To be concerned about trad/Conservative Influencers

[sleighbells00]

Does anyone feel concerned by the trad/conservative influencers targeting young people with these sorts of messages? I came across this video on YouTube, basically about how motherhood should not be a choice but that all women should fulfill this role. I love being a mother but I would hate for a young girl/woman to stumble across this and feel that her only path in life revolves around having children, women should live the lives that bring them happiness and fulfillment.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7mqAp-tDI&t=55s&pp=ygUQY2xhc3NpY2FsbHkgYWJieQ%3D%3D

A little as the young women I know, including niece, really don't want children and I also query if they will be able to afford the lifestyle my generation have had (gen x). Nothing fancy but simply getting on the property ladder etc.

There's always been misogynistic men but I fear that the internet has bred more. Porn has ruined many.

At the same time I can see why some young girls may actually move towards more conservative ideals in order to reject all the above.

I gotta be honest, my generation at least from what I experienced was very much raised with "don't have children" hammered into us. Education, job, money, career, success, the girl boss narrative basically.
As someone who very much wanted/wants a family of my own, it scared me away from it for a long time due to guilt, feeling like it was naughty or bad or something.
I think I'd genuinely have loved something like this (not watched the full thing just yet) - preferably not so religious or "you don't have a choice" militant about it in approach - but it would've been nice to have seen that it's okay not to want to be career driven - And to be fair at the same time that career mentality is so pushed and so everywhere, that my immediate reaction is just "good for you".

If that's what they believe in, I don't see any harm in talking about their beliefs.
As long as they're not pushing anyone into it or forcing anyone, I don't see the issue and would've welcomed seeing more options for what life could be.

My children are getting bombarded with anti-motherhood messages all the time and I keep getting quizzed on whether I regret being a mother. The ‘child-free’ thing is taking over kids social media - seems to be a concerted campaign- it’s widespread and even changing mumsnet with them demanding their own board. I didn’t watch the link, but I would be pleased if my kids got some positive motherhood messages through all the anti-child/anti-family stuff.

Well it's a lovely fiction but I will be telling my daughters to have a job and financial independence. Women need those to actually have choices.

The kind of fantasy, possibly kinky idea of trad or surrender wives is a modern choice. And because you can vote, have credit or get a degree you can get out of it if you like, but that is hard. This is the bit that is not seen, and it's the part you have remember.

I found that 'my body, my choice' seems to have worked. I have a child but nobody forced me.

There are some very odd people and movements that have gained a foothold through tictok and such, so I guess anything is possible.

That being said, I don't see this being taken up in a huge way.

In general, I am for people saying what they think and presenting their arguments. Overall, I don't think that motherhood is fulfilling and worthwhile is the cultural message that most girls are hearing much.

I don't think this video is going to make a dent in centuries worth of female social conditioning.

Thank you for all your replies everyone!

Nothing has changed.
Mothers are still worshiped and being a mother and a wife is still the best thing woman can be.
No idea why some pretend it isin’t (and has always been) a thing
Manu women are highly misogynystic, this are just one sample of that.
It’s sad for them.
I don’t like when they pressure and shame other women/girls to so the same.

I wouldn't say motherhood is worshipped.
Not having children is definitely judged harshly. But so is being a working mother. So is being a stay at home mother etc. Very often by other women. I don't usually like the "feminism is about choice" line of thinking but motherhood is one area where we could do with more. (And an actual recognition that since 80% of women wil have children maybe society can do more to support especially those at the lower end of the scale.) But that's different to the YouTube/tiktok videos which usually focus on:

1. Woman reaches 30 and becomes childless old hag. Hah hah hah serves her right for not getting a man and kids sooner. Fake concern.
2. Population COLLAPSE imminent. Feminism to blame
3. Why women are actually much happier and less depressed if they embrace tradwifedom.

Motherhood is very definitely NOT worshipped. Even on mumsnet you see comments like ‘you want special treatment because you squeezed out a child?’ The gender ideology movement is particularly dismissive towards mothers - erasing the word ‘mother’, presenting mothers as a malign force and seeking to estrange children from them.

Agreed! The anti children/anti motherhood sentiments are coming from many differnt angles. Personally find it very misanthropic and anti-life.

Young women are continually having it suggested that having children ruins your life/your figure/your sex drive and motherhood is seen in necessarily negative and limiting ways. And climate activists are suggesting we shouldn't have children because of over-population.

This, I think, adds to the 'pro choice' fervour whereby you see crowds of young women screaming " what do we want - abortion!; when do we want it - now!". Access to abortion is, of course, incredibly important - but it is not a positive life choice, so much as a life belt to be used only when in very difficult circumstances.

Worshipped? Can I get some of that please? Not much evidence of it around here.

There are all sorts of extreme views available on the internet. This is just one of them. Some women will always be more maternal or aspire to have a more traditional role than others. Thank goodness we have a choice, contraception and a vote now.

The anti child messages also tend to be very geared towards middle class people and lifestyles. Travelling the world, building a career, eating out, festivals, partying - until well into your thirties. Meanwhile working class people still get married earlier and have children earlier too - same the world over.

I didn't have maternal feelings until i was pregnant and actually had children. Children came as a result of a relationship with a man.

Sometimes I cynically, think that the attempt to erase motherhood, and women's inevitable link to it is part of the wider transhumanist/transgender agenda. The thinking being something along the lines of - if being a woman has got nothing to do with being pregnant or motherhood, and is just a 'quirk' of biology - then it must be possible to, either ,transcend sex altogether ( transhumanism) or that 'womanhood' is open to anyone who identifies with it ( transgendersim).

However, simultaneously there is a concerted campaign to enable womb transplants into male bodies - as well as dystopian visions of babies being born in laboratories - or within the bodies of brain dead 'gestational carriers'.

i think femaleness is associated with the earth and its natural cycles, and its inevitable limitations. Motherhood is seen as constraining and limiting; one has to put one's own ego aside and focus on others....and none of this is compatible with a philosophy or vision of life which is centred on the Self and on self fulfilment and "living one's best life" - whereby the best life is always wholly individualistic in nature.

I would be reluctant to judge young women about a reluctance to have children or settle down. The fact is that this does come with serious downsides and society is keyed up for these women to take on the strain of domestic work with it. It upsets some but I think it reveals further just how poor a deal it can be, and there is nothing wrong in making choices on that basis.

Transgenderism has to divorce womanhood from motherhood because men cannot be mothers so without divorcing the two it is a barrier that shows clearly that they can never be women. Reality breaks through.

BLM movement also sought the destruction of the nuclear family - the removal of children from the influence of mothers.

Tuition fee debt and property prices are the biggest factors in the decision to have children in this country, not online influencers.

But there is never a perfect time to have children. I think there is now a tendency to think that everything has to be perfectly set up and situated before you can have a child. But I do agree about the importance of having a home - a stable base. You don't want to be in a house share ( unless consciously chosen) when you have children.

I was a single parent and did actually live in house shares with other women and children - but it was far from ideal or easy.

Check out the childfree board to read about the hatred that childfree women experience.

They are women, of course they experience hatred, all women do.

But this is directed specifically at their refusal to have children (the way good and proper women displaying correct femininity should).

As opposed to having children whilst single, having children too young, having children too old, taking children on a plane, taking children on a bus, working whilst having children, not working whilst having children, parking in baby and child parking spaces, having children with different fathers, supporting children after they turn 18, wanting to send them to private school, not wanting to send them to private school, taking children on holiday, having too many children, having only one child, having children despite them needing to share a room, asking for childcare support….

I’ve got young kids and the instagram algorithms know, so I get a lot of lighthearted “kids are hard” videos which always make my chuckle and are well appreciated. But my goodness the comments from the anti child brigade!!! It’s so frustrating. There appears to be a cohort out there completely obsessed with the narrative of hate towards childbearing. And you’ve only got to spend 2 minutes on Reddit to see the culture of child hating over there.

Kids are fucking awesome. There’s always going to be women in every generation that don’t want kids or don’t end up having them for whatever reason, but it makes me sad there might be teenagers growing up now that might have otherwise wanted and had them who won’t.