This Childcentric World
I posted this on a horse forum (of all places to post a CF type rant…) in a topic that was discussing why people can’t seem to understand the lack of desire to have children. These are my thoughts on that lovely subject..
Society reveres having kids. Pregnancy and childbirth is seen as the ultimate..and sometimes *only* right of passage for women. If you don’t have kids or subscribe to the idea that having children is the most wonderful thing on the planet; you’re weird, selfish, sick, immature and any number of things that people can come up with.
The baby/child worship and centricity in this world is sickening and very disturbing. I saw a commercial about cervical cancer the other day, and the first thing mentioned was how “she may not be able to have kids”. That’s devastating? How about the fact that she may DIE. That it could KILL HER. Media/doctors/etc tell people to quit smoking for your children, lose weight for your children, fight the cancer for you children. What about yourself? What about wanting to live a long and healthy life for YOURSELF?
I recently went to the local Women’s Health Clinic to get a low cost IUD. I saw close to 40-50 women in that their EACH time I was there. And every.single.one had at least one child with them, was pregnant, or was talking about their children. ALL of these women were in their late teens/early twenties. One of the nurses told me I was the most intelligent young women she had ever seen working there – and she’d been working there for YEARS. How sad is that? 40 women per day, 5 days a week is 200 women a week. 200 women is roughly 800 women per month. 9600 women a year. Out of almost 10,000 women. I was the most intelligent young women she’d come across in that clinic. That’s sad. That’s heartbreaking.
If society didn’t worship babies and motherhood, if choosing to not have children was seen as a valid choice was actually portrayed in the media; I bet more women would wait. Wait until they had finished school, were financially stable and in loving, long term relationships (and that doesn’t mean they HAVE to be married). I bet there would be less children in this world being beaten, abused and killed by parents that believed the lie that it’s different when their your own. It’s NOT always different, sometimes, most of the time, it’s the same.
Lest anyone think I hate children and motherhood; I don’t. I think kids can be awesome. I can’t wait to share my passion and love for horses with a child (not my own, someone else’s!) I think mothers; the ones that give of themselves selflessly and don’t except praise and congratulations and worship everywhere they turn; are wonderful. I think they make the world a better place by raising productive members of society.
