| It’s inevitable…. A single woman with hips is going to get pressured.
In America, no matter how “free” we claim we are, we put enormous
pressure on people to have children. We say that people can do whatever
they want or be whatever they want, but we don’t live that way. We
pressure people to have kids. Or rather, it’s always that nagging busy-body at the barbeque or Christmas party who can’t think of anything else to talk about. I affectionately refer to them as “the idiot at the barbeque” because this has happened to me so many times. There are always multiple adults who have grown children, most of whom were anywhere between lousy and outright abusive as parents, who start in with the nagging and absolutely won’t let up no matter what. Just google “pressure to have children” and you will find tons of stuff written by women who have absolutely no interest in having kids actually bothering to consider doing it because they are so constantly pressured by others to have kids. Why on earth would a woman consider having kids if she knows she doesn’t want them? Because that pressure isn’t recent. It’s been going on her whole life. Little girls are bombarded with the “knowledge” that they will grow up and have children. We may say we have “freedom” but every adult knows that most people in our culture expect them to have children. These women know that their relationships with their parents and in-laws will suffer if they do not produce children. They will lose the love and support of their families if they do not have kids. The older women pressure them the most. Why all the insanity? Because no one will tell the truth about any of this openly in our culture. It is not something that most people feel safe talking about because we all are taught that we cannot tell the truth about this. This is where it gets dicey. Most adults, especially older adults who have adult children, feel pressured to lie about their experience of raising kids. First there’s the pressure to have them, then there’s pressure to enjoy it (whether they do or not), then there’s pressure to keep pretending they loved it long after their kids are grown. Most adults in private, if they trust things to be confidential, will admit that 1. they didn’t like being parents 2. They regretted having the kids but felt stuck once the kids were there 3. If they had it to do over, they wouldn’t have them 4. They felt enormous pressure from others to “like” being parents, even though they knew they weren’t happy and had made a mistake 5. They were pressured even more to have a second child The idiot at the barbeque always is very concerned about other people because it actually scares them (or angers the crap out of them) to meet an adult who is happily childless. Most adults have had it so engrained in their thinking that “you must have kids” that it actually peeves them when someone doesn’t, even though they are envious. Once at a barbeque, I had a woman in her eighties start in on me about kids. She had five grown children, all of whom hated her. This woman clearly did not enjoy even one second of being a mother, and in twelve years of having her as a neighbor, not ONE of her children or grandchildren has ever come to visit. Now in her nineties, she remains one of the meanest and most unpleasant women I’ve ever met. All her children were born before birth control was available. Clearly, she did not want to have kids and did not nurture anyone or anything. So, of course, she’s got to start nagging about having kids. My then-boyfriend and I had been together for seven months. Not a long time, and yet she was already pressuring us to start having kids! Not only were we not married, but I never would have considered marrying him or having kids. I knew I did not want to have kids, but that didn’t even matter to her! In her worldview, I had to have kids. She didn’t even HAVE a reason why! I just “had to.” She was not the only idiot at that barbeque. No lie, during the same plate of food I was pressured by four other adults to start having kids. Not one of them cared that I did not want to have children! They had all caved in and had kids they didn’t want, and in their eyes, since they sold out, EVERYONE has a duty to sell out just like them! Everyone of these people hated being parents, relentlessly complained about it and truly dislike children. What’s astonishing to me is that they openly dislike kids, complain about their own endlessly, and yet pressure everyone to have kids. It’s stupid. |