I'm not the sort of person who believes you need to settle down, get married, have a couple of kids to be happy. Or at least, I used to think I wasn't. The more time I spend observing our world, the more I ask myself - is that how I truly feel, or is it just a notion that's been drilled into me by an anti-family society?
I wrote yesterday about how people are finding less and less meaning in their lives, and I feel it's got a great deal to do with the demolition of family, as a desirable goal.
Your parents, obviously, wanted a family. Are you really going to be so passe?
This seems to be a big issue with my generation, and people under 30, today. Suddenly, wanting a family of your own has acquired all these unpleasant connotations:
- It's sexist and patriarchal to assume that a woman needs a family to be fulfilled - except not really. It' biology. It's inane maternal instinct. It's the need to nurture another human being. The "patriarchy" may be strong, but I doubt it's strong enough to mess with thousands of years of genetic coding.
- Having kids is selfish. The planet is overpopulated, as is. - That's true, but that doesn't make my wanting kids selfish, per se. Besides, who's to say your child won't be the one to fix our world? And what would happen if you never had them? The overpopulated card also employs a double-standard, as it applies strictly to Westerners. At the same time, we are being told to welcome Muslim families with hordes of children. China has a population of 1.4 billion. So maybe the full explanation, instead of "there's too many people", should be "there's just too many Westerners/whites."
- Having kids stops you from having a career. - It doesn't stop me, but it does make things more difficult. But then, who said having a career and a kid was supposed to be easy? And since when is a career something so valuable, in the first place? I'm very fortunate in the sense that I enjoy and am good at my work, yet I hardly see not having kids as a worthy trade-off.
The list goes on, and it's essentially saying it's 2021, it's unfashionable to want kids. And many young people are buying it.
Younger generations wanting kids later and later.
There are countless studies about millennials putting off parenthood to be quoted here, the basic idea being that the average age for a baby is going ever up.
Most of the people <25 I've talked to aren't even considering having a baby, and to be honest, they're not really prepared to. This is because, in our society, the young are encouraged to remain stuck in a state of childhood and helplessness long past its expiry date.
Most of the people I know under 25 (or sometimes even as old as 30) are still spending their time playing video games, watching anime, going to cafes to play board games, and wearing Mickey Mouse shirts. Now, not saying there's anything wrong with any of these things per se, but surely, you see the pattern of childlike, stunted behavior.
Combine this with the emotionally underdeveloped, teenage-like relationships of the 21st century, and our financial instability, of course these people don't want to have kids. They're practically children themselves.
Still living with their parents, playing video games with their 20-something pals, taking girls out to movies - this is 16-year-old behavior, and it looks very poorly at 26.
The decline of romantic relationships in the 21st century
I'm gonna go ahead and blame the Internet, even though I don't think the Internet or specifically dating apps are a bad thing. On the contrary, with the pandemic, I think they were actually a welcome source of social interaction.
That's not to say they aren't harmful, however, as they encourage less effort on both parts. If you can order a pizza through your smartphone, why not a relationship? And if we're encouraged to believe there's a ready-made relationship just waiting on our tap, where's the incentive to work at it?
Furthermore, why should we? The Internet is a place of limitless options, and in this abundance of choice, it becomes impossible to make one.
Young people today aren't looking for anything serious, and that is another sign of emotional immaturity. If you're not ready for a "serious" relationship at 18, that's understandable. If you're not ready for one at 23-24, it's not a good sign. It means that you've evolved little, if at all, in the 5-6 years in-between.
Why shouldn't you look for something serious?
Kids my age aren't thinking about the long-term, and so end up wasting years in relationships that don't go anywhere. Why? Because they're enjoying themselves, and having fun, and that's pretty much all our hedonistic, commitment-addled society asks of them.
Even if they are looking for steady, committed relationships, young people have been bullied into silence because it's unfashionable. They don't want to sound old-fashioned, and even more, they don't want to scare off a potential partner.
The way I see it, wanting a family is a noble, enriching experience, and you should go about it as with any other goal in life. Unapologetically and relentlessly.
Otherwise, you'll just keep wasting time in meaningless hook-ups. You'll let others walk all over you, squandering what is a very short fertile period in your life. If you're not afraid of admitting you want to become a partner at your firm, and so are working and dedicating yourself to that, why shouldn't you also admit to wanting and working towards a family?
Dawn of Equal Rights - Should women fuck like men?
I think this is the question that the hit shot Sex and the City starts with, so the premise is clearly not new. Yet I can't help but notice that, with women being told they can do anything that men can, we've ended up taking on their worst qualities. Traditionally, men are not supposed to want to settle, to be scared of commitment, less emotionally mature than girls, and so on. So apparently now, our best solution is to imitate them, and act just as scared. Why? To prove we can? Well, what's that going to achieve?
I don't think motherhood is for all women. I just think there's a lot of us pretending to be someone we're not, and caving in to social pressure.
But why? Whence this hate against families?
This, I don't know. There are several arguments to be made. There's the one I made above about someone out there wanting to cut back on white/Western children, presumably in the interest of a predominantly mixed race society in the near future.
Secondly, and this one applies right now, as I pointed out in my previous post, families give you meaning. And meaning is not seen well in our modern, inclusive society, I'm afraid. When you have something to work and fight for, when you have a purpose, it's harder for society to assign you one. Same with having a special someone in your life, lest you start thinking in "us against the world" terms, as those might prove dangerous.
After all, a father with a family to feed is far more perilous than a emotionally insecure boy playing race games with his online pals all night.
I think this pattern has been building up for a while. Growing up in the 80s in the UK I saw the shift into women moving more into careers as they talked about smashing the glass ceiling. Over the next decade more women started having children later as they cemented their careers first. Either that or they accidentally got pregnant young and chased a career while leaving that child to be raised in childcare.
I had my first child at 25 (my husband was 29 and feeling like time was running out 😆) and felt like this was actually a reasonable age after my sister and mum giving birth at 17. Yet most of the parents with same age kids around me thought I was a young mum. I rarely meet women with children the same age as mine who are younger than me.
As I'm no longer in my 20s I'm more of an observer from the outside and not fully aware of modern pressures, but I can see what you mean about young adults being kept young. In Australia welfare expects that parents support their children until they are 25!
Some really good points and perspectives here.
@tipu curate
Oh yes, I assume there's been build-up to this. It's just sad, in my opinion, as I don't think this view of maternity is very healthy. I think 25 is a very reasonable age to have children, too, as it gives you enough energy to care for them and raise them.
Support them until they're 25? Not only does that seem like a stretch for the parent, but I can't imagine that's good on the child. I mean the people I know under 25 who are still being fully supported by their folks are messed up with a lot of frustrations and resentment over that. From what I've seen, it's very hard to see other kids around you get job and slowly gain financial independence, while you're still not doing that. Then again, if all kids in your group are like that, maybe it's not so strange...
Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment and the curation! I appreciate it!
I saw that in my eldest, even in her teens. She left home at 19 in an explosive way and the resentment all got aimed at us, despite us trying to help her towards independence. She's finally realised her anger at everything was more confusion at the societal mixed messages around her and sees others her age and older incapable of looking after themselves, so I eventually got a thank you for teaching her how to look after herself.
At one point she was spouting something about the nuclear family not being the right approach, which confused the heck out of me, because we'd always expressed the importance of extended family too. Something she didn't always agree with either, because we took my parents in for a while and that inconvenienced her. She must have been reading something on social media on that sort of thing and at the time was looking for any ammunition she could find to resent me. She admitted that to me later after seeing a psychiatrist.
I’m starting to wonder now if I ended up a victim of this attack on families.
Seems to me that's the way, alas, with most families. I think anger and resentment towards parents is, to a certain extent, helpful, as it helps the child establish their independence. It's very primal and illogical, especially if you've good, loving, nurturing parents who try to steer you toward independence, anyway, as seems to have been the case for you and your daughter. But there it is, unfortunately, you need to establish your maturity and independence from even the kindest of families, I think.
Perhaps... I mean, what you said about her criticizing the "nuclear family" sounds like one of their tricks. Whoever it is, waging war on family. But I'm glad things worked out between you and your eldest.
You could well be right. Rebelling does seem to be the way many teens work towards establishing independence. My sister did that too, although didn't attack my parents, merely disobeyed. I saw the effect her behaviour had on our parents, so chose not to go that way, so I can't really say I understand it.
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I think many people don't fully realize how recent it is that women can fully function (be economically independent, 50 years ago in many Western countries you still needed your husbands approval to open a bank account, lol) in society and that there's still a lot of 'old' systems in place that stem from the 'before' time.
I don't think women don't want to be mothers, they just want to be mothers in a system that supports them becoming mothers.
We live in a world where we made 'having money' so important, and now women are more and more becoming higher educated and get degrees in higher percentages then men, well... They want the 'fun' (money) in return for their efforts after having gotten those opportunities, which makes total sense to me.
That means amongst quite a few others:
Acknowledging the pay gap that starts after having had a baby, that has been proven to be unrecoverable even if the woman goes back to work afterwards. It's not really 'fair' (what is fair, we can discuss endlessly probably :D) that mothers have to live on less money after pension age - ESPECIALLY since they're supposedly fulfilling such an important role in society? Most societies want women to have babies but don't make sure they can live a fulfilling (financially equal to men who don't need to break up their career after becoming dads) life. I think that's extremely hypocritical and something women want to be fixed or it's not really 'worth' it anymore.
I agree, biology is a huge factor in humans, so I do believe many women would be quicker to choose to become mothers if they weren't so disencouraged by other (economical, but also physical) factors. Biology is important but since we live in complex societies it can definitely be overruled, and changing society will help people get back in touch with their biology again as well.
As with any change in society there's often a strong 'anti-movement', which is temporarily necessary, before a better balance is achieved. We're in the stronger movement now where women as a group temporarily (need to) make 'extremer' choices so next generation can have a better life - where for example it's not financially disencouraging to become a mother in a world where having money seems to be 'the most important thing'.
(Which is probably another interesting topic for discussion)
(Reply was written very quickly and probably quite unnuanced, but wanted to react as its an interesting topic.)
Cheers!
You make some excellent points here. I agree completely, our society doesn't in any way make it easy for mothers, and I'm sure that contributes a great deal to this reluctance to become one. Yes, perhaps if there wasn't such professional blowback, more women would be inclined towards motherhood at an earlier age.
I see what you mean about it being worth it (or not) for women to have babies, and though I don't really look at this personally (in the sense that although I'm also contributing to society, I'm not having a baby for them, I'm having it for me), I do believe that this discrepancy needs to be fixed.
I so hope you're right with this, as I resonate big time with that entire paragraph. Of course, there's no telling what the future will hold, though hoping that we're headed for better, rather than worse, is the only thing that still gives life a sense.
I don't know if there ever will be a radical shift in our financially-oriented world, but at the same time, I keep thinking that as a would-be-mom, there will never be a time when you're ready, never a time when you've got quite everything you need for a baby. I just worry that, by waiting for financial security, some women may wait forever. Then again, having a baby you can't really afford carries its own set of disadvantages, both to you and the child. So yeah, I guess it's a very complex topic. At the end of the day, it's a deeply personal choice. I'm just fascinated by why people choose one way and not the other. Thank you for your comment, and for pointing out the huge role of money in this decision :) I admit, though it had crossed my mind, I hadn't given it as much thought as I would've liked to.
I hope so too - in the Northern European countries there's already a lot better options for parents, for example both moms and dads take time off work for raising the kid, and it's expected that men take at least as much time off for the baby as the mom, which makes sure they really have an opportunity to become real 'dads' instead of 'the man that cuts the meat on Sunday'. I think a HUGE part of women getting a better position in society after becoming moms goes through the men.
Definitely true. I think we need more communities for new moms, as evolutionary speaking I think we have never raised our babies as alone as we do nowadays... And that's not helping. Moms should have a support network so they don't fall into a depression, can ask all the normal daily and more embarrassing questions, and can sometimes lean on other people so they can relax a little, as suddenly being responsible for a human being 100% of your time is a huge and tiring change.
Glad you appreciated it and have a little extra way of looking at the topic! Thanks for writing the post, nice to have an exchange of ideas sometimes. I'm sure we'll both make a decision that suits us when the time is there ;-)
Honestly, I think that's an awesome idea, since men, in their own way, are being deprived and discriminated against in the "traditional" arrangement, too. We talk so much of how unfair it was that women were expected to stay home and raise the kids, but rarely how unfair it was for the man to go out and have to earn, and put food on the table. Missing out on the chance to be a father, and creating poor relationships with their children, later on.
We're so obsessed sometimes to prove who's more underprivileged and discriminated against, sometimes, that we forget this is not a contest...
I'm curious, do you mean because back in the "old days", women were more encouraged to interact with other new moms, and had family to help them? (as now, it's less normal for a family to bring up its young as a collective endeavor).
Exactly. The presence of a father has huge impact on the development of a child, so honestly, it's a win-win-win if we can get fathers to be part of the family more.
So, there's back-back-back in the day when we still roamed the earth and didn't necessarily live in individual houses but in groups of people. There would be children running around keeping each other busy, moms only needed to keep a half-eye on the child, as all moms would have a half-eye on the child, and no mom had to spend all their energy on the kids. Raising kids was a community effort with not so much 'effort'.
But also later, compared to now, communities still existed, and indeed, everyone you knew lived close(ish) to your home, whereas nowadays our communities are spread out over the countries or even world, and it's less automatic to give your child away for a day to someone as the ones who you can depend upon are living further away. In my city you now have an initiative where moms can get together, kids roam around, the moms get some tea, chat, and together they 'watch' the kids, more like the 'very old' days. The idea is simple but moms seem to find it a huge 'invention' and claim they really thrive on that little mom community and have felt alone until that day.
So yeah.
We need more of that I think :-)