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medpundit |
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Thursday, June 06, 2002This has been going on for as long as women have been having children. Mary Chestnut commented on it in her diary, written during the Civil War: "I did Mrs. Browne a kindness. I told those women that she was childless now, but that she had lost three children. I hated to leave her all alone. Women have such a contempt for a childless wife. Now they will be all sympathy and kindness. I took away "her reproach among women." Things haven't changed much in the one hundred and forty odd years since she wrote those words. Despite all of our gains in the world, women still reproach one another for their reproductive choices. It's often subtle, but it's there nonetheless. Just look around you at the next large family gathering you go to. If you happen to have among you a woman who has no children after a year or two of marriage, watch how the other women treat her. They'll all gather together in a group, talking, making meal preparations, or cleaning up after a meal. At first, the childless woman will join them, but she'll quickly be driven from the group because they will simply ignore her. This isn't just a matter of conversation topics. Those women aren't exclusively talking about children and motherhood. It's insulting to women to suggest that they can't discuss topics beyond the domestic once they have children. It's equally insulting to suggest that the childless woman can't discuss domestic issues. The reason it happens is that, sadly, for a significant number of women, the only measure of adulthood is motherhood. They won't recognize that childless woman as a grown up, even if she is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The most astonishing and troubling aspect of this attitude among women is its source. When I was pregnant with my first child I was told by countless women that having the baby would be "the greatest thing I ever did." They didn't mean the challenging and time-consuming task of raising a child. They meant the actual physical act of having the child. For some reason, they think that surviving the pain and suffering of childbirth is the pinnacle of human achievement. It isn't. Any mammal can push a baby out of its body. There's no denying that labor is painful and ardurous, and that the act of delivering a baby into the world is hard work, but it doesn't confer greatness. And it isn't some rite of passage that has to be endured to turn a girl into a woman. I wish there was some easy way to change this attitude, of taking away our reproaches; but it's so deeply ingrained that there is no easy way of eradicating it. So, what I do, is make sure my daughter knows that happiness does not depend on marriage and motherhood, in the hopes that when she encounters the contempt of women with children she'll have the fortitude to ignore it. And when I'm with a group of women, and the division between those with children and those without becomes apparent, I join the childless. If nothing else, it gets me out of washing the dishes. posted by Sydney on 6/06/2002 08:44:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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