The parents vs. childfree battle: why are we fighting it?
I read a blog entry on a childfree website that was followed by a comment from a woman who went on for some time about how physically disgusting she thought pregnant women were. She wrote that only the child’s father should have to be subjected to the sight of the woman’s bulging abdomen. (It’s likely this woman is tokophobic, but even so...)
Too often (not most of the time, but often enough), the tone used by some of the childfree when talking about parents is one of not-even-remotely-veiled contempt.
They (again, some, not all) will refer to parents as “breeders” — scientifically accurate, yes, but offensive nonetheless — and to their children as crotchfruit, crotchdroppings, semen demons, etc.
Parents’ joy over their children, the issues they face as parents, and even the fact that they chose to become parents is cause for ridicule among a certain childfree population.
What I don’t understand is why.
I’m more than aware of how emotionally exhausting (even just annoying) it can be to have society and the media subtly, but consistently, reminding me that as a (moderately) healthy woman with a functioning uterus, I should probably have a seventeen-year-old child by now.
I know many women are probably feeling threatened (as should men, by the way, because we women don’t make babies all by ourselves) by people with political power who, given the chance, would enthusiastically remove a woman’s right to prevent pregnancy and/or childbirth.
But where is all this anger for anyone and everyone who has kids coming from?
I’ve always liked to think of childfree women as people who relish their freedom and their free time, who are happy about the choice they’ve made, and who will defend that choice when it’s questioned or criticized.
But seeing many of them subjecting parents in general to the same kind of judgment and ridicule they hate to be the targets of confuses me. I might expect it from someone who’s just come into their choice and is feeling tender and defensive (it’s a little bit like being a teenager in love who views all adults as the enemy saying, “You don’t know what love is!”), or from someone who’s being attacked at that moment by someone specific (whether a person, TV show, or blog), but when it comes from those who have been childfree for a while and who seem to be attacking parents just to attack parents, it’s baffling.
Sure, most of us will probably see a parent pushing one child in a stroller and dragging the other by the hand and think, “I can’t tell you how happy I am to not be you,” but who doesn’t think that about anyone they see living a life, or doing a thing, they’re relieved to not be living or doing themselves?
But this is not a logical reason to attack parents just for wanting to be parents.
When we who are childfree are attacked by people who think we’re not being the right kind of women for not building babies in our wombs, we first feel justifiably incensed, and we probably then make any number of assumptions about the people who are angry with us, because we honestly can’t fathom why our decision, which has nothing to do with anyone but us, is one they feel justified to criticize.
Some of the assumptions we make about those people (some may be on target, some may not):
1.They have antiquated notions about what a woman’s role “should” be
2. They’re miserable, and so they want us to be miserable, too
3. They secretly envy us
4. They see their role as parents as unavoidable, and therefore self-sacrificing, heroic, and noble, but not necessarily joyful; they wonder why they had to do it and we didn’t
Whatever the reason for someone’s attack on our choice, I wholeheartedly agree that it deserves our rebuttal. Our fiery ire.
But “it” is that specific attacker or group of attackers, not all parents, wannabe parents, and pregnant women. What did they ever do to us?
And what did our own parents do to deserve that kind of universal distaste for their choice to produce us? (I’m not addressing antinatalists, here.)
What assumptions — and I’m not saying they’re accurate — do you suppose parents might make to explain why some childfree hate them and their offspring? Maybe:
1. We still aren’t sure about our choice, so when we see people with children, we feel insecure and lash out to feel more powerful and in control
2. We feel guilty about our choice (when you’re raised believing having children is just what you’re “supposed to do,” guilt over not doing it can be a side-effect), so when we see people with children or think about parents, we’re reminded of what horrible people others must think we are, and we lash out in self-defense
3. We view parents as fitting into a certain mold and living a certain life (in other words, we have a bit of a prejudice), and everything about what we imagine it is is so distasteful to us (minivans, shuttling kids around, dragging kids through supermarkets, having “parental” opinions about everything on the planet — “Ban books! Ban music! Ban sex education ! Think of the CHILDREN!”) that it makes us cringe, and we’re compelled to express that distaste
4. We secretly want children, but we don’t want to want them
5. We want them, but we’re incapable of having them, so we call ourselves “childfree” to fake it until we make it, in the meantime seething with envy when we see parents with children on their shoulders (←I knew that woman)
Every childfree person’s reasons for spitting vitriol at parents and/or children are probably unique to them, and very personal. But the way I see it, if you’re a happy, confident, childfree person, you have no reason to be angry at someone just for being a parent. (Leave my dad alone!)
We chose this childfree life (if I’m not mistaken) in large part because we’re very attracted to the absence of child-related stress, so it seems counter-intuitive to put so much negative energy toward thinking about, fuming over, judging, and criticizing people who have children in general.
So, I’d like to call a truce.
To those angry with the childfree: Seek help. Explore your inner self. Discover what it is about how we live our lives that so offends you, get over it, and find more joy in your own life.
To those who hate people who have or want children: Do the same.
Naturally, the battle will go on among the individuals who have and share their strong opinions in a public forum, but as a childfree woman on the side of the attacked childfree (when we’re attacked), I’d like to ask us to take the high road. Defend when, and only when, attacked, and when firing back, fire at the actual attacker, not at the neighboring village they sometimes hold block parties with. They didn’t do anything.
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Kristen Tsetsi is a 1/3 founding non-mother of Childfree Girls and the author of The Age of the Child: When a pro-life Constitutional amendment leads to a birth control ban — life sentences for abortion, police investigations of “suspicious” miscarriages — politicians start finding babies abandoned on their doorsteps. That’s just the beginning. “It’s rare to find a novel that portrays childfree women at all and, if they do, they are often assigned very stereotypical characteristics. This is not the case in The Age of the Child.” — Brittany Brolley, RinkyDINK Life | “An exciting drama that illuminates the hypocrisies of our time without flinching.” — Alan Davis, author of So Bravely Vegetative
