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

I am concerned about any link to this though:

I hated oral contraception and it made me ill. I've just always been careful and lucky to be with someone who respected that.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were links to the trends described in this thread and being "hormone free."

Doctors warn about social media link to abortion rise www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66671765

Great comment

It is not " weird or backwards" to want or to have children; it is literally the purpose of male/female relationships at the deepest of biological levels - and biology remains a driving force in human beings.

Many children are borne out of the love between a man and a woman and the instinctive desire that can arise from that to have a child. I didn't grow up imagining having children at all.....in fact I never saw myself as married and with children, when a child myself. Children have arrived out of relationship - and yes, women do usually bear the weight of most of that for obvious reasons of pregnancy and childbirth, and from breasfeeding and also, quite often, from a desire to be with the child when it very young - if possible.

I'm not sure how doing what your body is designed to do is somehow un-feminist? When younger I really got in to what I would call 'Goddess Feminism'. The feminism that was centred in the experience of being female; in the power of the female body; its cycles, its sexuality and fertility. 'Equality feminism' is all well and good - and obviously women should be paid the same for doing the same work, but at the same time there are sexed differences linked to the above which do often mean that women make different choices - and why should they not be supported in those choices?

I note that lots of young couples now get a dog. There are so many dogs around. People seem to use them as child substitutes. A desire to nurture ( to have a focus outside of the couple itself)does tend to arise out relationships

This sums up nicely how I feel about this.

Great post @RebelliousCow - I’ve never heard of Goddess Feminisim before, love that concept.

So much for mums being worshipped. It now comes out that they are a selfish drain on your resources and to blame for all the ills of the world. On a feminist board too!

We have very different views on this.
I don’t believe biology pushes people to have children, it’s mostly a want.
People can still make choices and are in control of themselves.
Often times these ’biology/urge/it’s what humans blindly do’ are used as an excuse to shame single and childfree women (fulfilm your purpose you dirty woman) and also excuse that the homophobes and rape apologist use (it is/isin’t natural).

Many children are borne out of the love between a man and a woman
And many more are not.

I donmt believe women’s worth and purpose is to be a wife and a mother.
That’s how misogynists view women.

Trust me, many people just simply don’t want kids. The desire does not exist. You know how you just intrinsically know you don’t want cancer or to lose a limb or go skydiving? You don’t have to consider it because the desire is not there? That’s how I feel about having kids.

I however accept that many others do want kids and find a lot of joy and fulfilment in parenthood. I’m as sure as I can be without actually doing it that I wouldn’t have the same experience but I’m happy for people who have the family they want. Why can’t you extend the same acceptance to childfree people rather than try and impose your own reasoning on why they don’t have kids and infer they must want them deep down? Why do you think your values are inherently better? Isn’t it worthy of celebration that women have a choice now and aren’t just shunted into marriage and children as a matter of course whether they like it or not? You don’t have to understand or share the values of the childfree but it’s no less worthy of respect and celebration than you and your family values.

Your disdain for mothers is now clear

If you believe a teenage girls who thinks that getting pregnant will give her a flat and a chance to escape from an abusive family, or overcrowded flat has made a ‘free choice’ then you fail to understand feminism.

If you think all women are in ‘control of themselves’ and free to make choices then you are incredibly naïve.

If you exclude women who chose to be a wife and mother from your feminism then it isn’t feminism.

Quite often we are given the idea that being a woman is necessarily oppressive; that there is no value, nor enjoyment in traditional female roles or pastimes; that being a woman is a confining and limiting experience and that liberation can only come through assimilation into the workforce and through pursuing certain types of lifestyle.

Of course there are downsides to every choice we make. When choosing one path, we are not choosing another path - and every path has its own restrictions and negative effects. But there is, and can be, great value in having children and being more home centred ( and liberation too) maybe giving up work or only working P/T in the early years - but that often requires a supportive partner to enable it.

i've been a young single parent, and also a married parent. At different stages I've gone back into education and training; worked P/T; worked full time and now spend a lot of time looking after a granddaughter ( which I really enjoy and appreciate - and which permits my daughter who is a single parent - to work and to have days off). And in every above circumstance I've always managed to be able to do some of what I want, and some of what I enjoy.

Often fulfillment comes through focusing on what you can contribute to others, and to society, rather than just being narrowly focused on self pleasuring.

Just because you've not experineced the drive to procreate doesn't mean it is not a thing. It clearly is. When you say it is just about " wanting" it makes it seem very shallow and self centred - but it isn't. It arises from a deeper instinctual urge and there can be a great satisfaction in fulfilling that.

On a purely practical level children are the future in a way that dogs aren't. Children are the society of the future. It is they that will be creators and inventors, carers and entertainers, and one day we will all be dependent on other people having had children. In fact we already are.

Can you not see your own misogyny in some of the things you say?

Isn’t it best then that procreating is left to the people who want to do it and are committed to doing a good job? The people who don’t do it because they don’t want it and have enough self awareness to recognise they wouldn’t like it and wouldn’t be a good parent are surely doing as much of a service to society by not raising a generation of unwanted children

Many childfree people do this in other ways though - I’ve volunteered with the homeless for example. Many parents don’t actually give anything to the wider society beyond their family.

@yeahthisisit

I don’t believe biology pushes people to have children, it’s mostly a want.
People can still make choices and are in control of themselves.
Often times these ’biology/urge/it’s what humans blindly do’ are used as an excuse to shame single and childfree women (fulfilm your purpose you dirty woman) and also excuse that the homophobes and rape apologist use (it is/isin’t natural)
Do you really think humans are so divorced from the rest of nature that we don't have biological urges in the same way that all other living creatures do? The biological urges may not be universally felt in equal measure by everyone, but to pretend they don't exist and aren't a powerful influence on us is just bizarre. Literally almost everything we do is driven by an underlying biological urge.

Reproduction is obviously a strong biological urge for many. You only have to look at the number of much wanted children born in impractical circumstances to see that people's desire to have babies often trumps logic and rationale. It doesn't make you strange or weird to not have this biological drive, in the same way it is totally ok to not be subject to other common biological desires such as the desire to have sex or indulge in sugary foods. What is weird though is to deny that most people have these desires and that is because biology has programmed us that way to ensure our species survives.

Many children are borne out of the love between a man and a woman
And many more are not
Ridiculous statement! Where is your proof that 'many more' children are not borne out of love between a man and a woman?

I donmt believe women’s worth and purpose is to be a wife and a mother.
That’s how misogynists view women
I agree, but I think that many women have a biological desire to be a mother and this should be recognised and promoted in the feminist movement in the same way that it should be recognised that many women have a desire for a career and this should also be recognised and promoted.

Of course! There is no compulsion to have children if you don't have that compuslion or if it doesn'r arise for whatever reason.

What is going on here ( this thread) is resistance to the idea that being a mother or looking after a home and family is automatically negative, restrictive and unliberating - which does tend to be a very common sentiment that is being pushed on young people these days.

Personally I can see the roots of transgender ideology in this rejection of female roles and of motherhood.

It is also interesting that for many older transitioning AGP - 'being a woman' ha s an entirely sexual focus - these men never want to do the hard work of childrearing and domestic responsibility.

Having children and raising them gives a huge amount to society. It is required for society to have any future. Volunteering with the homeless is good, but there is no chance that you are doing as many hours of that as mothers do in raising their children (because it is invariably mothers who do so). Discounting these hours of care is misogyny.

No, I agree! It is important to have a goal and a contribution that is beyond oneself. Too much self focus is not healthy - as personal desires, by nature, are never fully satiated.

If you have well turned out, well balanced children - that can be a great contribution in itself. And then being involved with grandchildren, likewise.

@RebelliousCow
*What is going on here ( this thread) is resistanceto the idea that being a mother or looking after a home and family is automatically negative, restrictive and unliberating - which does tend to be a very common sentiment that is being pushed on young people these days.

Personally I can see the roots of transgender ideology in this rejection of female roles and of motherhood*
I have got into many arguments on these boards because I dared to suggest that women as a class have a stronger biological drive to care for their children than men. I have been repeatedly told that any observable and quantifiable differences were due solely to social conditioning and absolutely nothing to do with sex based differences. Even though these trends were present across almost all countries and cultures and even throughout the animal kingdom!

I always thought the people that thought social conditioning explained all sex based differences were basically suffering from internalised misogyny, because they clearly thought that acknowledging biological difference would mean that women's female traits would inevitably be considered worse and inferior. It was much simpler to achieve equality if we all pretended that women and men could just be socialised to want exactly the same things and behave in the same way. The truth is that if we do accept that men and women have innate biological differences in their psychology as well as as their physiology, then equality becomes far more complex and difficult to achieve. Are we trying to achieve the same outcomes for men and women or to enable men and women the same opportunities to achieve the outcomes they want? So if women as a class have a stronger desire to have children and to look after those children, society needs to do more to support this rather than assuming that all women want to rush back to work ASAP and work long hours whilst their children are very little.

Theer are lots of men who actively do want to have children and a family, and there are many men who are good with children and are very nuturing - but I do agree with you that, in general, women tend to experience a far more intense maternal drive - after the child is born. If all goes well - the bonding process can move mountains.

Skimming this thread it feels to me like some people resent that some women choose motherhood.
The idea of choice is that each person gets to choose for themselves. One person doesn't get to choose what's best for everyone.
I like the concept of young women having more choices as society improves, but criticising them if you think they made the wrong choice seems regressive. A person can make a choice and it doesn't work out, and maybe they change their mind and try other options and see how those work out. That's called life.

The idea that people letting other know their choices and how those are going is fine. The more different choices that young women are exposed to the better, if for no other reason than to highlight how many options there are.

The way of judging if a choice is good is how much happiness results from that choice, both for the person making the choice and those around them. The metric is not if some rando on the internet approves.

Ok you’re jumping to some wild conclusions here - I didn’t discount the hours mothers do or compare motherhood directly to volunteering with the homeless. Of course they’re two vastly different things. I actually think society should be way more supportive of mothers by introducing things like free or heavily subsidised childcare, flexible working as standard, crèches on site at big companies, and a narrative shift to men being equal parents and picking up the same slack that tends to fall to women. I’m very in favour of the scandi model which makes genuine choice possible.

It shouldn’t be a given that all of the caring and home responsibilities fall to women as default, any more than it should be acceptable that men opt out of parenting completely. If a couple have chosen this dynamic then fair enough (but I don’t think it’s a choice made in a vacuum away from societal expectations and limitations). Obviously men can’t breastfeed so there’s some things they can’t do, but I do think there should be a baseline expectation of equal parenting and this facilitated better by society. I’d be happy for my childfree person’s taxes to go towards better childcare provision, for example.

I’m going on a tangent now but I really rebuke your misogyny accusation. I’m afraid I don’t think simply birthing a child is a service to society in and of itself, though. Perhaps that child will meaningfully contribute to society, perhaps they won’t - do most of us really do much that genuinely makes the world a better place? Me included - I’m sure my volunteering didn’t really make a dent in systemic issues. That child might be a murderer or a brain surgeon or a receptionist - you can’t argue they all have the same value.

@RebelliousCow
Theer are lots of men who actively do want to have children and a family, and there are many men who are good with children and are very nuturing - but I do agree with you that, in general, women tend to experience a far more intense maternal drive - after the child is born. If all goes well - the bonding process can move mountains
Exactly, there are plenty of women that don't want children or want to be a super involved parent or caregiver and there are plenty of men that do want children and want to be a super involved parent and caregiver. At a population level though, the string trend is that women have a greater desire to have the children in the first place and then spend more time raising them.

If we want to get anywhere with feminism and equality, then we do have to acknowledge these trends and look at how we support women in achieving their life goals rather than assuming that women should be happy with exactly the same things as men.

That child might be a murderer or a brain surgeon or a receptionist - you can’t argue they all have the same value.

Different children have different values? So presumable my disabled nephew has very little value?