The devaluation of motherhood

[alwayslemons]

Please excuse me if this post is a little rambling. I’ve been thinking about it a lot but it’s hard to articulate!

I’ve noticed in recent years that it’s become kind of uncool, socially, to have or want children - and certainly to be a SAHM. Almost every young (under 30) woman I’ve spoken to about it has seemed almost proud of the “Children? Gross! I’d rather have a dog” attitude. Openly sneering when they see a child in public like there’s no greater irritant. After one of my friends had a baby, some others (all women) were talking in a fairly unpleasant way about how she no longer had anything interesting to say and it was like she was just a “baby machine”. Someone I work with was talking about her sister and said “she’s the breeder in the family” because she has children. They’re all on board with the “feminism is about choice” thing, yet curiously contemptuous of any woman who chooses motherhood over a career.

I recently saw an Instagram post from a feminist account about how child free women still need a good work/life balance so the “oh it’s easy for you because you don’t have children” attitude from coworkers is unfair. Which I agree with, but oh my god the comments… honestly, some of them were vile. Calling mothers entitled etc, it was pretty horrible. (Also, sorry, but you considering your dog to be your baby is not the same thing as actually having a baby… I adore dogs, but come on)

Like obviously if you don’t want kids then that’s fine, and nobody should ever be judged for that. But it seems to be swinging pretty far the other way. I’ve noticed it in newspaper articles and on social media, as well as in real life, and honestly I find it kind of upsetting. Both motherhood and being a full time SAHM are things that have been undervalued and taken for granted for the longest time - how in the world is this feminism? It seems more of the same “I’m not like the other girls” nonsense.

Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me??

Soz for the rambles but I had to get it out, it was really bothering me today!!

It's not new. Motherhood may have been desirable up to the 50s but only due to lack of other options. Even when Motherhood was the main thing women were expected to do it wasn't valued. Women aren't valued in society in the same way as men, and women are socially conditioned to subscribe to the same views.

Nowadays women have options so when we are young having babies doesn't look tempting. We don't look at mothers and say "that's what I want". Why would you? It's hard work and thankless. Much easier to look after yourself and have your freedom. I didn't sneer as such but I didn't want children and I didn't fancy Motherhood. It's just another sign of ageing.

Then biology kicks in and you do it anyway.

So ignore it and know that these same women will be cooing over babies in 5 years time.

@Nix32 I agree with this, the sort of accepted default is that you're better off sending kids to a childcare setting as they can provide better activities/play than a parent or home setting.

Its a weird and undermining message which I just can't get my head around. Childcare is not like a set of discreet tasks you can provide a young kid to complete to improve their 'skills', they can learn just as much from a home setting as a nursery and many, if not most, parents are competent enough to provide it. (This isn't to say I think nursery is bad, it's fine and good, but I see this a lot on here that it's somehow better to put them in nursery and if you keep them home it's holding them back? Weird)

I see it a lot in the facebook groups I am a member of. Always young and often environmentallist women who have real disdain for any woman who would choose to have children.

The thing is wanting children is a biological urge. That hasn't suddenly disappeared. All that's happened is that various factors in society have made it so difficult that some women feel that the difficulties and obstacles are too much

Agree that it’s always been devalued, and there’s a Madonna/Whore conflict going on. Ask western mothers from the last 100 years if their tasks, opinions and needs were respected by family and society and I’d be surprised if most said yes.

As with everything right now, social media makes small, passing opinions into big gobby public statements. Feelings that might be just of today or this year are broadcast as if they are some eternal truth, and if you feel differently then you’re in opposition and the Enemy. It’s so tiresome.

Some people want kids, some never will, others (as PPs have said) may want them but can’t find any decent men to be fathers. We just need to get off SM so maybe it’ll wither and die and we can have reasonable conversations again.

DH (50 this year) has a couple of single friends with this mentality. Don't men want more than sexual gratification ? What about companionship, support and building a life together. Are young men just not interested in these things now ?

I roll my eyes when women say children aren't good for the environment. These same women drive cars, go on foreign holidays and eat imported foods etc.The UK and East Asian countries have low birth rates.

A top factor associated with low birth rates is the education attainment available to women. When women are more educated, many choose not to have children or have fewer children. Of course, there are highly educated women who very much want children, but I'm broadly speaking about data, not individuals.

Among my work colleagues, who mostly have PhDs, I'm the only senior leader with children and among the wider team, probably 20% of people 45 and younger have kids. Many are partnered/married, and don't have children because they do not want them.

Even in Western countries with high quality, affordable childcare or lower CoL, the birth rate has fallen.

If you desperately wanted to increase the birth rate, the two policies most likely to achieve that would be to restrict girls' education and restrict family planning (birth control/abortion), neither of which appeal to me as a feminist.

We’ve definitely noted this in our friends (late 20s professionals) - particularly the comparing of dogs to children! In our case, I think a lot of it is a byproduct of an individualistic society as well as messages about having it all (which in their view seems to mean having a cute well behaved baby that doesn’t change the parent’s life in any way). Lots of our friends have never been around babies or young children. They have definitely changed in attitude since watching us with our LO. They now see that parenthood is hard but also immensely rewarding. They’ve also seen that with supportive friends, we can still do a lot of what we did before. Our lives aren’t over in the slightest. Our friends want to go out with us or for us to visit them and so they’ve quickly revised their opinions on babies in restaurants or on trains. Likewise, they realise that even the happiest well-cared for baby will cry, and they no longer complain about crying babies in public. Generally, having a baby in their social circle has led them to be far more tolerant of babies’ needs and understanding of their place and importance in society. That being said, our baby is still often compared to their puppies …

We do know some who insist that having a baby is selfish for environmental reasons (despite still flying, eating meat etc.) which massively grinds my gears. I’d personally far rather look for solutions to climate change than agreeing to a mass extinction event . However, I think really these are people who just don’t want children and are experiencing familial pressure.

I’m still not sure our friends understand the work involved or the costs of childcare though. I’m planning not to return to a ‘high status’ job and know this will raise eyebrows. I already feel like ‘just a mother’ sometimes and worry more about my identity if I leave work. Any tips would be much appreciated @Teddleshon!

I think there's a definitely some distain for mother's going on- I see it a lot of here. That mothers have failed to see though the societal messaging and thus stupid-that we're all miserable and all regret it.

I don't think all women should or indeed want to be mothers far from it and I don't think we want to encourage more teenager pg or reduction in women's education or limits on career goals.

However it's clear there are social and economic conditions that are pushing parenthood to ever older ages - high house prices and rents insecure employment and stagnate wages. It often hard to talk about them though as so many take it as an attack on their lives and choices.

Plus most of the focus is on women - not that men have realistically limited fertility windows and seem very unaware of this.

Also high instances of family break downs and single parenthood in society where two incomes are increasingly needed to avoid poverty - makes parenthood more daunting. Also the environmental lobby do seem to be anti children at moment.

I did start to resent the messaging when my DC were very young that they'd be better off in high quality childcare than with me - obviously to get women back to work and if I thought they'd have coped I'd have wanted to get back but my kids were high need babies and struggled in settings.

So yes noticed it.

That is what the data says, but it doesn’t explain the correlation: do better-educated women think that having children is a terrible idea? Is it that these women instead understand that without better childcare policies and family protections it’s too big a risk to their lives longterm to have a child? Or is it something else entirely?

I don’t think the only way to improve birth rates is to remove girls from education or remove access to reproduction (plus, does the planet perhaps need a declined birth rate for a century or so?) but there are maybe ways or equalising parental care and reducing the impact on a woman’s career, if that’s what puts off educated women in the West.

In terms of culture, there’s a whole slew of patriarchal factors that mean girls get the message that mums are boring, weak doormats with no lives of their own, and those ideas get carried on until any biological clock starts ticking.

That is what the data says, but it doesn’t explain the correlation: do better-educated women think that having children is a terrible idea?

There is research out there looking at this - but I'm sure it's fully understood- and again it tends to focus on women. Working class areas we grew up in I think men's willingness to settle down earlier is probably as important if not more for younger parenthood.

https://www.cpc.ac.uk/docs/BP29_Educational_differences_in_childbearing_widen-in_Britain.pdf

Previous research suggests that women who enter motherhood later in life would still like to have relatively large families. Given that we show a persistent link between delayed childbearing and smaller completed family size, policies are needed that address barriers to childbearing for such women. At the same time, couples need to be made fully aware of the extent to which the chances of conception decline with age. Finally, policy could facilitate childbearing for those women who wish to enter motherhood earlier in life by allowing women to have children in their twenties and early thirties without significant detrimental effects on other aspects of life such as career and financial stability.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-01-09-wanting-stay-education-%E2%80%98not-main-reason-why-women-delay-having-children%E2%80%99
Significantly, their model calculates that for every extra year of educational enrolment after the age of 12, a woman delayed motherhood by an average of six months. However, strikingly, they also find that the main influence on whether a woman postpones having children is largely associated with her family background. The paper concludes that family environment, a combination of a woman’s social, economic and genetic factors, is significant, with education alone contributing to only 1.5 months of the total six-month delay.

Lead author Dr Felix Tropf, from the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Our research casts doubt on previous studies that claim a strong link between educational expansion for women and the postponement of motherhood. We find that both education and a woman’s fertility choices seem to be mostly influenced by her family background, instead of education influencing fertility behaviour directly. For example, families provide social and financial support, and pass on genes affecting reproductive behaviour. A large part of the observed association between education and age at first birth in other studies can actually be explained by the family environment. In isolation, education has a much smaller effect.

Honestly, I think one of the reasons why many young women are choosing not to have children is because people like you continue to conflate concepts such as "motherhood" with lifestyle choices such as "being a SAHM".

If I had grown up with the idea that I might have to choose between motherhood and career, I would probably have chosen career, despite always having known that I wanted to be a parent. Fortunately for me, my own SAHP mother was at pains to teach me that I didn't need to make that choice.

I’ve noticed this too OP and I think like you say it’s a ‘I’m one of the cool girls, I’m not like them’ type thing.

It’s not at all about anyones individual choices to have or not have children but there is a definitely a distain for mothers (not fathers though LOL).

I wonder if it's different when the norm was for larger households with all the different ages and more of the economy being family run businesses. Even as a childless adult babies and children would have just been people that you lived with and helped out with.

Now it's two completely different lifestyles and when you have a baby it's like being sent to the Twilight zone. I've definitely been in a place where I had nothing interesting to say and found my childless friends hard to relate to. I can also see why some people look at mum's living this other life and decide it's not for them.

Not that a large intergenerational household appeals to be but I can see how the small household model divides us.

@joelmillersbackpack - the “ not like the other girls” thing reminded me of something my DD has noticed. She’s 10 and reads a lot and has remarked that EVERY female heroine in modern books is someone who wants to be an adventurer/scientist/explorer etc and just doesn't care that everyone else wants her to grow up and get married and have children. They always have messy hair (and a sister or best friend who is immaculate and who she gets compared to) and loves to climb trees and get muddy. DD - who has grown up with a mother who has always worked full time in a profession, who has been encouraged to have a wide range of interests and certainly not shoehorned into anything - is nevertheless a fairly feminine girl who enjoys “girly” pursuits and looking nice! She would also very much like her own family as an adult, and finds the relentless “don’t be like the other girls” messaging a bit alienating.

I think it’s the clash of cultures. We are raised to be told we can make our own decisions and know our own mind. But then lots of people act like a) you should want kids and anything else is strange b) it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do but it also worth it but never really explain why it’s worth it and “you’ll just understand when you are a parent”.

I mean it’s not a very convincing case telling people you know what’s good for them so they should just follow this life path!

The UK doesn't value motherhood particularly - don't get me wrong, there are worse places (I'm looking at you, USA). But the 'urgh having kids ties you down' attitudes, the awful push to drive women back into the workplace, the selfish attitude from grandparents who can't be bothered to look after their own grandchildren ('I've raised my children, it's myyyyy time now!') all contributes to this.

I have made arrangements to retire to look after any future grandchildren full time, as my parents did for me. It's hard work, of course, but the best possible work!

In short - I agree with you, OP.

I agree with you OP, and with a lot of other PP's are saying.
I think there's also this thing where women are told/lead to feel offended if someone even asks them if they want children, especially if they've got a long term male partner.

A married female friend of mine told me about being asked this question and I had to point out that having children is not a strange or bad thing to do... yes not all married straight couples have children and that's fine, but it's not exactly unexpected for them to have children either. It's literally just a question in most cases, it's usually not loaded with the heavy, traditional attitude of 'I'm only asking you so I can have an opportunity to judge you'

Agree with PP about the girlboss trope where every female character sounds the same and I hope more 10 year old girls are getting fed up of it too.

I had to point out that having children is not a strange or bad thing to do

I think a lot of women brought up in a certain era have this thought process that getting pregnant is wrong. Growing up in the 1990s it was endlessly drummed into us that getting pregnant was the absolute worst thing you could ever do. This was obviously to try to stop teenage pregnancies but I know a lot of women of my generation still carry this thought. To the extent that I know married women who are terrified to tell their parents they're pregnant !

I remember the first time I bought a pregnancy test I felt really seedy, I think because on TV you mostly see teenagers or people who have cheated buying them. It was really daft in hindsight.

I used be loosely involved in children's publishing and lol yes at the girlboss tropes. My particular bugbear are the gorgeously illustrated and very dull biographies, which no child wants to read and always include a section of Frida Kahlo for some reason?

I do feel we are really just moving slowly from one rigid paradigm to another and can't seem to celebrate actual diversity of thought and choices for women, it always gets into a us v them on whatever particular debate it is. It's about depressing.

@WhatNoRaisins - yes, the girlboss trope, exactly. Not many characters who are gentle, care about their appearance, maternal but also creative and intellectual with a rich inner life. If you’re pretty and/or motherly you must also be vapid and enjoy a restricted life.

I do feel we are really just moving slowly from one rigid paradigm to another and can't seem to celebrate actual diversity of thought and choices for women

Yes! You expressed this so well!

I remember that the Barbie movie touched upon this; that the “you can be (ie. should aspire to be) president/a rocket scientist/a neurosurgeon!” message can be just alienating as “you should be a mother and a housewife”.