Why Such A Stigma Against Childless Women?
I’ve been doing this whole infertility spiral for about 3.5 years now — did IVF twice, didn’t work either time, etc. — so I think a lot about these types of issues, literally every day if not once or twice per hour. I’ve now been in two long-term relationships with women who I could not make into a mom, and that does weigh kinda heavily on me in my worst moments. I’m not sure if every woman wants to be a mom, but it can feel that way.
Obviously, we do have somewhat of a stigma against child-less women. If you want to make this ideological, the stigma comes more from those who lean right, which makes sense, as conservative values embolden a certain set of gender roles. This stigma is usually framed up as “a woman being selfish,” as detailed well in this video:
That video borrows heavily from this article, FYI.
The idea of that article is, essentially, women were supposed to “serve” and “nurture” men after the horrors of World War II. I kinda see that theory. Just FYI — we haven’t had a World War in a few decades. Some women still believe it, and the return to “trad-wife” content on Tik and The Gram underscores that (and creates equal amount of happiness and moral panic across swaths of people).
The funniest (I.e. worst) part of the “childless women” discussion is that it closely mirrors the abortion discussion, in that a ton of people who are not in fact women feel they can tell a woman what to do with their life, body, and reproductive capability. It’s all completely asinine. Every human being on the planet is trying to feel like they’re part of something or belong somewhere. Men and women both have struggles. The key is some grace and understanding of everyone’s position. That’s very hard for most, tho.
The “childless women” bucket is usually a series of other buckets, which includes:
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Only Bullet II is someone who just didn’t want kids — Bullets 1 and 3 are different. Infertility is a real bitch.
Right there, then, it doesn’t make a woman “selfish” to not have something she actually wanted. That's the wrong semantic structure here.
As for Bullet II, “never interested in kids,” that’s someone’s decision. Let ’em be.
As for the “selfish” argument overall, it’s preposterous because you can easily argue the opposite: right this second, it’s selfish to have a kid. You’re bringing them into a world that’s under-resourced with grave environmental concerns generations down the line. Now, yes, most industrial societies are getting older and have low replacement-rate fertility, and there I suppose you could argue 2–3 kids is “doing your part,” but have you ever interacted with a new parent? They are incredibly selfish almost constantly, and if you ever mention the six times they cancelled something, they scream at you about how they’re keeping a life alive. I’d argue you can easily say having kids is also selfish, especially when you realize a lot of people have kids almost solely to keep up with their friend group.
The real reasons between child-less women are far more complicated than “Becky is selfish.” Instead, it goes like this:
Those are the actual reasons for child-less women — that, and the unbearable bullshit of fertility issues and treatments and all that. Selfishness has almost nothing to do with it.