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When someone says they do not want a child, it means they do not want to be the nanny, teacher, parent, cook, doctor, driver, therapist, friend, confidante, and the hundred other roles a parent is expected to play within one day.
I recently wrote a post on instagram about how motherhood is romanticized and I immediately got a bunch of messages from men who were extremely taken aback that I could dismiss motherhood and compare it to materialistic things.
I have two dogs, help my partner co-parent and consider myself a very maternal person (whatever that means… in my dictionary it means I will ask you if you ate lunch). Why do people assume that women who are childfree or advocate childfree values are like the witch from any generic fairytale?
When someone says they do not want a child – what they mean is – I do not want to be the nanny, the teacher, the parent, the cook, the doctor, the driver, the therapist, the friend, the confidante and the hundred other roles a parent is expected to play within one day.
They do not mean that children are ugly, unworthy creatures to walk on this planet and that nobody should be reproducing. How hard is this to understand? Well some people shouldn’t be reproducing but that’s for another day.
Why do men like mothers so much? Or so they say – but we still live in a society where women above a certain age are almost invisible. Men pretend to support older women and mothers only in the inboxes of otherwise young(ish) girls who are trying to be rebellious – in most other times – they genuinely do not give two hoots about any woman who is older than a fetus – they are automatically considered aunties/kezhavis.
The thing is – I have tremendous respect for women who are mothers. It is a lot of hard work and our society is a shit place to be a mother. There are no privileges to living in a way that conforms to the patriarchal society, and I know its not a walk in the park for anyone playing that role- they will worship you for bringing life on this planet and have a party on your behalf while you change diapers.
However, what is this perversion of dismissing any woman who questions motherhood or in general the status quo? What is this expectation that any woman, rebellious or otherwise, will toe the line and not call you out on how you romanticize motherhood just to extract more free labour? Time is up. Women are questioning everything. Motherhood included.
Image source: a still from the short film Ghar ki Murgi
A marketing graduate from the Indian School Of Business, Nandhitha is passionate about writing. She loves to write about the world around her and also enjoys dabbling with fiction/poetry. read more...
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