I’m sorry but I can’t quite get my head around your issue with the first article, I didn’t read the article written by Boris’s ex. It is a very real and balanced take on a perplexing conundrum. I will say the same to this as I say to the idea of trans humanism. We are a mammalian species, biological, many of our instincts and responses are hardwired into us, many have a biochemical basis. Many women do get to a certain age and begin to crave reproduction, not all but plenty.
We are designed to procreate in our twenties, that’s when our bodies are at their best reproductive capacity and when the best quality offspring will be produced, that’s just a fact of biology. It’s well known and accepted that a woman’s fertility falls off a cliff when she hits thirty, that’s also a fact of life and the chances of having say a Down’s syndrome child for example, goes through the roof. Like many other species we are also hardwired to pair up, mostly female to male, and to work in groups, that’s just part of millions of years of our evolution.
Decades ago, as feminism itself was evolving, there was a a choice to be made, elevate the position of the female function in society, the biological reality of most females, ie motherhood, or compete with the men. The route mainstream feminism took was to compete with the men. So many of us groaned in despair, we saw the problems that trying to be faux men could cause, nobody would listen. Instead of fighting for recognition and respect for women’s concerns and priorities and the crucial role we play in raising the next generation, middle class and elite women in particular, threw mothers and women who wanted to have children and raise them themselves, under the bus. They had never needed to be hands on mums as they tended to send their children off to boarding school or hand them over to nannies. Working class women have always had to work outside of the home while raising families, usually in menial low paid jobs.
It’s great to have choices, of course it is, but the pendulum swung too hard the other way. Governments took advantage of it and created a society where one wage is nowhere near enough to raise a family on, and now despite what many say, a woman who wants to stay at home and raise her kids is seen as unintelligent, lazy or freeloading. The government also pushes that narrative, particularly to working class women. So many women will say “I’m just a housewife” or “I’m just a stay at home mum”. She’s raising the next generation ffs! She’s not delegating the raising of her children to someone else, the mother child dyad is real and it’s important, or it should be.
If you are a working mother raising a family then what quality time are you spending with your children every day, are you taking the time to let them know that you enjoy them, that you listen to their concerns? I doubt it in the two hours between getting home from work and their bedtime. Many children are parked in front of the tv or handed an iPad. Most working mothers are frazzled, many are working full time and still doing the bulk of the child rearing and household chores. They are usually the ones getting up in the night when the child’s unwell, they are the ones arranging play dates and making costumes for the school play or taking the child to Brownies or Cubs. Women really were sold the idea of having it all, especially in the eighties and nineties, with its sharp corporate suits, shoulder pads and all. Adverts, soaps etc, all selling the idea of the have it all working mum. None of it based in reality.
The chickens are coming home to roost as many of us knew that they would. Men are now colonising womanhood and actual women have been relegated to being an idea in a mans head, dresses, long hair and make up, things we saw our randy boyfriends do during the glam rock era. Women are being replaced on committees by men who have gone through male puberty and whose lived experience has been totally male, they are being relied on to provide a “ female point of view” as if they could have any real knowledge or experience of what that would be. It’s ludicrous and is a direct result of modern so called feminism, that thinks it’s role is to fight for everyone except women and especially not mothers, it prefers to erase us.
I see so many of my childless friends cast envious eyes at me when I’m surrounded by my children and my grandchildren, there are times I envy their holidays and days out but I know that some of them are filled with regret, they did want kids but they were busy building careers and just never got round to it, now they feel that they made a mistake. For some lucky women it works out but they are probably the exception rather than the rule, too many have discovered that you really can’t have it all.
Sorry for the essay, but it just drives me nuts that women seem to be going backwards in terms of rights, freedoms and quality of life. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.