A couple of days ago, an article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled “Why having a baby isn’t the pinnacle of a woman’s life”. In it, Clem Bastow lamented that, having reached the end of her twenties with no sign of a childbearing desire, her immediate friends and family continually question her choices and she receives unsolicited warnings that she’s failing to fulfil her role as a woman and that she’ll be sorry in later years. At the time I am writing this, the article has generated 402 online comments and 41 tweets, many of them downright nasty. Why do we care so much about other people’s procreative choices? Is judging other’s choices necessary to make us feel better about our own? Or are we all the victims of a collective evolutionary urge to encourage the survival of the species?
When I was young, when I thought about it at all, I thought that one grew up, finished school, perhaps went to university, perhaps got a job in a bank, pretty soon got married, pretty soon (but not too soon!) after that, had children. Live more, or less, happily ever after. In the world where I grew up, that just seemed to be the natural order of things. But when I look around me now, that traditional path is represented by a minority of my immediate friends and family, and is certainly not represented in my own circumstances. I suspect that it wasn’t really representative back then, either. So why do we keep acting as though it is?
Feminism, technology, and economics have conspired to give us more choices than ever. We can have a baby the old-fashioned way. We can have a baby and a career. We can have a career, have a baby, then have another career. We can have one baby, then another, then another, then another. We can fall pregnant by accident and have a baby, or not. We can adopt, we can foster. We can do all of it with partners, or without. We can have no babies. All of these choices are valid. None of them deserve to be judged by people who’ve done differently.
We should recognise though, that every choice, by its nature, involves loss. It may simply be the loss of the choice, once you’ve made it, but when it comes to reproduction, it’s likely to involve more than that. For every woman who says that birth and motherhood is a profound and miraculous experience, there’s almost certainly one who found it confronting, painful, and confusing. For every woman who reaches menopause having happily remained childless, there’ll be another living with an element of regret. In either case, given our propensity for criticism and judgement, the second person is not likely to speak up about it, and will be left to cope with their feelings in isolation. Perhaps we need to find a way to give each other a break.
Medicare rebates are available for women with concerns about a current or recent pregnancy. Counselling is non-directive and supportive. Phone Phoenix Holistic Centre on 02 9386 1225 for an appointment or please send me an email to heather@mindsightpsychology.com.au if you have any questions.
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