hI Don’t Want To Have Kids. Get Over It. | The Current Conscience
Despite the progress we’ve made as a culture, we still derive a great deal of comfort from women who fit into a prescribed, gender path. The negative responses women receive when they announce their choice not to have children is symptomatic of what we still expect women to do with their lives.
Why don’t we see a woman who elects to live a life without kids as someone who has carefully made a decision about her future because she’s weighed the import and responsibility of being a parent, with her desire to actually be a parent?
We would never see her as making a thoughtful choice…
Because as we see it, she’s just being thoughtless.
every time I’ve told someone I don’t want have to children, or I’m pretty sure I don’t want to, I get responses like “you’ll change your mind” “I used to feel the same way, you’ll get over it” “how could you never want to have a baby?” “who will take care of you when you’re older if you don’t have children?” etc. and people with kids say “when you have children, you’ll understand” automatically assuming because I’m a female I will and want to have children.
gender roles suck
What’s even worse is that, for many people, it’s a catch-22. Because if someone gets pregnant and decides to keep their child, they are often seen as being careless, someone who isn’t prepared to take on the responsibilities of having children.
Gender roles suck.
(Source: sociolab, via fuckyeahsexeducation)
