“You’ll change your mind when you’re older”, they’ll say, trying to compose themselves from the shock – no, utter inconceivability of what I just said.
By their gaping mouths and wide eyes, you’d think I’d just said that I kicked puppies for sport or thought that Nickleback was a good musician. However, when talking to an older woman, as has happened many times before, I said something that, in their eyes, was so much worse. I said that I didn’t want kids. Not now, not ever.
Inevitably, if an older woman is speaking to a younger woman, the topic of when you will ‘settle down’ and have children will come up. It’s thought that no matter what amazing things you achieve you won’t get that storybook ‘completeness’ in your life until you settle down in a nice house with a nice husband and nice children.
The phrase ‘settle down’ in itself is a weird one to me, as it implies that everything in my life is fleeting and transient, and that the only sense of permanency I can hope for is when I eventually hear the pitter patter of tiny feet and trim my dear husband’s calloused toenails day after day.
One of the worst things about society’s absolute insistence that women can’t be sleep easy unless they have children is the fact that it suggests that a woman’s happiness and achievement is contingent on the existence of others. It suggests that anything she makes for herself pales in comparison, and that it is only through serving others as a mother or a wife that she can find any meaning in life. I don’t think I need to tell you how backwards of an idea that is.
The truth is, if being sterilised was a procedure that was freely available and not hugely stigmatised at my age, I absolutely wouldn’t hesitate in getting it done. I might be 22, but I’ve changed enough of my siblings nappies and tutored enough surly teenagers to know that when I’m thirty, forty, whatever, I will seriously have no regrets about not having children.
“the idea of women choosing to live for themselves rather than other people is still such a taboo topic.”
I’ve been called ‘barren’, ‘selfish’ and even been told that I will ‘die alone’ and will ‘never find a husband’ for my decision. Well, jokes on them – I don’t want to get married either.
I find it really peculiar that, in 2020, the idea of women choosing to live for themselves rather than other people is still such a taboo topic. It suggests to me that, in some ways, society isn’t as progressive as we like to think it is. Believe it or not, women are capable of finding happiness and meaning within themselves and outside of the home.
Charlotte Colombo
Featured image courtesy of StockSnap via Pixabay.
