Mothers and non-mothers are women just the same

While that term is an extreme example, it’s an example nonetheless of increasing hostility towards motherhood. A few days ago on Twitter, I spotted a conversation about taking kids to restaurants, and whether excluding children from public spaces was justifiable. Some women expressed the need to have space free from children because they spend all day around them. More surprising were the salty replies. Replies like: “I hate kids.”

Wait – isn’t that the narrative we don’t want child-free women to be burdened with? Women are maligned for not having children and rejecting motherhood. They’re called cold, selfish and unfeminine. Odd then that some would voluntarily wear the mantle of those words, giving the detractors all the ammo they need.

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It’s OK to not like being around kids – it’s an exhausting and demanding task to teach someone how to be a person – but that is rarely the tone of what’s being expressed. What I hear coming through in these conversations are generalisations and stereotypes that would not be appropriate if applied to any other marginalised group.

This sentiment is not peculiar to feminism, nor is it common – though it is one I’ve seen pop up increasingly in feminist spaces over the last few years. Spaces where I’ve come to expect a more thoughtful, more compassionate and empathetic perspective on the world. Yet all have discussions with deliberately child-free people and many feel more than happy to use the strong words even though they know I’m a mother. Ragging on children seems to sit in opposition to the values that the feminist movement embodies, generally speaking. It’s not that feminists are the only ones saying this, more that it runs contrary to the politics they typically express. When you exclude kids from space, you exclude mothers and carers, who have to work damn hard just to get to that space in the first place. Although the family can be a trap and has absorbed women’s potential and talents for centuries, the family unit persists because we don’t live in a feminist utopia.

While more women are choosing to remain child-free, plenty will still get married, have babies, get divorced or find themselves parenting alone. These women still need feminism as long as the “working conditions” leave her doing the lion’s share in the home. These women still need feminism because of their careers and earning potential nosedive when they become a mother, and their social lives contract too.

We’re acculturated into a society where motherhood is the gold standard for a woman’s life, whether we subscribe to that belief or not. Because of that standard all women, regardless of whether they have had or intend never to have children, are positioned in relation to motherhood. That’s how society understands women. And of course, that’s why it’s frustrating for intentionally childless women to be read against a standard that they have no intention of ever meeting, and to be judged for choosing to do something other than reproduce.

A woman is never seen just as an individual, it is always in relation to the feminine-coded goods and services she is supposed to provide as a spouse, a mother, a carer. I am all for women choosing not to pay up on a bargain they never consciously entered. I’ll be the first to cheer you if you say parenthood isn’t the zenith of a woman’s life. Preach, sister.

But, because of this positioning of women in relation to motherhood, there is a tendency towards polarisation, of mothers versus non-mothers, which becomes adversarial. Of course, this is not the full picture, binaries rarely, if ever, reflect the complexity and nuance of real life. Plenty of women became mothers when they didn’t choose to, plenty of women would love to have children but can’t. Plenty of women don’t want to have children at all. But making these distinctions between ourselves cuts us off from the benefits we can bring to each other’s lives. When I hear people saying they hate kids, I can’t help but wonder if they really mean it. They’re such strong words to fall on someone who’s just learning how to be a person. And I’ve met plenty of brilliant, well-mannered children who are better behaved in public than adults, are just as capable of being rude and insufferable as a toddler having a bad day.

I get that the pressure to conform to gender roles can provoke a visceral reaction against the expectation that all women want to or should want to have children – but the choice of words doesn’t reflect that sentiment. Those words are freighted with unpleasantness, the type that would not be tolerated were it any other group of people. Yet somehow hating kids, being disgusted by them is given a pass. And frankly, it comes across as more than a little mean-spirited.

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I’ve always found it sad that we live in a culture that doesn’t embrace children, where family life in public has to be perfect or it’s unwelcome. Children only learn how to behave in public if they’re given a chance to learn what’s expected of them.

You can not want to have kids but still treat them with respect and dignity. You can think motherhood is a bad deal for women and still care about the conditions that women parent within. You can want more from your life than a child, that doesn’t mean that having children is not important to some women or should be sniffed at by those who choose a different path.

No woman should feel judged for not having children, but neither should mothers, or their children be judged for who they are. It’s a nasty, divisive and un-sisterly. Have kids, don’t have kids, whatever makes you happy. But be mindful of that blind spot outside your own experience.