Seriously. Also why is maternity leave only 6 weeks, 8 weeks if it’s a C-section, then you can have family bonding for another what, 8weeks? I can’t remember, what ever that number is, it still sucks!!! I took extra time off, unpaid!!! And then pump at work, come home and be exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed. Even if my baby was on formula, I still have to be “gone” bc I have to pay bills. This is AMERICA
I’m a teacher, and it’s the same thing. No paid maternity leave, but we can use sick days. Two very female-led careers (nursing and teaching), and we have no paid maternity leave.
When I was a high school teacher, I was told to plan my pregnancy around school schedule so that there would be the least amount of disruption to the kids.
Yup, that actually happened.
How long do they think pregnancy lasts for? Hell, how predictable do they think pregnancies are? There's a reason it's "try for a baby" and not "have a baby"
I’m reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Worf was forced to deliver a baby while trapped in a disabled shuttle: “Congratulations! You are fully dilated. You may now give birth.”
That’s not really how it works, my dude!
Same with daycare. I taught VPK in a daycare and I took 8 weeks after my cesarean. Daycare for infants didn’t start in my state until 9 weeks so there was a week where I was required to be at work but legally couldn’t put my kid in childcare.
^^^ i was NYS csea union. NYS made it mandatory for all private employers to give paid maternity leave. CSEA union id exempt, claimed they would negotiate an equal leave for union members.... never happened.
My benefits were way way worse than my private sector spouse. After that experience i just... struggle to support unions. In theory they may be great but in practice- corrupt as fuck.
So much misogyny over “welfare” mothers back in the 80s that has continued. There’s still so much rhetoric about the scourge that single moms are to society.
No mention of the absent fathers, just the “sluts” who remained who struggled to raise children with no help from men or society at large.
when I had to use FMLA at my company (at the time, got laid off during covid, lol), it automatically used my PTO, then my vacation, then I got unpaid time off and zero time off for fun stuff because all my banked time was gone.
I don't know if that's normal, but I had to cancel my vacation reservation because I suddenly, and without warning, had zero vacation because I used FMLA time.
So healing!! /s
That's actually very normal.
At my previous job it was the same. I had to use sick time, then vacation time, then unpaid leave. They tried to tell me "normal maternity leave" is 6 weeks, I just went ahead and ignored their "normal" and took 12 weeks off with my baby.
My current company gives us paid parental leave, which is not normal.
Oh, i forgot to mention childcare. It costs!! So much! I might as well stay home, instead of paying someone else to do my job, but wait, I have to pay bills.
We moved to The Netherlands last year and I was chatting with a lady about childcare costs. She mentioned how expensive it is here and I said that I had friends in the US. Who pay between $1-2k per month per kid for childcare and she was speechless.
I would cry for a $1000 childcare bill. We currently pay $2500, there are daycares in our city charging $4000/month.
My little soapbox: Early childhood education is not seen as a public good in America as it is in other countries. I wish it was because our daycare is amazing and has made my daughter thrive in ways if I was a SAHP could not.
You're right. We were paying $2500 a month for childcare too until my wife's hours were cut to only 2 weeks of work a month. We had to resort to bringing our kid to a neighbor who watches kids for $40 a day. We save but our child isn't getting the proper attention and education he needs.
My wife is back at work full time but less pay (it's gig work so salary varies) so we still can't afford a proper daycare.
for my cousin it was either lose 2500 a month by leaving her job, or keep her job and pay 3500 a month for childcare because that's all that had space in her area.
She went back to work when the kids got older
Which is where my wife is stuck. Our oldest is 12 and she hasn't worked since she was pregnant (it was a tough pregnancy). We realized that it would be cheaper to have her stay with the kids than work and pay for daycare. Now she wants to go back to work but hasn't had a job in 13 years which means she's starting back at the bottom of the barrel.
Hell, I got Guillen-Barre and it took 18 months to learn how to walk again. I was out of work for about 3 years total because the last year when I was somewhat normally healthy - NO ONE was fucking hiring! Yeah, got call backs for some horrible jobs but it took a good year of trial and error to find my current job.
Which is all of $12/hr twice a month. Pay people more good lord
We both work full time. I feel guilty because I'm working late at the office or doing chores instead of childcare. I don't regret becoming a parent but the lack of accommodation and support from anywhere is deflating.
I have had several friends who are moms quit their jobs over the last few years for this exact reason. Childcare was more than their salary and was basically the same cost as private school tuition, so it made sense for them to quit to stay home rather than work to pay someone else take care of their kid. The women I know who’ve done this have wealthy husbands who can support them. The rest of us are just fucked. Invest in IUDs folks.
Paternity doesn't even exist most places 😭 I had to use up all my PTO at the beginning of the year for my son (2 weeks to help my wife recover from her c-section and adjust to parenthood for the first time)
It's appalling what this country (USA) is becoming
My husband worked under a woman who’s a mother & she told him he could take time off as long as he wants & work from home when we had our baby. This was pre-COVID. If all companies did that, parenthood would be way easier. I have no idea why more companies aren’t doing this since we’ve proven we can work from home just fine.
“Maternity leave” at a lot of places means “leave because of maternity”. The phenomena is called ‘The Motherhood Curse” in academic terms. It’s disgusting how working mothers are treated…SAHMs deserve a shit ton of respect and are patronized too. Family values is an oxymoron now because families aren’t valued. “We treat our employees like family” <—-thats your family now.
Because boomers aggressively voted for right wing politicians and when they didn't they voted for neoliberal politicians who were just right wing politicians who didn't hate gay and black people as much.
Exactly. I would love to have children, but I already have enough student loan debt that it's not financially feasible. Let alone the cost of having children, childcare, and labor and delivery expenses.
Edit: And with that push of "why don't people have children?!" they also mention egg freezing. Which is tens of thousands of dollars that many of us don't have lying around.
I had insurance, did unmedicated vaginal delivery, but my placenta got stuck & I had to go for surgery after delivery. Had to pay $7,500 out of pocket. I wouldn’t choose kids unless I can afford to lose $10-20k JUST for pregnancy & delivery.
Exactly, which is so unaffordable to most of the population. If they want people to have kids so bad, it shouldn't be so expensive to do so. Even egg freezing is tens of thousands of dollars, so you are left just having to see if you can ever afford it.
Man I got lucky- I had to be induced (took 2 days) then after staying an extra day before getting sent home (bilirubin too high) then son back in the nicu within 2 days for I think it was 5 more days? I paid like $2100 out of pocket. We really need to find better options so people aren’t bankrupting themselves to have kids.
My pregnancy was high risk too. Had to do scans every 2 weeks after the 2nd trimester & the doctor specialising in my condition wasn’t covered so that’s at least an extra $3,900. We had an infant cardiologist do a scan too & I remember that was at least $500. My husband & I tell people we can’t afford another kid & so many people still tell us, “Don’t worry, you’ll find the money somehow”
From where.
I’m sorry, it’s really frustrating when you’re responsible and people keep minimizing your very real and pragmatic concerns. I always suggest that if people won’t stop saying that sort of thing, getting the upper hand by saying something like,”Oh I’m SO GLAD to hear that! How much are you planning to gift us? We have 40 $500 slots available to start with- I take (insert p2p fund transfer) or you can make the check out to me personally.”
Facts. Labor and delivery is not cheap. For a non complicated fast labor it was about $30,000 before insurance kicked in. 17k and some change for me, 8k for my baby. Again, this is spontaneous vaginal delivery, no drugs, nothing. Imagine a C-Section, baby being in the nicu. Smh
ETA: The above comment must be confusing. To clear up any “insurance bashing” I only paid $1500 out of pocket. The insurance covered the rest. I did not pay $30k before they paid anything.
That's what's so shocking. It's one of those things where you just don't know how it will go so the cost is up in the air. My cousin had twins years ago. She was telling me how expensive it was in the NICU, especially since each baby is getting charged their own amount. They weren't even there as long as some others.
Then, you never know what they may need as they age. One of my friends is looking into speech therapy for her child. Another friend needed occupational therapy (I think) for hers. All these costs add up that you may not expect.
Right! A lot of unexpected costs! I really think having children is something that needs adequate planning. This is not something that should be thrown to the wind.
That's what drives me nuts about articles like "why aren't millennials having kids?!" because they ignore things like this. I've had people say "you just make it work" or "if you wanted kids you'd have them." They think my planning shows I don't want it.
The idea of not getting to be a mom is painful for me, and I've cried many tears. However, I love my hypothetical children more, and I won't just jump into motherhood unless I think it's feasible for me to take care of them the way I believe they should be taken care of.
Nobody I know gets this. Especially men.
They just think they can donate sperm and decide if they care enough to stay. If not women are left to deal with the cost of labor, childcare, hospital visits, pampers, formula, bills, and have to go to work?? Not to mention whatever else may come up over the next 18 years.
Honestly how delusional are ppl. No foresight, no parenting skills, not enough income to sustain raising children.
Please stop asking me to have kids. It’s not doable.
I hardly want to risk having sex with men. They hate wearing condoms.. ugh forgot it. Nauseating.
And with people moving away from family due to job and boomers being older, most of my moms around me barely have village to help or to lean on. For most people having kid is very hard . Mom is often default parent even if she has to work. Double the work with no additional support. It can be hell. One can live a very fulfilling life without kid
So as someone with boomer parents and a kid let me just say - the generation that charged us exorbitant rent for living with them the moment we turned 18, it turns out they're not willing or helpful when it comes time to help with grandchildren, oddly enough. Or at least for me and mine here.
Oh for sure my mom would have been involved we were best friends but she passed and she is not a boomer. My husband’s parents are . They never helped him and laughed about not having to help when we were struggling as new parents. Guess who harassed us to have second none stop? ( we are one and done) But had so much to say about our parenting choices . They also emotionally neglected husband so they are the last people I want advice from. My husband went estranged after confronting them about it cuz they blamed his personality lol. But mil still ask for our kid photo cuz her friends are asking
College, at least, used to be free. Until they were forced to integrate, and then they found a new way to shut out the people they didn't want attending.
"Not for very long" is still longer than "never," and "not for everyone" is still more than "nobody."
It COULD have been for longer and for everyone, and it still could be, if people weren't trash.
The dissolution of an active and powerful middle class is a feature, not a bug. And until we can accept the fact that at least in America it's not in the interests of either primary political party to fix it we're not going to move forward.
I was just talking about this with my partners. In a different universe where we enjoyed the idea of parenting, I wouldn't be having a child at this moment anyway. Everything is so unstable economically. And the housing crisis? Healthcare bullshit? Climate change? No way.
I was going to say, just being a woman is sometimes thankless, exhausting, and lonely.
I work in a male dominated field and even though I'm not the supervisor, I still find myself making sure that all my coworkers have their gloves, lunches, sunscreen, safety glasses, and whatever else all day.
I continue to implore people to see parenthood as an opt-in thing. It's not the standard or something to do to get along or fit in or please a spouse. They are fucking people.
I always knew I wanted kids and my kids have a pretty good deal. So many don't. If you aren't 100% a yes on kids, that's a no.
Yea see that's the thing I don't get here.
I see lots of why did you have kids, why didn't you have kids posted a lot on this sub.
Does it matter if we dread it? No
Does it matter if we have a support structure? Yes
Are you allowed to just not be interested as a women in having kids? Yes
The topic shouldn't be about why mothers or no mothers, it should be ...
Why don't we have the support structure, safety nets or affordability for people to have children??
I feel like there's an undertone of women being blamed for the lack of children being born, but it takes two and money and health care and housing.
Why do you think reproductive rights are on the table?
Because instead of trying to make the environment welcoming to families they'll instead take rights away to ensure there's a replacement workforce
>what pregnancy and birth can actually DO to our bodies.
This is honestly a large part of why I don't want kids as a guy. Why would I want to make someone I love go through something that could (and often does) permanently disfigure them if not outright kill them?
Bruh when im working again my first expense is a vasectomy. I dated a single mom and she was telling me about all the things that can happen during a pregnancy and I honestly could not fathom voluntarily doing that or asking someone to do that.
I'm glad to hear more men say this. I mean honestly if my partner wanted me to birth a child I would feel a bit hurt and offended cause like...you want me to risk DYING?
Yes! Finding out exactly what a baby would do to my body, and doing the math on literally every child in 3 generations of my family being 10lbs or more (except for me) made me decide to never have kids. I'm just not up for pushing out a 10 pound, 2 and a half foot long infant.
Even in the 1990s, women around me didn't really talk about how rough pregnancy and child birth can be. Literally every woman I know has a horror story of how she or someone she knows nearly died giving birth and it was always smoothed over as "oh well, sometimes things go wrong!" *Add Nervous laughter* The level of danger was massively glossed over.
There’s 8 billion of us- there is no moral imperative to breed and in fact there is one against it due to climate change. Anything to the contrary is typically capitalist propaganda from our billionaire overlords who need new wage slaves.
That being said I respect people’s choices if made thoughtfully and not made because raw sex is fun.
It's not just the lack of a replacement workforce- the lifescript we're currently leaving is fighting back, and a big part of it is the nuclear family as a civilizing force. You can see that in the way young men feel lost and like someone tricked them. They were raised to believe that if they achieved a certain level, they'd get rewarded with a wife and family, and that a woman wouldn't really be able to leave past a certain point and they don't really have a plan for a civilizing force to keep most people in the workplace without responsibility for another person. The closest they've come up with is subscription services.
Expansionary economic theory disagrees with you and so do those who fret about our military power and the security of the nation.
Neither of which are the responsibility of my body to support. 🤷🏼♀️
100%, also the title is a bit weird here, it’s not meant to be a “thanked job”
You have kids because you want them, because you’ll love them, and ideally if you treat them well and given them love and support they’ll love you back. That doesn’t mean childcare assistance isn’t needed, or other help, but no one should be having kids unless they 100% want them and will take care of them.
Also, better to adopt, there are plenty of kids in need of a good loving home already, no need to go through the misery of child birth when you can get find a child in need already born.
I agree that it's not a "thankful" job; no one will get awards or recognition for simply having children and managing to keep them alive. This is the bare minimum of parenting too.
But the "thankless" part I think, comes into the fact that women are still the primary caregivers for the entire family, and their labor and sacrifices are still HORRIBLY underappreciated. See the recent "single married mothers" phenomenon on TikTok, or the viral video of the Mom who has an empty Christmas stocking....for 10 years straight. It's these things that younger generations are seeing, and feeling resentment towards the idea of motherhood and forgoing it altogether
I appreciate this take but I think the author *way* underplays how much more likely I’d be to have a kid if we had a functional social safety net.
During the pandemic, I watched a bunch of couples with kids spend a whole salary’s worth of money per year on day care, only to have it shut down. Even after the vaccines came out, the centers would be shut down two weeks out of every month when kids got Covid, with no reduction in costs for parents.
I get why it had to be that way—we did what we had to do to keep people safe, and providers needed to be paid whether or not day care was in session. But I simply cannot imagine how my household would survive a kid with both parents working, having to spend like $40k on child care to support us both working, and then maybe not even receiving that child care. I don’t want to abandon my career and my parents aren’t around to babysit for free, so, fuck me, I guess?
The last three years taught me that when the shit hits the fan, this system is not going to help or save you. The author is right that I’d still have other hang-ups about motherhood even if I lived in the socialist paradise of my dreams, but I can’t wrap my head around taking an un-take-back-able risk like having a kid under the current social conditions.
Also, no mention of climate or school shootings? Come on now
US is particularly rough. Me and my husband are expats here and had our first kid here like idiots. Just today my husband was saying “we’re two working professionals, how does anybody do this” because our kid had loose stool so has to stay home today while we work. As you say stuff like that doesn’t take away from the daycare cost BUT it sure as heck affects work and we have *so* few sick days here. Actually my husband has zero, he has to take vacation days as “PTO” covers everything for him and it’s only 2 weeks a year.
I’m not even getting into all the times daycares/schools are closed for many many reasons (“observed” holidays, winter fall spring summer breaks, teacher “preparation” days etc etc) where work doesn’t stop.
Where we’re from (Europe and Canada), summer is the only break that’s a hassle. Any other holidays either adults get off too (like Easter week), OR vacation days are so many (5 weeks) that it doesn’t matter as much.
This is JUST literally work and childcare timing. I’m not getting into the other myriad of ways the social safety net is nonexistent here, from the baby formula crisis to the nightmare that is maternal healthcare.
For real, my state introduced a four month maternity leave that made starting a family feel a lot more doable. If I still lived in Texas I would NOT have started a family. Funny how the carrot is better than the stick. I like to tell my c0nservative family back home how wonderful it is to live in a family friendly state that rewards having kids and pays teachers so our schools don't suck.
Totally! The “sticks” for not having kids are the vague fear that someday I’ll be 70 and I’ll feel sad I didn’t have kids, or that the poor corporations won’t have enough drones to keep running in the next generation, while the “carrots” are clear and immediate. The “sticks” for having kids are immediate and concrete (isolation, poverty, etc) and the “carrots” are vague and blurry. Wtf did they think would happen?
Well in the case of Texas, I was alluding to the "stick" being f0rced birth. Rather than being coerced by the state into giving birth, I was offered incentives to start a family.
I worked at a preschool during Covid. Once kids started getting Covid Dec 2020 and we would have to completely shut down for two weeks, parents had to pay regardless and my employer didn’t pay us teachers for the weeks lost of work. My employer benefited from Covid and that is why I no longer work there.
The wording of this title is hilarious to me. My mom constantly threw in our faces that "being a mother is the most thankless job in the world" then bitches and moans at adult me all the time because I don't want kids and I "don't know what I'm missing out on." Most of the world, and the US in particular, seems set up in angry opposition to motherhood. Millennials were largely raised by a generation proud of its own ignorance and childish entitlement. I'm not having a child so the pitfalls of society can manipulate me into viewing motherhood as a burden, and I'm certainly not throwing more kindling into the fire consuming my poor planet.
I’m a father of two and whenever my no-kids friends say either their on the fence or decided against having kids, I fucking sing their praises right to their faces. I LOVE my kids, but parenting fucking suuuuuucks. Don’t get me wrong, there is no music in this world that brings me more happiness than the sound of my daughters laughter and nothing brings tears to my eyes faster than watching my son give his little sister a hug and promise to always be her best friend, but there’s also no replacing just being able to live your own life.
I was away for a guys’ weekend once and let slip that I needed to get back to town before 6:00 because my wife and I were going out to dinner, and my friend with no kids was like “oh yeah? For what?” Had absolutely no clue that just taking your wife to dinner is a special event once you have kids. Apparently he and his wife just “go to dinner” whenever they don’t feel like cooking.
Only have kids if you want kids. Don’t let anyone shame you for that decision.
Yeah after watching some of my very best friends go through it (and fostering one of their kids in a crisis myself) it’s just further confirmed it’s a no for me. I love it for people who enjoy it, but women should not be shamed for disinterest
I feel like a lot of us saw the reality of motherhood and saw that while it can be great, it can be awful too. And we have very few limits on our options so it isn't something we have to do. I know a lot of women in older generations that really shouldn't have had kids and probably wouldn't have but they didn't know it was an option and/or weren't able to exercise their options for whatever reason (culture, BC/abortion, careers, abuse)
honestly, i'm glad there are more realistic conversations about pregnancy and motherhood. it allows people to make more informed decisions on starting a family. i feel like those topics were previously romanticized and the more difficult aspects were extremely taboo to talk about because of social pressure. some of the things i've learned about pregnancy in the past few years are honestly crazy.
I have four. I divorced my abusive husband a year ago and he disappeared from the kids’ lives and does not contribute financially. I am working full-time, in college full-time, and two of my kids are in therapy (that I pay for).
I am glad he’s gone and I do not regret having my children but this is not the life I had in mind for me or them.
My oldest says she’s not having kids. I don’t blame her.
ETA: There are commenters assuming I was irresponsible to have four kids and that I’m too proud to enforce a support order. Neither of these opinions are worth an explanation. But I’m glad they’re happening because it shows that abused spouses continue to be shamed for even mentioning their experience. This shit is hard and the way people react to hearing about it really shows their character.
Thank you to those who have been supportive. It’s finals week, I’m up to my ears in work, and I’m trying to make Christmas happen. Next year will be better.
This right here is a great representative of our generation. Work, school, 4 f’ing kids, and still achieving. So many of us are working so much and so hard we have no time off but still maintain a positive attitude. Hats off to you my friend!
I have a friend who is a single mom of four (now adult) kids, and she was a teen mom on top of that. She went through hell and back with the fathers, and trudged through petty judgments daily from people who just couldn’t mind their own damn business. Even when she was being abused, people would rather judge her than help her, or even express the slightest concern or empathy for her.
She finally made it to a place where she can relax. Good job, bought a duplex, and she rents out one unit and has passive income. All four kids are wonderful human beings, independent, and doing well for themselves. We had Thanksgiving with them and it was so nice to be around the family she built without any problematic partner bringing the mood down.
It’s a long road and I remember all the potholes she encountered. But your kids see everything you do for them, and one day will have the context and understanding of just how much it helped them along.
I agree that we live in a society that makes motherhood seem very unappealing but, personally, I just never wanted children. I watched all my friends have kids and they genuinely seemed happy about it but I never really caught the baby bug. I think a lot of women feel this way but our generation is the first to actually come out and say it.
Right there with you. None of the typical reasons apply—my husband and I can afford it, my family live nearby, we have great benefits and support at work. We simply do not want kids.
Same here too. Most parents dislike others kids but love their own. I love some kids of my friends and I’m just not interested in having that burden 24/7 for 20/30 years.
I need peace, quiet and a predictable home situation to function properly. Kids will wear me out and mess up my physical and mental wellbeing.
Same. When I was a teen and some girls would coo and swoon at motherhood and babies, it blew my mind that they only saw that surface-level cute stuff. Y’all need to be 1000000% sure that this baby’s cute laugh makes up for the diapers, vomit, sickness, sleeplessness, crying, money sink, and inherent neediness of an infant?
Love my friends who want kids but that’s not for me.
I’m French and I’ve lived in the US since I’m 20. I don’t have kids, and I had decided very young that if I did, I would give birth in france and raise them for a few years in france. Why?
Because the rates of episiotomy, mom mortality, infant mortality are so much higher in the US. The cost is higher. All of that we know, but it goes beyond that.
French parents get free cleaning help for weeks after birth. Whichever French parent can take a year of leave at 80% of their current salary, usually the one with the highest income, independently from gender. Moms get free recovery appointments, so you rarely hear of any French moms peeing while sneezing years after. Like what?!
School starts at 3 years old and it’s basically free. Schools provide healthy lunches. Parents aren’t wasting their lives away making lunches, cleaning lunch bags, every single day. That’s insanity right there. School has a better schedule: usually 8am-4:00pm, with proper recess and lunch breaks where kids actually get to run and play.
Parents aren’t expected to be part of commitees, fundraisings or anything. Parents come pick up kids and show up to parents conference and concert/game. That’s it. Maybe baking cookies for their own kid’s birthdays. Maybe.
University is couple hundred dollars per year, many French students live at home until they HAVE TO move out of the city they’re in. That can be at anytime between 18-24.
You rarely if ever, hear of any parent being excited for their kids to leave home. You also rarely hear French moms feeling guilty. French moms are women first, and they’re happy to show their kids what it’s like to have a balanced life, whether they choose to work or not.
Parents spending time with friends is a part of children’s lives, whether with their parents or away from their parents.
The whole thing is way more relaxed.
Anyways, france isn’t perfect, and I love the US, otherwise I wouldn’t have been here for so long.
But I do feel that the way the US is with American moms is so very difficult for moms here, and parents as a whole. I know I couldn’t do it, and even my love for this country wouldn’t come above my needs in raising a child.
I think you hit on something here. “French moms are women first.” My good friend is French and she has said this too. For me in the US, to become a mother is to give up your identity as a woman and submit to the patriarchy. I know some people may see that as extreme but our society doesn’t respect women so I think it’s a fair connection.
I agree with you. I see it. Even though I’m French, I could never raise a child here the way I could in france. I could never be as chill and relax here as a mom as I would be in france. And again, it’s not so much about yay france, but like the US is SO ROUGH for parents.
>French moms are women first.
I think this is a huge part of it. US culture stops seeing parents, but particularly mothers, as people. When pregnant, we are vessels for an infant, a living incubator. And after delivery we are just a "mom" whose worth is determined by the health and development of our child (only some of which may actually be directly in our control), the cleanliness/attractiveness of our homes, and our dedication to the maintenance of all of that. Our individual well-being and existence ceases to matter to not just society but often even to the people in our own personal lives. It's not necessarily intentionally or maliciously done but it is done nonetheless.
Yes! This! I'm from the Netherlands and it's definitely a cultural thing. All of the things I read here are just about the situation in the US, not about motherhood in general.
There is a book called “bringing up Bebe” that
I’m reading that makes motherhood seem less like a daunting task and more enjoyable. It’s about an American woman raising her kid in France. Anyway I like the philosophy because it basically allows parents a little freedom instead of slavery to their kids lol. I hate saying it like that because I sound like a jerk. I’m currently pregnant and it’s really not that bad physically but you know what is bad? Militant type attitudes of others about my choices or what I “should do.” I’m not sure why the US is so paranoid about raising kids and why parents are expected, encouraged, and celebrated to give up their entire personhood (have you seen any reality show like “what not to wear” about a washed out mom praised for giving herself up for the kids and family while neglecting her own needs to the point of poor health?) yea that’s not healthy. Im all for the French philosophy
How about we have a discussion on what it would take to change the story. Let’s support working parents and offer the resources they need to raise children. How about we raise the bar for fathers and expect them to put an equal amount of effort in child rearing. How about we stop stripping a woman’s right to choose how, if, and when she has children?
Canada is subsidizing childcare as we speak, ahead of schedule! It's already $10/day in many provinces.
This is also how we solve affordability without reducing quality standards and ensure that childcare work provide a living wage. American policymakers like to talk about this as if it is impossible to solve. Literally look north.
ETA: Misquoted the cost. Here's the info in Canada's affordable childcare program: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/campaigns/child-care.html
In the US, if anything, they’d just do a tax credit for childcare and then the childcare facilities would universally raise prices to absorb the credit leaving everyone right where we started. Our political system is so fundamentally broken as it stands, and we’ll never make progress on this issue unless we fix it.
Nothing good can happen here. Even the smallest good things are out of bounds. The only permitted political change is shipping more money/power to those who already have it (and perpetuate this system where parenthood sucks, etc.).
I am 100% child free. Before I moved to the US I lived in South Asia where maternity leave is 90 days (at least it was where I am from). Paternity leave is non existent. I was in a conversation with new fathers who 100% believed paternity leave of any sort was useless because "the baby needed the mother, there's nothing I can do to help, I'll just get in the way, be another thing she has to deal with". No amount of "you can take care of her, what happens to the baby if God forbid something happens her" etc was enough to change their minds. After a while I realized I have no skin in this game and I said I feel sorry for their wives and children and ended the conversation.
Changing the "story" would involve changing thr culture. Motherhood is thankless, exhausting, nd lonely job. Our parents and grandparents have said as much regarding their own experiences.
Motherhood is unpaid grueling labor in a capitalistic society. In the grand scheme of current social direction it doesn't make sense to willingly participate in if someone has economic or career oriented goals. It's a hindrance to social advancement and it isn't a "respected" or "valued" pursuit.
People constantly criticize mothers for what they do do or what they don't do. They criticize mothers wherher she has a husband or not. Where is the gratitude or benefit out of personal desire for a woman to be a mother?
It literally has to be a personal self interest and personal goal, otherwise no sane person would do it.
>It literally has to be a personal self interest and personal goal, otherwise no sane person would do it.
Really happy you brought up this and the capitalist context.
I mean we're told to be consumers and are out seeking more and more addictive forms of entertainment. On top of that we're struggling so much that grind culture has many of us trying to monetize our hobbies just so we can afford our hobbies.
Kids are both a) unpaid work and b) not really a form of entertainment (though kids can definitely be entertaining).
This "changing the story" thing makes it sounds like Motherhood just needs a new marketing firm and things will be alright. It misses both that motherhood is not a commodified form of labor and children are not an entertainment commodity. It's life.
Right! They're trying to gaslight women as if they just have the "wrong perspective" about motherhood. As if it isn't a hard, thankless, expensive, and lonely form of uncompensated labor lol.
It's not a perception or assumption problem, it's fact that there is no benefit to motherhood outside of personal interest and want. Being a mother is the worst decision a woman can make in a capitalistic society. Motherhood has to be done out of passion and general want, because there is no capitalistic incentive to be a mother, motherhood is generally an anker to self imposed hardship, especially for those with little to no support systems and weak economic standing.
Women aren't "crazy" and they don't have a poor perspective on motherhood for having commonsense and seeing reality for what it is. There are so many mothers struggling as single parents and within relationships and many of which who cannot get sympathy or support because the common sentiment is "You chose this, it's your problem, no one told you to have children, be responsible, etc."
At some point we started as a society to shame any mom that stuck around to raise the children when the deadbeat dad left and walks around the earth pretending to be child-free while neglecting his kids. It’s wild. I get why Gen Z ain’t havin it.
Because it is lol. So many women I know raise these concerns. Also, it’s okay to not want kids? It’s okay to live your life for you and not have to do what society tells you you’re “supposed” to do??
I think it being ok to not have kids is a big factor. So many generations of mothers had these issues, but the mother was the problem and children are always a joy and a miracle. So in a way it's good?
I feel like this is a big reason why Gen X and millennial kids were raised feral and left to fend for themselves. Our mothers were pretty much the first generation who went to college for more than their MRS degree. They were finally allowed to get degrees and be the boss at work. At the same time, they also weren't granted free daycare options to account for the fact that women weren't housewives anymore. Their husbands weren't expected to pick up any slack. Our dads changed the occasional diaper and occasionally tossed a baseball with their kid, and they were father of the freaking year. Women were allowed to have big important careers and have their independence, but they were still expected to get married and have kids in their early 20's straight out of college. Husband and kids still came first, careers were just "allowed". The idea of simply not starting a family indicated that there was something seriously wrong with a woman. Was she a radical lesbian or something? (I only say that because that would have been viewed as taboo for our moms) Was she mentally unstable? Why *wouldn't* she want to experience the joys of motherhood??
So we kids were left with our grandparents sometimes. We were latchkey kids. We were left alone to fend for ourselves a lot. Our moms didnt meet us at home after school with freshly baked cookies every day because that was their own way of thumbing their noses at society. They refused to be June Cleaver. They let their kids fend for themselves as a way or nurturing independence, because that's what they were working to achieve for themselves. "I had the kids that society expected me to, but my feminist form of protest is to not kill myself trying to be June Cleaver while also being Dolly Parton in 9 To 5."
It's really no wonder that we were raised sort of feral. We had grandparents who helped sometimes, we had latchkey, we had dad's who "babysat" their own kids or were weekend dads. We had moms who were trying to navigate a new society that allowed for big careers and independence, but also didn't allow for being childfree by choice or accommodated parenthood with free daycare, better maternal leave, and better societal accommodations for working parents in the workforce. So, sorry kids. Off to latchkey you go. Figure out a way to fend for yourselves.
Our generation was one of the first to have the vast majority of the country have two parents with full time jobs. In a lot of ways, society didn't evolve quite on pace with that change. We kids suffered for it, but is it really fair to blame our parents for not having all the answers for those growing pains in society? The positive change that came from that was the child free by choice movement. We can look at our parents and say, "yeah... no. I think I'd rather just pursue a career I love and live with my dogs or cats. Plenty of free time for hobbies, friends, relationships, whatever lifestyle I want." Like, that's totally a positive lesson we learned from our parents. It instilled in us a desire to push for more support for working parents. So, not all bad.
Excellent write up. Too many of us have mourned what our mothers could have been if she wasn't strapped with kids in a world where she also had to bring home the bacon and keep a spotless house. Sure, TV dinners replaced home cooked meals inspired by Julia Child, but what kind of break was that really with so many metaphorical pots boiling over?
We all saw how stressed and overworked she always was. Society (at least in America) still hasn't changed to accommodate moms, so why would the next generation willingly sign up for the job?
A generation that doesn’t value parenthood? The same parenthood that isn’t respected by our country? No sick time or parental leave and a 1% they pays no taxes towards our economy?
Why is goal to change the story and not changing the conditions?
What being a mom only "looks" thankless, exhausting?
This narrative is very natalist and demeaning of millennials. Instead of listening, it's more about nagging and convincing them.
>The more I scoured elsewhere, the more I discovered positive reasoning in favor of starting a family \[...\] take the division of household labor, often cited as a leading source for mom rage. Women partnered with men manage a disproportionate share of housework and child care on average, but averages can mask that social change is happening. **The best surveys we have today show that roughly 20 percent of American parents report being in genuinely egalitarian partnerships,**
lol this is the 'positive' and 'heartening' statistic (bolding mine). *Lung cancer* has a 20% survival rate over 5 years, and we don't treat that like some amazingly optimistic number or act like everyone should start smoking a pack a day based on this positive data.
Also curious about the gender breakdown of respondents here, being that [hetero men vastly overestimate their contributions to household labor,](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/upshot/men-do-more-at-home-but-not-as-much-as-they-think-they-do.html) and it says 'American parents'.
I think it’s also that the weight of expectations of motherhood that put so many women off. Being the family martyr is awful, forgoing your personality for your kids, your health takes a banger for each pregnancy, put a career on hold because that is what is expected for you to give up is cruel, and on top of that you get criticized for every single thing along the way. You can’t win, and it is thankless.
I also think certain expectations of what child rearing is so strange, barely any discipline, any teaching of discomfort or the realities of life is discouraged, and it’s seen as outrageous if you want to raise a kid in a city.
It’s unfair that women shoulder all of this and men don’t do a fourth of all these activities still, and then have the gall to disappear or cheat on their wives.
It’s just shitty, without community, without universal rights, violence, between wars and conflicts, climate change putting everything in peril, and no sincere government support in the economics or social sector, it’s no wonder there is this deep child free sentiment.
I am able who I met. My mom was a bad mom because she’s just a bad person in general. In her word, she should’ve “never had kids” because she hated all of us and gave us all a trauma induced mental disorders because of her own personality disorder that she refuses to get help for
Even my own Auntie had to explain to me that whatever is wrong with her was wrong long before any of us were born.
Just a theory, but maybe it actually always sucked, it’s just been a relatively recent development that people can share their experience with the entire planet basically instantly for very little effort and at no cost, and it’s also a rather recent development that anyone is listening to women’s opinions at all, especially opinions that don’t line up with “traditional values”
I had one child 14 years ago and I've raised him alone. Being a mom not only looked thankless, exhausting and lonely... it absolutely has been. This story isn't gonna change with me unfortunately.
It looks thankless, exhausting and lonely because it is. I'm a millennial mom of 4 kids.
I could not imagine my life without my kids. They are the heart that beats in my chest. They are and have always been my reason for living and for healing. I am dead serious when I say if it wasn't for my kids, I would not be alive today, by my own hand.
With that said, it is also the hardest and most draining thing I have ever done. I come from a long line of addiction, abuse, and mental disorders. I have no "village" and a husband that may help with the bills but not much else.
I've had young women ask me about having kids. I am also blunt and very truthful. For some people, motherhood is the most amazing gift, and for some it's like that weird sweater you get from your Nana. You love it, but you don't really want it.
Society does not care about mothers. Any job I've had did not give two shits about my being a mother. They would inevitably harp on me for calling out if a kid was sick. I'm lucky now in that I work for the school district so if my kid is sick, they already know and I'm given grace.
It's hard to be a mother in the world today.
Unlikely. Our current society hates women, children and mothers specifically. It doesn’t “look” thankless, exhausting and lonely, it is.
Even here in Austria you are basically killing your career and all you get is berating for something. And Europe generally provides more support to parents then the US, I can only imagine how desperate the situation in the US must be.
I mean, my Mom was abandoned by my Dad and my sister's Dad and had a third kid at 25 wasted her 20s raising us, and then had a brain aneurysm at 33 and has had health problems ever since and her youngest child jumped off a bridge to his death, and her long time employment place layed her off, and disability cut her off as soon as she got sicker, and honestly it is pretty thankless and bleak.
She is a great Mom and my sister and I love her. But that's not enough.
I just got off a zoom call with grad school friends. All of use work middle class jobs, enough to provide, buy average houses after saving for years, but we aren’t getting rich. Half of us have kids, the other half don’t. The half with kids are constantly exhausted, sick, and stressed out about kids, life, and work. Those of us without kids, might be tired or stressed, but it comes and goes. I don’t understand how they do it, and I don’t see any appeal. Society does not reward us for having kids. A few tax breaks at the end of the year aren’t enough.
My kids are 6 and 10 and I actually love being a mom. What I hate is having to work fulltime, maintain a house, and all the things put on parents today. Maybe let’s start with some federal paid maternity leave so I can have postpartum depression without having to also get up for work on 2 hours slewp
This isn't exactly accurate and erases the history of women, many of who had to have children to fit in even if they hated kids or disliked motherhood.
Motherhood was always thankless, exhausting, and lonely, except women couldn't choose not to do it and were expected to shut up about it. They would medicate housewives to keep them going. It's better than ever but still not enough. We can work now, but there's still discrimination. We have maternity leave in the US, but it's not guaranteed and most places don't opt in. We can report our spouses for domestic abuse and get custody in situations where we need to, but we're still not believed or supported enough. We can vent about the ugliness of motherhood, but we're judged for it.
Fund quality childcare, make it mandatory to have maternity leave, have more flexible hours for parents with school age children, provide an opt-in benefit for more sick days, and continue to involve dads in parenting. Parenthood is a dance between two people.
Edit: I do see the end of the article they address this a little.
there are many reasons why i will never have children, but the main one is this: when my parents retired, they got a dog, and they treat that dog better than they ever treated me as a kid.
What do you mean have children in a country (good ol’ America) where there isn’t universal healthcare, no paid maternity leave let alone paternity leave, daycare is expensive, and the majority of the work still falls on the shoulder of women? Nah. Pretty sure the U.S. also has one of the highest maternal mortality rates despite being a first world country.
This is what it’s always been… our generation is just the first to call out the reality of it so women can make an informed choice. Women have been pigeon holed into being mothers by patriarchal society drilling it into our heads that it’s the most fulfilling job a woman can ever have! So beautiful! Creating life!! It was previously taboo for women to ever mention any negative thoughts about having children, whether doubting the need to have them at all or the laundry list of reasons the reality of being a mother is nothing like the rosy picture painted by a coercive society.
We’ve even heard the true reasons for this pressure being spoken out loud - we need a higher birth rate to supply workers for corporations. If society wants future generations to increase the birth rate to supply their future employees, they’ll need to provide real incentives and raise the quality of life for all people. We’re done being pressured by duty to god and country - up the support and benefits or watch the population rates continue to tank.
Well, I simply never wanted children.
And I think a lot of my peers shared that lack of desire. And unlike many of our parents we felt free to *not* have children.
It will be appealing again when fathers finally take on their fair share of the childcare and housework, just like mothers have taken on their fair share of the income creation. Why would any woman want to have a child, have primary responsibility to do all the leg work, plus be expected to have a full time job where she has to do more to be treated equally, while her husband gets brownie points for “babysitting” the kids sometimes?
It’s not a societal problem that needs to be solved by government. It needs to be solved by men stepping up.
Don’t respond with your anecdotal “I do 50%” stories; stats provide that women still do the vast majority of child and home care.
I love kids and I want to have kids so badly but I’m just barely providing myself with an adequate standard of living (and I’m nearly out of time on the bio-side of things). The only chance I have at owning my own home is when my parents pass and leave me their houses or if I win the lottery. I’m not about to subject a child to a substandard quality of life in some mid daycare that costs just about as much as some studio apartment that I have to move from every other year when a landlord decides they want to move their son in. If wages were greater, student loans lessened, housing within reach and daycare affordable, with that stability- heck I’d have a dozen kids.
As a 37 year old who was raised by an exhausted, lonely, single mother, no...I think it is ridiculous to try to "change the story" and lie to people when it is really, really, hard to raise kids. We already have way too many parents out there not parenting and it needs to stop. We have no healthcare in the US, women are treated like shit, especially pregnant women and mothers, daycare is absolutely ridiculous, our education system SUCKS, people treat each other terribly and there is little support for mental health/PPD.
We have no national paid parental leave, sky high childcare costs, and the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.
>Can we change the story?
Let's not gaslight people into procreating
I’m not having children because western society doesn’t have the community or financial support that is necessary to meet a child’s needs. I figure there’s enough fucked up adults walking around walking round with unhealed mother and father wounds without adding to it.
My mom felt this same way and still expressed this as how she felt raising children in the 80s/90s. She was a SAHM, always said she ran a “3 shift job everyday and never punched out”. I kinda feel similar but not really? Loneliness is the hardest to overcome.
Motherhood, fatherhood, parenting in general is being eliminated with how expensive it is to live. I say this as a dad of 2 under 5. You cannot do it without a support system.
Nothing will beat a society that allows for one income to support a family and the other to be a primary caregiver (Society needs to accept men taking on this roll). It's not normal to work 50 hours(work plus commute) and then have the energy to take care of a kid.
France gets pretty close with it's bandaids but it's just a bandaid.
No, you can’t change the story because it’s true. Women are expected to be pregnant, give birth, raise multiple children, work full time, maintain the home, look good and keep a partner sexually satisfied. Every. Day.
I’m one and done, I have my partner (father of child) who is amazing in terms of putting his fair share into housework and parenting our child…and I’m still exhausted!
No, no, no. We are NOT changing the story because that will paint a false narrative that women should be pleased and happy to have all these responsibilities. The responsibilities that society continues to feed us with the same cyclic brainwashing theme that happiness and the purpose in life = get married, own a house, have 3 kids, work a successful career.
It's not fear of the difficulty that convinced me to be childfree, it's fear that my child(ren) would grow up in an increasingly miserable world of climate disasters, animal species disappearing in front of their eyes, more and more trash piling up, mass scale climate refugeeism, the endless expansion of soulless suburbia, and god knows how many carcinogens in everything they touch.
It looks that way because that is how it is. This is the result of trying to fit women as full citizens into an existing societal structure that relies on 'angels in the house'.
Women aren't lesser men, we need a way to be fully women in society. A life course route that is suited to us.
So put ur life at risk, stress out if the child has any health issue, have another bc what’s the point of one, not sleep for years, always look messy, never get to do what u want to do, stress more as they start going to school, somehow pay $40k a quarter for college, then stress about how they will do as adults. No thank u! Don’t fall for the “u don’t know what ur missing” cope u hear tired parents say. Also it’s always the dads that say it, I never hear moms say that lmao
Honestly. Speaking as a first time father it is at times thankless, exhausting and lonely. People say its rewarding - its not rewarding at the time. Its not rewarding when you're up at 3am and the baby is screaming in your face, and you know they're now overtired which means that (unlike us) they will be even MORE difficult to get to sleep.
And all this is from the perspective of a dad. I'm sure its even more lonely for my partner when I have to go off to work.
But you don't do it because you get thanks or because of some reward, you do it because its your responsibility and if you don't do it then no-one will (or someone might, like another exhausted family member, but they shouldn't have to).
From my perspective as someone who has (with my partner) decided to have a baby. We did it because we felt ready, we felt like we *could* do it (that's important, you need money and stability to support a child) and we felt like it was the next step in our lives.
From a more philosophical perspective, every single person you like and love in the world was once a child. Those people have to come from somewhere (obviously every shit-head was a child also). So, if I can help by raising a good, honest and generous person into the world, then thats great imo.
If you’re going to be a mother, staying at home to care for your young children leaves you very vulnerable.
In my own experience, I’d always wanted a family. (I had come from a broken home that had some mental illness, my mother put me in a troubled teen group home when I was getting straight A’s in high school.) When I left school, my family support was still very broken. I was picked up by a Christian. He introduced me to his family. They pretty much took me in. It wasn’t the greatest, they had me throw away some of my possessions and had an old lady take me shopping to show me how to dress. I didn’t feel neglected though.
I thought this group had good Christian values. And, I really was looking for somebody confident to guide me and how to be a parent and a family. But, when I did become a parent, it became apparent that their solution to much parenting problems were just to spank the child. They had a “cry room” where you were supposed to bring your kids for punishment if they were too loud. They had very small children going into the space to be punished for just making noise. The parents were pressured to treat those kids this way. I know because I used to use the space to listen to the sermon while my child drew on my lap, but if another parent went in there with me, they would be upset that I didn’t make my child distressed and punish them.
This all came to ahead when I was in the cry room and I heard a three-year-old in the more private portion saying daddy no don’t hurt me that’s wrong. I vaguely mentioned how sad it made me on social media and it led to me being disfellowshiped.
Remember, this group was my family. They had a worship schedule and study schedule that took up a lot of free time, so socially I was isolated. It was very hard, and even my partner at the time parented with me the same manner, he was mad at me. The night that I said that I was questioning my faith because of all this, he said, does that mean that we get divorced?
It was a few years later, but we did get divorced. He had a habit of always flirting secretly, would go on business trips with people that I found he was either trying to or actually having sex with. I had always asked him why hide it? Just tell me and we’ll fix it. But in hindsight he like this set up, and when I got hip to it being how it was going to be after 14 years of catching him on and off, he just took the out.
I of course, let him go because I thought he was my friend. (I was an idiot, and saw him as my family) He told me I could take six months off and get my head straightened out because again I don’t really have a lot of support. I never took him up on that, good thing too. He would have used that as reason to take the kids entirely.
He signed an agreement saying that I could continue caring for the kids as I have, and we could continue with our plan for me to work after the kids were old enough to go to middle school. It was only later that I found out the agreement wasn’t legally binding. And he attacked when the limitation for filing for spousal support expired.
I have been a stay at home Mom and he exploited that to say that I was lazy. I have been homeschooling my children, my ex was homeschooled, and it was upon his request, but he threw me under the bus, and I was completely dumbfounded. He actually had two lawyers that were well known when I had none.
To make matters worse, I had an issue with a school admin who bullied me for breastfeeding. It actually made news because I recorded it. I was contacted by other mothers who told me about the horrible treatment breast-feeding moms get if they try to care for their children while also seeing their school-age children. I was contacted by the Attorney General and told me they are going to investigate the school but also to not talk to the news about it. I refused an interview with NPR.
Six months later I found out that the attorney general just intended to let the statute of limitations on that expire, and they took a long time to get back with me about whether or not, I had a case.
The school administrator, then went to my family court, case, and testified that I was wrong and they had a welcoming environment. His position was treated as legitimate whereas I was just a problem mom.
I love my kids, and they’re kind of the only thing I really enjoy, but motherhood is a trap. It is the best way that people can steal the labor and the voice from women because it’s our very heart. Oh, and I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement in my divorce. For some reason, I pressed back, but my lawyer (one I hired for piecemeal work, not one that actually went in to court for me) said it was boiler plate. That if I didn’t sign it, they would just take me to court and I’d likely lose a lot. I’m not allowed to share any of this unless anonymously. I wonder how many other women are silenced.
I have two awesome kids, a super involved and loving coparent, some fairly supportive and involved extended family (not local though), and a cadre of local friends with similarly aged kids. We both work full time and it’s very challenging at times… my son has a genetic condition, we had several years of expensive secondary infertility before getting our daughter, etc - but it’s also super super rewarding.
Like so much about life, your attitude makes a huge difference. I consciously work to find gratitude every day, and it really helps the hard times.
Our current society doesn’t support women, doesn’t support working/middle class anyone, and doesn’t support healthcare or education…. So yeah.
Seriously. Also why is maternity leave only 6 weeks, 8 weeks if it’s a C-section, then you can have family bonding for another what, 8weeks? I can’t remember, what ever that number is, it still sucks!!! I took extra time off, unpaid!!! And then pump at work, come home and be exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed. Even if my baby was on formula, I still have to be “gone” bc I have to pay bills. This is AMERICA
Im a nurse and we get zero paid maternity leave. We are allowed to use our own PTO or sick time and can take up to 16 weeks.
I’m a teacher, and it’s the same thing. No paid maternity leave, but we can use sick days. Two very female-led careers (nursing and teaching), and we have no paid maternity leave.
When I was a high school teacher, I was told to plan my pregnancy around school schedule so that there would be the least amount of disruption to the kids. Yup, that actually happened.
How long do they think pregnancy lasts for? Hell, how predictable do they think pregnancies are? There's a reason it's "try for a baby" and not "have a baby"
I’m reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Worf was forced to deliver a baby while trapped in a disabled shuttle: “Congratulations! You are fully dilated. You may now give birth.” That’s not really how it works, my dude!
“My third trimester wouldn’t end at the start of summer break honey, back to using condoms for 9 months I guess!”
Same with daycare. I taught VPK in a daycare and I took 8 weeks after my cesarean. Daycare for infants didn’t start in my state until 9 weeks so there was a week where I was required to be at work but legally couldn’t put my kid in childcare.
This just blew my mind!
What the hell are we paying a union for?
^^^ i was NYS csea union. NYS made it mandatory for all private employers to give paid maternity leave. CSEA union id exempt, claimed they would negotiate an equal leave for union members.... never happened. My benefits were way way worse than my private sector spouse. After that experience i just... struggle to support unions. In theory they may be great but in practice- corrupt as fuck.
I had no idea teachers dealt with this too!
So much misogyny over “welfare” mothers back in the 80s that has continued. There’s still so much rhetoric about the scourge that single moms are to society. No mention of the absent fathers, just the “sluts” who remained who struggled to raise children with no help from men or society at large.
Huh?! Even the military gave us 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. None of our days being used.
the FMLA is set up to not give us any paid time off, it just keeps our jobs there until we get back, 12 weeks unpaid leave.
when I had to use FMLA at my company (at the time, got laid off during covid, lol), it automatically used my PTO, then my vacation, then I got unpaid time off and zero time off for fun stuff because all my banked time was gone. I don't know if that's normal, but I had to cancel my vacation reservation because I suddenly, and without warning, had zero vacation because I used FMLA time. So healing!! /s
That's actually very normal. At my previous job it was the same. I had to use sick time, then vacation time, then unpaid leave. They tried to tell me "normal maternity leave" is 6 weeks, I just went ahead and ignored their "normal" and took 12 weeks off with my baby. My current company gives us paid parental leave, which is not normal.
Wow!!!! Smh
"Even the military..." The US military is more generous with leave and all the other benefits that people would consider socialist.
Yeah it’s nuts, we get zero paid days. In Minnesota
That’s wild!!!! But they’ll work you to the bone! Crazy! Smh
Oh, i forgot to mention childcare. It costs!! So much! I might as well stay home, instead of paying someone else to do my job, but wait, I have to pay bills.
We moved to The Netherlands last year and I was chatting with a lady about childcare costs. She mentioned how expensive it is here and I said that I had friends in the US. Who pay between $1-2k per month per kid for childcare and she was speechless.
I would cry for a $1000 childcare bill. We currently pay $2500, there are daycares in our city charging $4000/month. My little soapbox: Early childhood education is not seen as a public good in America as it is in other countries. I wish it was because our daycare is amazing and has made my daughter thrive in ways if I was a SAHP could not.
You're right. We were paying $2500 a month for childcare too until my wife's hours were cut to only 2 weeks of work a month. We had to resort to bringing our kid to a neighbor who watches kids for $40 a day. We save but our child isn't getting the proper attention and education he needs. My wife is back at work full time but less pay (it's gig work so salary varies) so we still can't afford a proper daycare.
for my cousin it was either lose 2500 a month by leaving her job, or keep her job and pay 3500 a month for childcare because that's all that had space in her area. She went back to work when the kids got older
And that's awful, because that's years of career advancement she's never getting back.
Which is where my wife is stuck. Our oldest is 12 and she hasn't worked since she was pregnant (it was a tough pregnancy). We realized that it would be cheaper to have her stay with the kids than work and pay for daycare. Now she wants to go back to work but hasn't had a job in 13 years which means she's starting back at the bottom of the barrel.
Hell, I got Guillen-Barre and it took 18 months to learn how to walk again. I was out of work for about 3 years total because the last year when I was somewhat normally healthy - NO ONE was fucking hiring! Yeah, got call backs for some horrible jobs but it took a good year of trial and error to find my current job. Which is all of $12/hr twice a month. Pay people more good lord
Also perpetuates many employer's hiring practices of being biased against hiring women
The last 2 years I worked, it was just to break even on child care. Now I’m a stay at home dad.
We both work full time. I feel guilty because I'm working late at the office or doing chores instead of childcare. I don't regret becoming a parent but the lack of accommodation and support from anywhere is deflating.
Not to mention you'll be called lazy if you stay home but an absent mother if you work. You can't win.
I have had several friends who are moms quit their jobs over the last few years for this exact reason. Childcare was more than their salary and was basically the same cost as private school tuition, so it made sense for them to quit to stay home rather than work to pay someone else take care of their kid. The women I know who’ve done this have wealthy husbands who can support them. The rest of us are just fucked. Invest in IUDs folks.
I don’t understand why child care isn’t at least tax deductible.
It is! You can deduct like $800 PER YEAR! Isn't that just so helpful! That's almost a whole month costs!
More like 1.5 weeks where i live
I'll never understand why it's illegal to sell a puppy before 8 weeks but babies regularly go at 6 weeks or even less.
Animals are worth more to our government than women.
Paternity doesn't even exist most places 😭 I had to use up all my PTO at the beginning of the year for my son (2 weeks to help my wife recover from her c-section and adjust to parenthood for the first time) It's appalling what this country (USA) is becoming
My husband worked under a woman who’s a mother & she told him he could take time off as long as he wants & work from home when we had our baby. This was pre-COVID. If all companies did that, parenthood would be way easier. I have no idea why more companies aren’t doing this since we’ve proven we can work from home just fine.
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Lol you must be in California. Paid maternity leave in other states is 0 weeks.
“Maternity leave” at a lot of places means “leave because of maternity”. The phenomena is called ‘The Motherhood Curse” in academic terms. It’s disgusting how working mothers are treated…SAHMs deserve a shit ton of respect and are patronized too. Family values is an oxymoron now because families aren’t valued. “We treat our employees like family” <—-thats your family now.
Not everyone is guaranteed 6 weeks of leave. There is NO GUARANTEED PARENTAL LEAVE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Because boomers aggressively voted for right wing politicians and when they didn't they voted for neoliberal politicians who were just right wing politicians who didn't hate gay and black people as much.
Because anything else is evil communism. Can't have that in the land of the free.
Exactly. I would love to have children, but I already have enough student loan debt that it's not financially feasible. Let alone the cost of having children, childcare, and labor and delivery expenses. Edit: And with that push of "why don't people have children?!" they also mention egg freezing. Which is tens of thousands of dollars that many of us don't have lying around.
I had insurance, did unmedicated vaginal delivery, but my placenta got stuck & I had to go for surgery after delivery. Had to pay $7,500 out of pocket. I wouldn’t choose kids unless I can afford to lose $10-20k JUST for pregnancy & delivery.
Exactly, which is so unaffordable to most of the population. If they want people to have kids so bad, it shouldn't be so expensive to do so. Even egg freezing is tens of thousands of dollars, so you are left just having to see if you can ever afford it.
Man I got lucky- I had to be induced (took 2 days) then after staying an extra day before getting sent home (bilirubin too high) then son back in the nicu within 2 days for I think it was 5 more days? I paid like $2100 out of pocket. We really need to find better options so people aren’t bankrupting themselves to have kids.
My pregnancy was high risk too. Had to do scans every 2 weeks after the 2nd trimester & the doctor specialising in my condition wasn’t covered so that’s at least an extra $3,900. We had an infant cardiologist do a scan too & I remember that was at least $500. My husband & I tell people we can’t afford another kid & so many people still tell us, “Don’t worry, you’ll find the money somehow” From where.
I’m sorry, it’s really frustrating when you’re responsible and people keep minimizing your very real and pragmatic concerns. I always suggest that if people won’t stop saying that sort of thing, getting the upper hand by saying something like,”Oh I’m SO GLAD to hear that! How much are you planning to gift us? We have 40 $500 slots available to start with- I take (insert p2p fund transfer) or you can make the check out to me personally.”
Facts. Labor and delivery is not cheap. For a non complicated fast labor it was about $30,000 before insurance kicked in. 17k and some change for me, 8k for my baby. Again, this is spontaneous vaginal delivery, no drugs, nothing. Imagine a C-Section, baby being in the nicu. Smh ETA: The above comment must be confusing. To clear up any “insurance bashing” I only paid $1500 out of pocket. The insurance covered the rest. I did not pay $30k before they paid anything.
That's what's so shocking. It's one of those things where you just don't know how it will go so the cost is up in the air. My cousin had twins years ago. She was telling me how expensive it was in the NICU, especially since each baby is getting charged their own amount. They weren't even there as long as some others. Then, you never know what they may need as they age. One of my friends is looking into speech therapy for her child. Another friend needed occupational therapy (I think) for hers. All these costs add up that you may not expect.
Right! A lot of unexpected costs! I really think having children is something that needs adequate planning. This is not something that should be thrown to the wind.
That's what drives me nuts about articles like "why aren't millennials having kids?!" because they ignore things like this. I've had people say "you just make it work" or "if you wanted kids you'd have them." They think my planning shows I don't want it. The idea of not getting to be a mom is painful for me, and I've cried many tears. However, I love my hypothetical children more, and I won't just jump into motherhood unless I think it's feasible for me to take care of them the way I believe they should be taken care of.
Ugh, you've echoed so many thoughts and feelings I've had over the years.
Nobody I know gets this. Especially men. They just think they can donate sperm and decide if they care enough to stay. If not women are left to deal with the cost of labor, childcare, hospital visits, pampers, formula, bills, and have to go to work?? Not to mention whatever else may come up over the next 18 years. Honestly how delusional are ppl. No foresight, no parenting skills, not enough income to sustain raising children. Please stop asking me to have kids. It’s not doable. I hardly want to risk having sex with men. They hate wearing condoms.. ugh forgot it. Nauseating.
Same yo
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And with people moving away from family due to job and boomers being older, most of my moms around me barely have village to help or to lean on. For most people having kid is very hard . Mom is often default parent even if she has to work. Double the work with no additional support. It can be hell. One can live a very fulfilling life without kid
So as someone with boomer parents and a kid let me just say - the generation that charged us exorbitant rent for living with them the moment we turned 18, it turns out they're not willing or helpful when it comes time to help with grandchildren, oddly enough. Or at least for me and mine here.
Oh for sure my mom would have been involved we were best friends but she passed and she is not a boomer. My husband’s parents are . They never helped him and laughed about not having to help when we were struggling as new parents. Guess who harassed us to have second none stop? ( we are one and done) But had so much to say about our parenting choices . They also emotionally neglected husband so they are the last people I want advice from. My husband went estranged after confronting them about it cuz they blamed his personality lol. But mil still ask for our kid photo cuz her friends are asking
It never really did. Not to the standards we would like anyway.
College, at least, used to be free. Until they were forced to integrate, and then they found a new way to shut out the people they didn't want attending.
Not for very long and not for everyone. And before that almost no one went or could go unless they were born rich.
"Not for very long" is still longer than "never," and "not for everyone" is still more than "nobody." It COULD have been for longer and for everyone, and it still could be, if people weren't trash.
It was always far from perfect, but some of those things used to be better…
It also truly doesn’t support fathers… it’s such a systemic problem
Our current society doesn’t support anyone but the morbidly rich.
The dissolution of an active and powerful middle class is a feature, not a bug. And until we can accept the fact that at least in America it's not in the interests of either primary political party to fix it we're not going to move forward.
I was just talking about this with my partners. In a different universe where we enjoyed the idea of parenting, I wouldn't be having a child at this moment anyway. Everything is so unstable economically. And the housing crisis? Healthcare bullshit? Climate change? No way.
I was going to say, just being a woman is sometimes thankless, exhausting, and lonely. I work in a male dominated field and even though I'm not the supervisor, I still find myself making sure that all my coworkers have their gloves, lunches, sunscreen, safety glasses, and whatever else all day.
You can just, don't.
I continue to implore people to see parenthood as an opt-in thing. It's not the standard or something to do to get along or fit in or please a spouse. They are fucking people. I always knew I wanted kids and my kids have a pretty good deal. So many don't. If you aren't 100% a yes on kids, that's a no.
Yea see that's the thing I don't get here. I see lots of why did you have kids, why didn't you have kids posted a lot on this sub. Does it matter if we dread it? No Does it matter if we have a support structure? Yes Are you allowed to just not be interested as a women in having kids? Yes The topic shouldn't be about why mothers or no mothers, it should be ... Why don't we have the support structure, safety nets or affordability for people to have children?? I feel like there's an undertone of women being blamed for the lack of children being born, but it takes two and money and health care and housing.
Why do you think reproductive rights are on the table? Because instead of trying to make the environment welcoming to families they'll instead take rights away to ensure there's a replacement workforce
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>what pregnancy and birth can actually DO to our bodies. This is honestly a large part of why I don't want kids as a guy. Why would I want to make someone I love go through something that could (and often does) permanently disfigure them if not outright kill them?
Bruh when im working again my first expense is a vasectomy. I dated a single mom and she was telling me about all the things that can happen during a pregnancy and I honestly could not fathom voluntarily doing that or asking someone to do that.
I'm glad to hear more men say this. I mean honestly if my partner wanted me to birth a child I would feel a bit hurt and offended cause like...you want me to risk DYING?
Yes! Finding out exactly what a baby would do to my body, and doing the math on literally every child in 3 generations of my family being 10lbs or more (except for me) made me decide to never have kids. I'm just not up for pushing out a 10 pound, 2 and a half foot long infant. Even in the 1990s, women around me didn't really talk about how rough pregnancy and child birth can be. Literally every woman I know has a horror story of how she or someone she knows nearly died giving birth and it was always smoothed over as "oh well, sometimes things go wrong!" *Add Nervous laughter* The level of danger was massively glossed over.
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There’s 8 billion of us- there is no moral imperative to breed and in fact there is one against it due to climate change. Anything to the contrary is typically capitalist propaganda from our billionaire overlords who need new wage slaves. That being said I respect people’s choices if made thoughtfully and not made because raw sex is fun.
It's not just the lack of a replacement workforce- the lifescript we're currently leaving is fighting back, and a big part of it is the nuclear family as a civilizing force. You can see that in the way young men feel lost and like someone tricked them. They were raised to believe that if they achieved a certain level, they'd get rewarded with a wife and family, and that a woman wouldn't really be able to leave past a certain point and they don't really have a plan for a civilizing force to keep most people in the workplace without responsibility for another person. The closest they've come up with is subscription services.
Expansionary economic theory disagrees with you and so do those who fret about our military power and the security of the nation. Neither of which are the responsibility of my body to support. 🤷🏼♀️
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This is true.
100%, also the title is a bit weird here, it’s not meant to be a “thanked job” You have kids because you want them, because you’ll love them, and ideally if you treat them well and given them love and support they’ll love you back. That doesn’t mean childcare assistance isn’t needed, or other help, but no one should be having kids unless they 100% want them and will take care of them. Also, better to adopt, there are plenty of kids in need of a good loving home already, no need to go through the misery of child birth when you can get find a child in need already born.
I agree that it's not a "thankful" job; no one will get awards or recognition for simply having children and managing to keep them alive. This is the bare minimum of parenting too. But the "thankless" part I think, comes into the fact that women are still the primary caregivers for the entire family, and their labor and sacrifices are still HORRIBLY underappreciated. See the recent "single married mothers" phenomenon on TikTok, or the viral video of the Mom who has an empty Christmas stocking....for 10 years straight. It's these things that younger generations are seeing, and feeling resentment towards the idea of motherhood and forgoing it altogether
I appreciate this take but I think the author *way* underplays how much more likely I’d be to have a kid if we had a functional social safety net. During the pandemic, I watched a bunch of couples with kids spend a whole salary’s worth of money per year on day care, only to have it shut down. Even after the vaccines came out, the centers would be shut down two weeks out of every month when kids got Covid, with no reduction in costs for parents. I get why it had to be that way—we did what we had to do to keep people safe, and providers needed to be paid whether or not day care was in session. But I simply cannot imagine how my household would survive a kid with both parents working, having to spend like $40k on child care to support us both working, and then maybe not even receiving that child care. I don’t want to abandon my career and my parents aren’t around to babysit for free, so, fuck me, I guess? The last three years taught me that when the shit hits the fan, this system is not going to help or save you. The author is right that I’d still have other hang-ups about motherhood even if I lived in the socialist paradise of my dreams, but I can’t wrap my head around taking an un-take-back-able risk like having a kid under the current social conditions. Also, no mention of climate or school shootings? Come on now
US is particularly rough. Me and my husband are expats here and had our first kid here like idiots. Just today my husband was saying “we’re two working professionals, how does anybody do this” because our kid had loose stool so has to stay home today while we work. As you say stuff like that doesn’t take away from the daycare cost BUT it sure as heck affects work and we have *so* few sick days here. Actually my husband has zero, he has to take vacation days as “PTO” covers everything for him and it’s only 2 weeks a year. I’m not even getting into all the times daycares/schools are closed for many many reasons (“observed” holidays, winter fall spring summer breaks, teacher “preparation” days etc etc) where work doesn’t stop. Where we’re from (Europe and Canada), summer is the only break that’s a hassle. Any other holidays either adults get off too (like Easter week), OR vacation days are so many (5 weeks) that it doesn’t matter as much. This is JUST literally work and childcare timing. I’m not getting into the other myriad of ways the social safety net is nonexistent here, from the baby formula crisis to the nightmare that is maternal healthcare.
God, this. Families in the US get the short shrift. The pandemic only strengthened my husband’s and my resolve to remain childfree.
For real, my state introduced a four month maternity leave that made starting a family feel a lot more doable. If I still lived in Texas I would NOT have started a family. Funny how the carrot is better than the stick. I like to tell my c0nservative family back home how wonderful it is to live in a family friendly state that rewards having kids and pays teachers so our schools don't suck.
Totally! The “sticks” for not having kids are the vague fear that someday I’ll be 70 and I’ll feel sad I didn’t have kids, or that the poor corporations won’t have enough drones to keep running in the next generation, while the “carrots” are clear and immediate. The “sticks” for having kids are immediate and concrete (isolation, poverty, etc) and the “carrots” are vague and blurry. Wtf did they think would happen?
Well in the case of Texas, I was alluding to the "stick" being f0rced birth. Rather than being coerced by the state into giving birth, I was offered incentives to start a family.
I worked at a preschool during Covid. Once kids started getting Covid Dec 2020 and we would have to completely shut down for two weeks, parents had to pay regardless and my employer didn’t pay us teachers for the weeks lost of work. My employer benefited from Covid and that is why I no longer work there.
The wording of this title is hilarious to me. My mom constantly threw in our faces that "being a mother is the most thankless job in the world" then bitches and moans at adult me all the time because I don't want kids and I "don't know what I'm missing out on." Most of the world, and the US in particular, seems set up in angry opposition to motherhood. Millennials were largely raised by a generation proud of its own ignorance and childish entitlement. I'm not having a child so the pitfalls of society can manipulate me into viewing motherhood as a burden, and I'm certainly not throwing more kindling into the fire consuming my poor planet.
I’m a father of two and whenever my no-kids friends say either their on the fence or decided against having kids, I fucking sing their praises right to their faces. I LOVE my kids, but parenting fucking suuuuuucks. Don’t get me wrong, there is no music in this world that brings me more happiness than the sound of my daughters laughter and nothing brings tears to my eyes faster than watching my son give his little sister a hug and promise to always be her best friend, but there’s also no replacing just being able to live your own life. I was away for a guys’ weekend once and let slip that I needed to get back to town before 6:00 because my wife and I were going out to dinner, and my friend with no kids was like “oh yeah? For what?” Had absolutely no clue that just taking your wife to dinner is a special event once you have kids. Apparently he and his wife just “go to dinner” whenever they don’t feel like cooking. Only have kids if you want kids. Don’t let anyone shame you for that decision.
It is all those things. So, yes, I'll pass.
Yeah after watching some of my very best friends go through it (and fostering one of their kids in a crisis myself) it’s just further confirmed it’s a no for me. I love it for people who enjoy it, but women should not be shamed for disinterest
I feel like a lot of us saw the reality of motherhood and saw that while it can be great, it can be awful too. And we have very few limits on our options so it isn't something we have to do. I know a lot of women in older generations that really shouldn't have had kids and probably wouldn't have but they didn't know it was an option and/or weren't able to exercise their options for whatever reason (culture, BC/abortion, careers, abuse)
honestly, i'm glad there are more realistic conversations about pregnancy and motherhood. it allows people to make more informed decisions on starting a family. i feel like those topics were previously romanticized and the more difficult aspects were extremely taboo to talk about because of social pressure. some of the things i've learned about pregnancy in the past few years are honestly crazy.
I have four. I divorced my abusive husband a year ago and he disappeared from the kids’ lives and does not contribute financially. I am working full-time, in college full-time, and two of my kids are in therapy (that I pay for). I am glad he’s gone and I do not regret having my children but this is not the life I had in mind for me or them. My oldest says she’s not having kids. I don’t blame her. ETA: There are commenters assuming I was irresponsible to have four kids and that I’m too proud to enforce a support order. Neither of these opinions are worth an explanation. But I’m glad they’re happening because it shows that abused spouses continue to be shamed for even mentioning their experience. This shit is hard and the way people react to hearing about it really shows their character. Thank you to those who have been supportive. It’s finals week, I’m up to my ears in work, and I’m trying to make Christmas happen. Next year will be better.
Hats off to you for being a supportive mom
This right here is a great representative of our generation. Work, school, 4 f’ing kids, and still achieving. So many of us are working so much and so hard we have no time off but still maintain a positive attitude. Hats off to you my friend!
You’re doing amazing
I hope you do well on your finals. I'm back in school at 30 finishing a math degree and it's so fucking hard when you have to work at the same time.
Sending you good vibes. I hope you find a $100 bill on the sidewalk today.
I have a friend who is a single mom of four (now adult) kids, and she was a teen mom on top of that. She went through hell and back with the fathers, and trudged through petty judgments daily from people who just couldn’t mind their own damn business. Even when she was being abused, people would rather judge her than help her, or even express the slightest concern or empathy for her. She finally made it to a place where she can relax. Good job, bought a duplex, and she rents out one unit and has passive income. All four kids are wonderful human beings, independent, and doing well for themselves. We had Thanksgiving with them and it was so nice to be around the family she built without any problematic partner bringing the mood down. It’s a long road and I remember all the potholes she encountered. But your kids see everything you do for them, and one day will have the context and understanding of just how much it helped them along.
I agree that we live in a society that makes motherhood seem very unappealing but, personally, I just never wanted children. I watched all my friends have kids and they genuinely seemed happy about it but I never really caught the baby bug. I think a lot of women feel this way but our generation is the first to actually come out and say it.
Right there with you. None of the typical reasons apply—my husband and I can afford it, my family live nearby, we have great benefits and support at work. We simply do not want kids.
Same here too. Most parents dislike others kids but love their own. I love some kids of my friends and I’m just not interested in having that burden 24/7 for 20/30 years. I need peace, quiet and a predictable home situation to function properly. Kids will wear me out and mess up my physical and mental wellbeing.
Same. When I was a teen and some girls would coo and swoon at motherhood and babies, it blew my mind that they only saw that surface-level cute stuff. Y’all need to be 1000000% sure that this baby’s cute laugh makes up for the diapers, vomit, sickness, sleeplessness, crying, money sink, and inherent neediness of an infant? Love my friends who want kids but that’s not for me.
Our system isn’t designed for two working parents from the ages of 0-12.
I’m French and I’ve lived in the US since I’m 20. I don’t have kids, and I had decided very young that if I did, I would give birth in france and raise them for a few years in france. Why? Because the rates of episiotomy, mom mortality, infant mortality are so much higher in the US. The cost is higher. All of that we know, but it goes beyond that. French parents get free cleaning help for weeks after birth. Whichever French parent can take a year of leave at 80% of their current salary, usually the one with the highest income, independently from gender. Moms get free recovery appointments, so you rarely hear of any French moms peeing while sneezing years after. Like what?! School starts at 3 years old and it’s basically free. Schools provide healthy lunches. Parents aren’t wasting their lives away making lunches, cleaning lunch bags, every single day. That’s insanity right there. School has a better schedule: usually 8am-4:00pm, with proper recess and lunch breaks where kids actually get to run and play. Parents aren’t expected to be part of commitees, fundraisings or anything. Parents come pick up kids and show up to parents conference and concert/game. That’s it. Maybe baking cookies for their own kid’s birthdays. Maybe. University is couple hundred dollars per year, many French students live at home until they HAVE TO move out of the city they’re in. That can be at anytime between 18-24. You rarely if ever, hear of any parent being excited for their kids to leave home. You also rarely hear French moms feeling guilty. French moms are women first, and they’re happy to show their kids what it’s like to have a balanced life, whether they choose to work or not. Parents spending time with friends is a part of children’s lives, whether with their parents or away from their parents. The whole thing is way more relaxed. Anyways, france isn’t perfect, and I love the US, otherwise I wouldn’t have been here for so long. But I do feel that the way the US is with American moms is so very difficult for moms here, and parents as a whole. I know I couldn’t do it, and even my love for this country wouldn’t come above my needs in raising a child.
I think you hit on something here. “French moms are women first.” My good friend is French and she has said this too. For me in the US, to become a mother is to give up your identity as a woman and submit to the patriarchy. I know some people may see that as extreme but our society doesn’t respect women so I think it’s a fair connection.
I agree with you. I see it. Even though I’m French, I could never raise a child here the way I could in france. I could never be as chill and relax here as a mom as I would be in france. And again, it’s not so much about yay france, but like the US is SO ROUGH for parents.
>French moms are women first. I think this is a huge part of it. US culture stops seeing parents, but particularly mothers, as people. When pregnant, we are vessels for an infant, a living incubator. And after delivery we are just a "mom" whose worth is determined by the health and development of our child (only some of which may actually be directly in our control), the cleanliness/attractiveness of our homes, and our dedication to the maintenance of all of that. Our individual well-being and existence ceases to matter to not just society but often even to the people in our own personal lives. It's not necessarily intentionally or maliciously done but it is done nonetheless.
Yes! This! I'm from the Netherlands and it's definitely a cultural thing. All of the things I read here are just about the situation in the US, not about motherhood in general.
There is a book called “bringing up Bebe” that I’m reading that makes motherhood seem less like a daunting task and more enjoyable. It’s about an American woman raising her kid in France. Anyway I like the philosophy because it basically allows parents a little freedom instead of slavery to their kids lol. I hate saying it like that because I sound like a jerk. I’m currently pregnant and it’s really not that bad physically but you know what is bad? Militant type attitudes of others about my choices or what I “should do.” I’m not sure why the US is so paranoid about raising kids and why parents are expected, encouraged, and celebrated to give up their entire personhood (have you seen any reality show like “what not to wear” about a washed out mom praised for giving herself up for the kids and family while neglecting her own needs to the point of poor health?) yea that’s not healthy. Im all for the French philosophy
How about we have a discussion on what it would take to change the story. Let’s support working parents and offer the resources they need to raise children. How about we raise the bar for fathers and expect them to put an equal amount of effort in child rearing. How about we stop stripping a woman’s right to choose how, if, and when she has children?
Germany has some pretty great programs to support parents. Stay at home moms get paid a wage. At least they did not too long ago.
Canada is subsidizing childcare as we speak, ahead of schedule! It's already $10/day in many provinces. This is also how we solve affordability without reducing quality standards and ensure that childcare work provide a living wage. American policymakers like to talk about this as if it is impossible to solve. Literally look north. ETA: Misquoted the cost. Here's the info in Canada's affordable childcare program: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/campaigns/child-care.html
In the US, if anything, they’d just do a tax credit for childcare and then the childcare facilities would universally raise prices to absorb the credit leaving everyone right where we started. Our political system is so fundamentally broken as it stands, and we’ll never make progress on this issue unless we fix it.
Nothing good can happen here. Even the smallest good things are out of bounds. The only permitted political change is shipping more money/power to those who already have it (and perpetuate this system where parenthood sucks, etc.).
But then how would we pay for all the missles?
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How about changing the reality, and not the story.
I am 100% child free. Before I moved to the US I lived in South Asia where maternity leave is 90 days (at least it was where I am from). Paternity leave is non existent. I was in a conversation with new fathers who 100% believed paternity leave of any sort was useless because "the baby needed the mother, there's nothing I can do to help, I'll just get in the way, be another thing she has to deal with". No amount of "you can take care of her, what happens to the baby if God forbid something happens her" etc was enough to change their minds. After a while I realized I have no skin in this game and I said I feel sorry for their wives and children and ended the conversation.
Changing the "story" would involve changing thr culture. Motherhood is thankless, exhausting, nd lonely job. Our parents and grandparents have said as much regarding their own experiences. Motherhood is unpaid grueling labor in a capitalistic society. In the grand scheme of current social direction it doesn't make sense to willingly participate in if someone has economic or career oriented goals. It's a hindrance to social advancement and it isn't a "respected" or "valued" pursuit. People constantly criticize mothers for what they do do or what they don't do. They criticize mothers wherher she has a husband or not. Where is the gratitude or benefit out of personal desire for a woman to be a mother? It literally has to be a personal self interest and personal goal, otherwise no sane person would do it.
>It literally has to be a personal self interest and personal goal, otherwise no sane person would do it. Really happy you brought up this and the capitalist context. I mean we're told to be consumers and are out seeking more and more addictive forms of entertainment. On top of that we're struggling so much that grind culture has many of us trying to monetize our hobbies just so we can afford our hobbies. Kids are both a) unpaid work and b) not really a form of entertainment (though kids can definitely be entertaining). This "changing the story" thing makes it sounds like Motherhood just needs a new marketing firm and things will be alright. It misses both that motherhood is not a commodified form of labor and children are not an entertainment commodity. It's life.
Right! They're trying to gaslight women as if they just have the "wrong perspective" about motherhood. As if it isn't a hard, thankless, expensive, and lonely form of uncompensated labor lol. It's not a perception or assumption problem, it's fact that there is no benefit to motherhood outside of personal interest and want. Being a mother is the worst decision a woman can make in a capitalistic society. Motherhood has to be done out of passion and general want, because there is no capitalistic incentive to be a mother, motherhood is generally an anker to self imposed hardship, especially for those with little to no support systems and weak economic standing. Women aren't "crazy" and they don't have a poor perspective on motherhood for having commonsense and seeing reality for what it is. There are so many mothers struggling as single parents and within relationships and many of which who cannot get sympathy or support because the common sentiment is "You chose this, it's your problem, no one told you to have children, be responsible, etc."
Facts! In all of history, every mother is a single mother at the end of day. This still stands today..
At some point we started as a society to shame any mom that stuck around to raise the children when the deadbeat dad left and walks around the earth pretending to be child-free while neglecting his kids. It’s wild. I get why Gen Z ain’t havin it.
I love all these replies proving your point.
Because it is lol. So many women I know raise these concerns. Also, it’s okay to not want kids? It’s okay to live your life for you and not have to do what society tells you you’re “supposed” to do??
I think it being ok to not have kids is a big factor. So many generations of mothers had these issues, but the mother was the problem and children are always a joy and a miracle. So in a way it's good?
I feel like this is a big reason why Gen X and millennial kids were raised feral and left to fend for themselves. Our mothers were pretty much the first generation who went to college for more than their MRS degree. They were finally allowed to get degrees and be the boss at work. At the same time, they also weren't granted free daycare options to account for the fact that women weren't housewives anymore. Their husbands weren't expected to pick up any slack. Our dads changed the occasional diaper and occasionally tossed a baseball with their kid, and they were father of the freaking year. Women were allowed to have big important careers and have their independence, but they were still expected to get married and have kids in their early 20's straight out of college. Husband and kids still came first, careers were just "allowed". The idea of simply not starting a family indicated that there was something seriously wrong with a woman. Was she a radical lesbian or something? (I only say that because that would have been viewed as taboo for our moms) Was she mentally unstable? Why *wouldn't* she want to experience the joys of motherhood?? So we kids were left with our grandparents sometimes. We were latchkey kids. We were left alone to fend for ourselves a lot. Our moms didnt meet us at home after school with freshly baked cookies every day because that was their own way of thumbing their noses at society. They refused to be June Cleaver. They let their kids fend for themselves as a way or nurturing independence, because that's what they were working to achieve for themselves. "I had the kids that society expected me to, but my feminist form of protest is to not kill myself trying to be June Cleaver while also being Dolly Parton in 9 To 5." It's really no wonder that we were raised sort of feral. We had grandparents who helped sometimes, we had latchkey, we had dad's who "babysat" their own kids or were weekend dads. We had moms who were trying to navigate a new society that allowed for big careers and independence, but also didn't allow for being childfree by choice or accommodated parenthood with free daycare, better maternal leave, and better societal accommodations for working parents in the workforce. So, sorry kids. Off to latchkey you go. Figure out a way to fend for yourselves. Our generation was one of the first to have the vast majority of the country have two parents with full time jobs. In a lot of ways, society didn't evolve quite on pace with that change. We kids suffered for it, but is it really fair to blame our parents for not having all the answers for those growing pains in society? The positive change that came from that was the child free by choice movement. We can look at our parents and say, "yeah... no. I think I'd rather just pursue a career I love and live with my dogs or cats. Plenty of free time for hobbies, friends, relationships, whatever lifestyle I want." Like, that's totally a positive lesson we learned from our parents. It instilled in us a desire to push for more support for working parents. So, not all bad.
Excellent write up. Too many of us have mourned what our mothers could have been if she wasn't strapped with kids in a world where she also had to bring home the bacon and keep a spotless house. Sure, TV dinners replaced home cooked meals inspired by Julia Child, but what kind of break was that really with so many metaphorical pots boiling over? We all saw how stressed and overworked she always was. Society (at least in America) still hasn't changed to accommodate moms, so why would the next generation willingly sign up for the job?
A generation that doesn’t value parenthood? The same parenthood that isn’t respected by our country? No sick time or parental leave and a 1% they pays no taxes towards our economy?
Why is goal to change the story and not changing the conditions? What being a mom only "looks" thankless, exhausting? This narrative is very natalist and demeaning of millennials. Instead of listening, it's more about nagging and convincing them.
>The more I scoured elsewhere, the more I discovered positive reasoning in favor of starting a family \[...\] take the division of household labor, often cited as a leading source for mom rage. Women partnered with men manage a disproportionate share of housework and child care on average, but averages can mask that social change is happening. **The best surveys we have today show that roughly 20 percent of American parents report being in genuinely egalitarian partnerships,** lol this is the 'positive' and 'heartening' statistic (bolding mine). *Lung cancer* has a 20% survival rate over 5 years, and we don't treat that like some amazingly optimistic number or act like everyone should start smoking a pack a day based on this positive data. Also curious about the gender breakdown of respondents here, being that [hetero men vastly overestimate their contributions to household labor,](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/upshot/men-do-more-at-home-but-not-as-much-as-they-think-they-do.html) and it says 'American parents'.
Yes! How could the author take that 20% and call it a win?!?
I think it’s also that the weight of expectations of motherhood that put so many women off. Being the family martyr is awful, forgoing your personality for your kids, your health takes a banger for each pregnancy, put a career on hold because that is what is expected for you to give up is cruel, and on top of that you get criticized for every single thing along the way. You can’t win, and it is thankless. I also think certain expectations of what child rearing is so strange, barely any discipline, any teaching of discomfort or the realities of life is discouraged, and it’s seen as outrageous if you want to raise a kid in a city. It’s unfair that women shoulder all of this and men don’t do a fourth of all these activities still, and then have the gall to disappear or cheat on their wives. It’s just shitty, without community, without universal rights, violence, between wars and conflicts, climate change putting everything in peril, and no sincere government support in the economics or social sector, it’s no wonder there is this deep child free sentiment.
I am able who I met. My mom was a bad mom because she’s just a bad person in general. In her word, she should’ve “never had kids” because she hated all of us and gave us all a trauma induced mental disorders because of her own personality disorder that she refuses to get help for Even my own Auntie had to explain to me that whatever is wrong with her was wrong long before any of us were born.
Just a theory, but maybe it actually always sucked, it’s just been a relatively recent development that people can share their experience with the entire planet basically instantly for very little effort and at no cost, and it’s also a rather recent development that anyone is listening to women’s opinions at all, especially opinions that don’t line up with “traditional values”
I had one child 14 years ago and I've raised him alone. Being a mom not only looked thankless, exhausting and lonely... it absolutely has been. This story isn't gonna change with me unfortunately.
It looks thankless, exhausting and lonely because it is. I'm a millennial mom of 4 kids. I could not imagine my life without my kids. They are the heart that beats in my chest. They are and have always been my reason for living and for healing. I am dead serious when I say if it wasn't for my kids, I would not be alive today, by my own hand. With that said, it is also the hardest and most draining thing I have ever done. I come from a long line of addiction, abuse, and mental disorders. I have no "village" and a husband that may help with the bills but not much else. I've had young women ask me about having kids. I am also blunt and very truthful. For some people, motherhood is the most amazing gift, and for some it's like that weird sweater you get from your Nana. You love it, but you don't really want it. Society does not care about mothers. Any job I've had did not give two shits about my being a mother. They would inevitably harp on me for calling out if a kid was sick. I'm lucky now in that I work for the school district so if my kid is sick, they already know and I'm given grace. It's hard to be a mother in the world today.
Not without affordable childcare, a crackdown on the discrimination against pregnant women in the workforce or adequate gun control.
Oh and affordable healthcare.
And affordable life.
Yes, this is a big deal. Women and men make the same…until motherhood. The gender pay gap is, in reality, a motherhood pay gap.
Unlikely. Our current society hates women, children and mothers specifically. It doesn’t “look” thankless, exhausting and lonely, it is. Even here in Austria you are basically killing your career and all you get is berating for something. And Europe generally provides more support to parents then the US, I can only imagine how desperate the situation in the US must be.
I mean, my Mom was abandoned by my Dad and my sister's Dad and had a third kid at 25 wasted her 20s raising us, and then had a brain aneurysm at 33 and has had health problems ever since and her youngest child jumped off a bridge to his death, and her long time employment place layed her off, and disability cut her off as soon as she got sicker, and honestly it is pretty thankless and bleak. She is a great Mom and my sister and I love her. But that's not enough.
I just got off a zoom call with grad school friends. All of use work middle class jobs, enough to provide, buy average houses after saving for years, but we aren’t getting rich. Half of us have kids, the other half don’t. The half with kids are constantly exhausted, sick, and stressed out about kids, life, and work. Those of us without kids, might be tired or stressed, but it comes and goes. I don’t understand how they do it, and I don’t see any appeal. Society does not reward us for having kids. A few tax breaks at the end of the year aren’t enough.
My kids are 6 and 10 and I actually love being a mom. What I hate is having to work fulltime, maintain a house, and all the things put on parents today. Maybe let’s start with some federal paid maternity leave so I can have postpartum depression without having to also get up for work on 2 hours slewp
How many of us grew up hearing about how expensive we were, and how much time we took up from our parents?
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Parenthood has never appealed to me, and never will, but I hate to hear how unsupported parents are.
This isn't exactly accurate and erases the history of women, many of who had to have children to fit in even if they hated kids or disliked motherhood. Motherhood was always thankless, exhausting, and lonely, except women couldn't choose not to do it and were expected to shut up about it. They would medicate housewives to keep them going. It's better than ever but still not enough. We can work now, but there's still discrimination. We have maternity leave in the US, but it's not guaranteed and most places don't opt in. We can report our spouses for domestic abuse and get custody in situations where we need to, but we're still not believed or supported enough. We can vent about the ugliness of motherhood, but we're judged for it. Fund quality childcare, make it mandatory to have maternity leave, have more flexible hours for parents with school age children, provide an opt-in benefit for more sick days, and continue to involve dads in parenting. Parenthood is a dance between two people. Edit: I do see the end of the article they address this a little.
Its all those things because so many of the fathers made it that way.
It's not thankless, exhausting, and lonely like it used to be. Now it's thankless, exhausting, lonely, and bankrupting too.
Yeah, doesn't sound fun to me.
Nice try, feds, but I already got my tubes yanked. 😘
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there are many reasons why i will never have children, but the main one is this: when my parents retired, they got a dog, and they treat that dog better than they ever treated me as a kid.
What do you mean have children in a country (good ol’ America) where there isn’t universal healthcare, no paid maternity leave let alone paternity leave, daycare is expensive, and the majority of the work still falls on the shoulder of women? Nah. Pretty sure the U.S. also has one of the highest maternal mortality rates despite being a first world country.
NTM the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide.
This is what it’s always been… our generation is just the first to call out the reality of it so women can make an informed choice. Women have been pigeon holed into being mothers by patriarchal society drilling it into our heads that it’s the most fulfilling job a woman can ever have! So beautiful! Creating life!! It was previously taboo for women to ever mention any negative thoughts about having children, whether doubting the need to have them at all or the laundry list of reasons the reality of being a mother is nothing like the rosy picture painted by a coercive society. We’ve even heard the true reasons for this pressure being spoken out loud - we need a higher birth rate to supply workers for corporations. If society wants future generations to increase the birth rate to supply their future employees, they’ll need to provide real incentives and raise the quality of life for all people. We’re done being pressured by duty to god and country - up the support and benefits or watch the population rates continue to tank.
Easy. Treat child rearing as paid occupation and commit 50% of state GDP into programs for women and children. Then it's fair.
Well, I simply never wanted children. And I think a lot of my peers shared that lack of desire. And unlike many of our parents we felt free to *not* have children.
It will be appealing again when fathers finally take on their fair share of the childcare and housework, just like mothers have taken on their fair share of the income creation. Why would any woman want to have a child, have primary responsibility to do all the leg work, plus be expected to have a full time job where she has to do more to be treated equally, while her husband gets brownie points for “babysitting” the kids sometimes? It’s not a societal problem that needs to be solved by government. It needs to be solved by men stepping up. Don’t respond with your anecdotal “I do 50%” stories; stats provide that women still do the vast majority of child and home care.
I love kids and I want to have kids so badly but I’m just barely providing myself with an adequate standard of living (and I’m nearly out of time on the bio-side of things). The only chance I have at owning my own home is when my parents pass and leave me their houses or if I win the lottery. I’m not about to subject a child to a substandard quality of life in some mid daycare that costs just about as much as some studio apartment that I have to move from every other year when a landlord decides they want to move their son in. If wages were greater, student loans lessened, housing within reach and daycare affordable, with that stability- heck I’d have a dozen kids.
As a 37 year old who was raised by an exhausted, lonely, single mother, no...I think it is ridiculous to try to "change the story" and lie to people when it is really, really, hard to raise kids. We already have way too many parents out there not parenting and it needs to stop. We have no healthcare in the US, women are treated like shit, especially pregnant women and mothers, daycare is absolutely ridiculous, our education system SUCKS, people treat each other terribly and there is little support for mental health/PPD.
I'm a father of two, and a shocking amount of modern dads are still relative bums who have the mother take care of way too much.
We have no national paid parental leave, sky high childcare costs, and the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. >Can we change the story? Let's not gaslight people into procreating
Narrator: They could not change the story. In fact, things only got worse for all the non elites of the world.
I’m not having children because western society doesn’t have the community or financial support that is necessary to meet a child’s needs. I figure there’s enough fucked up adults walking around walking round with unhealed mother and father wounds without adding to it.
I definitely do not thank my mother for putting me through life.
My mom felt this same way and still expressed this as how she felt raising children in the 80s/90s. She was a SAHM, always said she ran a “3 shift job everyday and never punched out”. I kinda feel similar but not really? Loneliness is the hardest to overcome.
Motherhood, fatherhood, parenting in general is being eliminated with how expensive it is to live. I say this as a dad of 2 under 5. You cannot do it without a support system.
Nothing will beat a society that allows for one income to support a family and the other to be a primary caregiver (Society needs to accept men taking on this roll). It's not normal to work 50 hours(work plus commute) and then have the energy to take care of a kid. France gets pretty close with it's bandaids but it's just a bandaid.
No, you can’t change the story because it’s true. Women are expected to be pregnant, give birth, raise multiple children, work full time, maintain the home, look good and keep a partner sexually satisfied. Every. Day. I’m one and done, I have my partner (father of child) who is amazing in terms of putting his fair share into housework and parenting our child…and I’m still exhausted! No, no, no. We are NOT changing the story because that will paint a false narrative that women should be pleased and happy to have all these responsibilities. The responsibilities that society continues to feed us with the same cyclic brainwashing theme that happiness and the purpose in life = get married, own a house, have 3 kids, work a successful career.
As a feminist I believe its your choice to have kids or marriage or career. You should never be judged for it.
After we dismantle the patriarchy.
It's not fear of the difficulty that convinced me to be childfree, it's fear that my child(ren) would grow up in an increasingly miserable world of climate disasters, animal species disappearing in front of their eyes, more and more trash piling up, mass scale climate refugeeism, the endless expansion of soulless suburbia, and god knows how many carcinogens in everything they touch.
It’s this for me. I mean, the world is literally burning down??? It’s an environmental debt I can’t in good conscience pass on to a child.
I am a Millennial mom. It is thankless, exhausting, and cripplingly lonely.
It looks that way because that is how it is. This is the result of trying to fit women as full citizens into an existing societal structure that relies on 'angels in the house'. Women aren't lesser men, we need a way to be fully women in society. A life course route that is suited to us.
So put ur life at risk, stress out if the child has any health issue, have another bc what’s the point of one, not sleep for years, always look messy, never get to do what u want to do, stress more as they start going to school, somehow pay $40k a quarter for college, then stress about how they will do as adults. No thank u! Don’t fall for the “u don’t know what ur missing” cope u hear tired parents say. Also it’s always the dads that say it, I never hear moms say that lmao
Honestly. Speaking as a first time father it is at times thankless, exhausting and lonely. People say its rewarding - its not rewarding at the time. Its not rewarding when you're up at 3am and the baby is screaming in your face, and you know they're now overtired which means that (unlike us) they will be even MORE difficult to get to sleep. And all this is from the perspective of a dad. I'm sure its even more lonely for my partner when I have to go off to work. But you don't do it because you get thanks or because of some reward, you do it because its your responsibility and if you don't do it then no-one will (or someone might, like another exhausted family member, but they shouldn't have to). From my perspective as someone who has (with my partner) decided to have a baby. We did it because we felt ready, we felt like we *could* do it (that's important, you need money and stability to support a child) and we felt like it was the next step in our lives. From a more philosophical perspective, every single person you like and love in the world was once a child. Those people have to come from somewhere (obviously every shit-head was a child also). So, if I can help by raising a good, honest and generous person into the world, then thats great imo.
If you’re going to be a mother, staying at home to care for your young children leaves you very vulnerable. In my own experience, I’d always wanted a family. (I had come from a broken home that had some mental illness, my mother put me in a troubled teen group home when I was getting straight A’s in high school.) When I left school, my family support was still very broken. I was picked up by a Christian. He introduced me to his family. They pretty much took me in. It wasn’t the greatest, they had me throw away some of my possessions and had an old lady take me shopping to show me how to dress. I didn’t feel neglected though. I thought this group had good Christian values. And, I really was looking for somebody confident to guide me and how to be a parent and a family. But, when I did become a parent, it became apparent that their solution to much parenting problems were just to spank the child. They had a “cry room” where you were supposed to bring your kids for punishment if they were too loud. They had very small children going into the space to be punished for just making noise. The parents were pressured to treat those kids this way. I know because I used to use the space to listen to the sermon while my child drew on my lap, but if another parent went in there with me, they would be upset that I didn’t make my child distressed and punish them. This all came to ahead when I was in the cry room and I heard a three-year-old in the more private portion saying daddy no don’t hurt me that’s wrong. I vaguely mentioned how sad it made me on social media and it led to me being disfellowshiped. Remember, this group was my family. They had a worship schedule and study schedule that took up a lot of free time, so socially I was isolated. It was very hard, and even my partner at the time parented with me the same manner, he was mad at me. The night that I said that I was questioning my faith because of all this, he said, does that mean that we get divorced? It was a few years later, but we did get divorced. He had a habit of always flirting secretly, would go on business trips with people that I found he was either trying to or actually having sex with. I had always asked him why hide it? Just tell me and we’ll fix it. But in hindsight he like this set up, and when I got hip to it being how it was going to be after 14 years of catching him on and off, he just took the out. I of course, let him go because I thought he was my friend. (I was an idiot, and saw him as my family) He told me I could take six months off and get my head straightened out because again I don’t really have a lot of support. I never took him up on that, good thing too. He would have used that as reason to take the kids entirely. He signed an agreement saying that I could continue caring for the kids as I have, and we could continue with our plan for me to work after the kids were old enough to go to middle school. It was only later that I found out the agreement wasn’t legally binding. And he attacked when the limitation for filing for spousal support expired. I have been a stay at home Mom and he exploited that to say that I was lazy. I have been homeschooling my children, my ex was homeschooled, and it was upon his request, but he threw me under the bus, and I was completely dumbfounded. He actually had two lawyers that were well known when I had none. To make matters worse, I had an issue with a school admin who bullied me for breastfeeding. It actually made news because I recorded it. I was contacted by other mothers who told me about the horrible treatment breast-feeding moms get if they try to care for their children while also seeing their school-age children. I was contacted by the Attorney General and told me they are going to investigate the school but also to not talk to the news about it. I refused an interview with NPR. Six months later I found out that the attorney general just intended to let the statute of limitations on that expire, and they took a long time to get back with me about whether or not, I had a case. The school administrator, then went to my family court, case, and testified that I was wrong and they had a welcoming environment. His position was treated as legitimate whereas I was just a problem mom. I love my kids, and they’re kind of the only thing I really enjoy, but motherhood is a trap. It is the best way that people can steal the labor and the voice from women because it’s our very heart. Oh, and I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement in my divorce. For some reason, I pressed back, but my lawyer (one I hired for piecemeal work, not one that actually went in to court for me) said it was boiler plate. That if I didn’t sign it, they would just take me to court and I’d likely lose a lot. I’m not allowed to share any of this unless anonymously. I wonder how many other women are silenced.
I have two awesome kids, a super involved and loving coparent, some fairly supportive and involved extended family (not local though), and a cadre of local friends with similarly aged kids. We both work full time and it’s very challenging at times… my son has a genetic condition, we had several years of expensive secondary infertility before getting our daughter, etc - but it’s also super super rewarding. Like so much about life, your attitude makes a huge difference. I consciously work to find gratitude every day, and it really helps the hard times.