,
I like your post. When my husband and I got married, we decided to be child-free. It’s been over twenty years, and we have had no regrets about our decsison. We didn’t get much pressure from our families, but did get pressure from just a few of our friends and aquaintances. We were really taken aback by it. Some people will intrude into others’ lives with nosy questions and unwanted advice. I realized that I needed to set boundaries, and I did by saying firmly that we had made up our minds and had not asked for advice. It doesn’t surprise me that the same types of pushy and intrusive people will continue to intrude in the instances you’ve described above even after the baby is born.
Sister Allison, let me tell you. I have a sure-fire way of getting these busybodies off my case, because they sometimes come at me even though I lack a uterus. I just remind them that there are already close to 7 billion rapacious consumers crowding and soiling the biosphere, and I’m in no hurry hasten our species’ demise by adding yet another grasping, pillaging parasite to the mix. If that doesn’t work, then I relent and agree that maybe it would be a good idea to make a special effort to have another little bundle of protein and fat, if only so that the bigger, stronger ones will have something to eat when the food inevitably runs out.