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Kimberly's avatar

I’m 41 and childless by choice for a myriad reasons—reproductive health issues, costs, but ultimately because I knew a long time ago that having my own kids would not make me happy. It used to be that I would have curious people ask me why I made that choice—it was generally polite and I didn’t mind the conversation. There’s been a decided flip in recent years of mothers confiding in me that either they wouldn’t make the same choice again, regret motherhood, or something along those lines of “I wish I wasn’t a mother” (and of course they love their children.) it’s been really fascinating watching other people process the motherhood after the fact and maybe admitting that their gamble didn’t work out? I appreciate their candidness about it and I find it interesting that I’m a safe confidant here—which I am happy to be. It feels a lot like I’m the safe (fat) confidant when formerly thin people confide in me that they want to stop participating in diet culture.

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Elizabeth M. Johnson (she/her)'s avatar

Wow, such an interesting parallel observation re: thin women + diet culture and moms + regret.

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Michele Simon, JD, MPH's avatar

I'm convinced that given truth serum the majority of women would would admit this. I'm sure my own mother would!

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Anne Burke's avatar

Thank you so much. Reading this was so validating. I'm 36, married, and childless by choice after a long internal struggle with the topic and many conversations with my partner. Somehow many of the mothers in my life cannot or will not recognize that it is perfectly legitimate to "want" children in the abstract and choose not to have them because of the myriad ways that making that choice would tip the precarious balance of your mental, physical, and social well-being into the untenable. And the only way to explain it to them feels like just being hurtful in return.

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Emily's avatar

My kids were born in 2010 and 2013, and I've been grateful since 2016 that I had already had them because I'm not sure I would have felt confident about bringing children into the world under the current administration. But they give me joy and hope every day. I would feel much more despair if my two chaos muppets weren't making me laugh with their intentional and unintentional hilarity every day.

That said, I've known since I was a tiny child that I wanted to be a parent. I knew it as completely and fully as I know my own name. I have never questioned my desire to become a mother or my ability to accept the responsibility of the role--just whether it was fair to my kids to be brought into such a broken world.

It was my bone-deep certainty about being a parent that makes me so fiercely, staunchly pro-abortion access. Because I was thrilled and delighted to be pregnant--but pregnancy sucked. Going through that awful process was terrifying and gross and difficult, even though I felt joyfully welcoming of parenthood. It is unconscionable to put someone through that literal body horror if they are unwilling, ambivalent or worried about having children. And it's insulting to offer money, whether it's $5k or $50k, to encourage unwilling people to procreate.

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Kimberly's avatar

Absolutely insulting AND a really ineffective way of raising children because people whose hearts aren’t into parenting aren’t going to make the best parents. Money is not even close to being a good external motivator here and don’t get me started on medals of honor.

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Eloise Michael's avatar

Wow it is so rare to hear someone say this out loud. I am a mother of two grown children. I love them so much. And also it has been incredibly hard.

When they moved out I discovered that I didn't even know what I liked to eat. For more than 20 years,when I went grocery shopping I had only ever thought about what they wanted. I didn't really know what I liked to do or who I was. It has been an exciting process to figure out who I am at age 50, but I can't help mourning what might have been if I had devoted my 20s and 30s to figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do instead of always always always putting other people's needs first.

I sometimes want to tell young women not to have children but think that's taboo to say! Having children is also of course beautiful and amazing. But we need help, time to ourselves, and most of all respect. It's shocking how little we respect mothers (as thinking adults not as selfless saints). We toss around It takes a village all the time but then do nothing to follow through on that bit of wisdom. It fucking does, so where is the village?

If the current regime wants you to do something, probably good idea to question that.

Also, as Kate pointed out, if you really want to have a baby, you're not reading this. For those on the fence troubled by the nagging sense that maybe you're supposed to, I second Kate's assertion that you're not supposed to or required to.

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Eloise Michael's avatar

One more thought on this. I think the main reason I have never actually said out loud to anyone that parenting kind of sucks for women is that I'm afraid people will just blame me for it being hard. As in, if I were better at being a parent it would not have been so challenging. I had my kids younger and was a single parent for most of it, which does make it harder financially, and was technically I guess my fault. That said I see married, financially comfortable women struggling with all the stuff Kate lays out here. There's shame in admitting that it was hard (even though everyone kinda knows it's hard!)

Everyone in the world loves you when you're pregnant or when you have a toddler on your hip. I can't think of another time when I got so much approval from strangers. But it's not just breeding that makes us good women. We have to also make it look easy.

Did anyone read Circe? I got a lot of validation from the fact that even a god was brought to her knees by parenting. It made me think about how much better I might have felt had I been allowed to even acknowledge his hard it was.

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ClaireBonk's avatar

I am an excellent mother and work full time and have a stay at home dad and I feel dead inside. Each day is a mad struggle to find a way to do everything I want and need to for me.

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ADHD Academic's avatar

You would think that those worried about the falling birth rate in the (developed) world would try to find ways to decrease the risks to health, finances, and career associated with pregnancy and motherhood, to make it a more attractive proposition. Free mother and child healthcare, lengthy paid parental leaves, affordable and easily accessible childcare, and well funded education up to the post secondary level would go a long way.

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Jennie's avatar

When the global population falls below 200 million, we can look at a plan for having more kids. Until then, I'm not going to worry about: not enough white kids; not enough population growth to depress wages and ensure the powerlessness of workers; or out breeding this group or that.

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ADHD Academic's avatar

If the falling fertility rate were actually the problem they were trying to address, we already have the data on how to do that: create a society that supports parents. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/birth-rates-are-falling-but-solutions .

But all the “solutions” proposed instead advocate increased coercive control of women’s reproductive behaviour. This tells us that women’s increased independence is the “problem” they’re really trying to solve. The fertility rate is the excuse.

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Jennie's avatar

Of course. I think we all know that here.

I feel it's incumbent on me, though, to keep countering "the sky is falling" narrative about an alleged global baby shortage. There is none.

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Steve Florman's avatar

I think the pro-natalist camp, at least the part of it where the Venn diagram intersects with American evangelical Christian Nationalism, isn't worried about the "global" baby shortage. It's the *right kind* of babies they're concerned with. And they're getting more open about it.

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ADHD Academic's avatar

Oh, that has been very clear all along. My conservative cousins will talk about how the wrong people are having babies. To keep conversation civil, I will pretend that they meant “people who don’t have the money to raise and educate their children in comfort and safety” and will respond that what we really need to do is make sure that every family has the resources they need. My conservative cousins will agree uncertainly, aware that the conversation has kind of gone off track, but not really sure how to redirect.

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Jennie's avatar

I love this!

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Jennie's avatar

The economists mean it though and there are plenty of bigoted economists happy to promote the idea.

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ADHD Academic's avatar

I suppose economists that cannot imagine any economic model except one based on constant growth will have trouble getting their heads around the idea that we do not actually need more babies.

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ADHD Academic's avatar

That too. We’re closing on 8 billion. Our breeding program has been spectacularly successful. I think we can worry about something else now. It’s not just that the plutocrat class needs cheap labor. It’s that our economic model is based on constant expansion. We have to change that.

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Michelle Spencer (she/her)'s avatar

I’m a childless Australian woman and this read is heart breaking —I literally teared up—because its a sensible, logical analysis of an entirely preventable grim situation.

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Kim's avatar

I usually agree w Kate 100%, but I am struggling with this one. I am a queer person in lesbian relationship and had my first child 8 months ago through ivf. I am lucky as a professor for a state college whose state insurance plan covers ivf, so it was accessible to us. I know Kate provided the caveat to her argument of those who want to be moms, but I think there’s another angle for queer people, or people who traditionally have been discouraged from creating families, having kids can be affirming and joyful for us, even in a world where we are marginalized and targeted. Child rearing is difficult and pregnancy is horrible, as we all are expressing, I know it is getting more dangerous and we need to be aware of that with our choices, but I also think there is a place for pursuing a family even in these times, not allowing this regime to take that love away from us. I probably didn’t articulate this well, but wanted to add it in here for another perspective. Also in lgbt couples childcare is much more 50-50, so there’s that element too.

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Kate Manne's avatar

That totally makes sense. Thank you for sharing, and congratulations! ❤️

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Meghan Eagen-Torkko's avatar

I have two children whom I adore beyond reason. Both of my pregnancies with them could have killed me. My miscarriage almost killed me.

I knew more than most people how close I came to dying, because I was then a labor nurse on a high-risk unit. So I could choose to continue those pregnancies, because I had the information needed to make an educated choice. In a country where less than 10% of school districts provide comprehensive medically accurate sex ed, this is not usually the case.

Pregnancy is too hard — parenting is too hard — to stumble into without choice, and the acceptance of that choice. Acceptance requires autonomy.

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JesseBesse's avatar

I’ve never been so happy with my choice to be childfree looking at this shit show of an administration. Absolutely no way I’d bring an innocent child into fascism. They can figure out a way to bear the children themselves if it’s so important. And if they can’t then they can admit us women are EVEN more important socially than men & start treating us as equals. And give us our reproductive rights back for starters. Fuckers.

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Amy Smith Bell's avatar

Yes to all, I’ve absolutely love this straightforward perspective. I said damn out loud three times reading this.

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Anne's avatar

I was already not intending to have children but I am even more resolved now.

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Pearson Marx's avatar

I have started having conversations with my husband about widening the notion of consent to include attentional consent. I love my husband, but he is constantly talking to/at me when I don’t want to engage. I’ve tried to explain to him that it feels violating to have his voice and opinions penetrating my consciousness against my will. He is also constantly talking when I’m trying to watch the news even though I have asked him time and again to please let me focus on it. I’ve likened it to a form of cognitive groping!!! He especially loves communicating information. He will sometimes start reading aloud from a long article word for word without asking me first if I am interested. It makes me laugh because I can’t imagine any woman taking another person‘s interest for granted . One of the things that scared me most about having children was not having the right to my own thoughts, as obviously a child would be entitled to my attention in the way that my adult male husband is not . It is an act of transgression for a woman to admit that she doesn’t want to spend her life nurturing someone else as Kate has pointed out so brilliantly in her work. I had three miscarriages at around 12 weeks and all of them were heartbreaking but looking back I do not think I could’ve endured motherhood without extreme stress.I am a writer and an introvert and I prize solitude. I want to thank Kate for ripping the veil of piety off this topic. And thanks also to others in this community who commented so candidly and generously about their feelings on this charged topic. Motherhood is presented as a one-size-fits-all mode of transcendence in our culture.

BYW, this pronatalist white nationalist government is trying to cancel Headstart all across our nation, denying mothers access to preschool for their kids. Unbelievable!

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Didi Egerton-Warburton's avatar

Thank you so much for this. Attentional consent and cognitive groping are such useful concepts! My Mum was a counsellor and I usually check with my partner whether he's available to listen, but sometimes he is giving me a minute-by-minute play of his latest run and I find myself thinking, 'this expectation that I'm interested in this level of detail would be more appropriate in a 6 year old.' I envy him the emotional security that assumes I care! My own style is to come in from a 5 hour bike ride and say that it was 'good' or 'OK', like a proper teenager.

I hope that your husband hears you and changes his behaviour to respect the boundaries of your attention. I hope he understands that you prize solitude, and that's for you, not for anyone else.

I explained this to a friend whose partner needs time alone, and a couple of years later he said it had helped him to understand her desire to be alone not as rejection, and when he stopped working against it he could see that she is happier when she is with him. You deserve that level of care and awareness too.

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Belinda (she/her)'s avatar

Awesome arguments, Kate. We childfree women must stay strong amidst the defamatory social commentary on us that we hear from politicians, etc, and in cultural texts like films and tv shows.

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Patience Withers's avatar

Thanks, Kate—this is an absolutely fair warning to American saps who decide to fulfill heteronormative demands. In Canada, too, there are the affordability and housing shortage crises. And climate change — so many floods and fires. I’m angry and bewildered whenever I see women with newborns now.

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ADHD Academic's avatar

I wouldn’t go so far as to be angry or bewildered at the choice some women make to have children. Unless you’re angry at how you feel they’ve been manipulated into doing that?

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Steve Florman's avatar

My kids are all adults - my oldest two sons have children. I fear for my grandkids, who are 5, 3, and 3. I don't know what the future will hold for them but I don't think it's going to be easy, especially for my eldest. He is divorcing a woman who should probably never have married, had a great deal of trouble in pregnancy, and lives now with her parents 7 hours away. The joint custody arrangement alone is a burden.

My daughters, unsurprisingly, have long ago decided to remain childless. While I think they'd be great parents, I understand and support them. Their resolve has only become stronger as they see where the country is headed.

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JI's avatar
Apr 27Edited

J.D. Vance = “sadsack pallbearer of patriarchy”. 😂😂😂

But, seriously, I think you’re right. The end of systemic and cultural patriarchy will remain “low” priorities until one of the following occur:

A) women stop serving as our nation’s safety net

or B) our nation’s dysfunction finally outpaces women’s efforts to reduce it

Today, we have a high need for change and a low desire for change. A good crisis will throttle those dynamics into a fair and productive balance.

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