You know something I’d really like to see in the world?
Less of people feeling like they have to have children for the sake of their partner.
As a child-free cisgender woman, I’ve often heard the argument “but what if you meet the perfect man and he wants children?” and it is the most manipulative, romanticised bunch of crap I’ve ever seen. This whole “sacrifice your bodily autonomy for the person you loves sake!” because goddamnit there are enough unwanted children in the world.
You think that someone magically agreeing to have children for their partners sake is going to erase them not wanting children? You think thats going to somehow take away the goddamn fear? You think they’re going to be cured of their indifference or dislike towards having children because their partner wants them? Fuck that.
Instead, some child is going to grow up with one parent, who deep down, no matter how far fucking down they bury it, didn’t want children. They’re going to grow up with one parent who might one day wish they had never made that choice. One parent, who wishes that they’d pursued their dreams rather then the overly romanticised “you’ll love children when you have them” crap. And thats a fuckton of a burden for a child to bear. Because the chances are these people who wanted to be child-free, won’t be able to avoid making mistakes in their parenting that stemmed from their original feelings. Chances are, it could impact their whole goddamn relationship for the rest of their lives.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a chance a person who agreed to have children for their partners sake, will look back in several years time and go “I made the right choice” and feel happy and elated about the choice to have children on their partners consent. But is that slim chance, that probably small option, worth all the fucking manipulation and romanticising of parenthood? Worth them potentially fucking up their relationship and their family because they heard manipulative crap from people who had no right in their reproductive choices?
I’ve met and befriended people who have already made that choice; people who did not want children, but will for their partners sake. I’m also the result of one of those choices.
I grew up with a mother who, although loves me, and has tried her best for me, has had to sacrifice her dreams and needs and wants for my goddamn sake, and she has told me for years now how she never wanted children, how I was unintentional (contraceptive failure), how she didn’t have an abortion because she believed it had no place in a marriage, and how she hasn’t had a decent job since I was born and slaved her ass off.
I love my mother. She loves me. But hell sometimes I wish, for her sake, for mine and even my brother’s, that she had made the choice all those years ago, to forgo having children and pursue her goddamn dreams like she wanted to, and I wouldn’t have had to grow up with guilt.
You know what I’d like to fucking see? A change in the way we view parenting, the way we view abortion, the way we view gender roles in society, the way we view reproductive choices and the way we view responsibility. And an end to filling people’s heads with emotional, romanticised, manipulative crap on the basis that parenthood is the ultimatum to an existence.
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