Author: Helen Boyd

We all read a lot about women having babies and not having careers as a result, and some feminists tend to present women’s inability to have a career and have children as a form of gender discrimination.

But you know, I don’t think it is. I thought that was the point of choice – that women who choose to have babies can, and women who don’t choose to have babies, don’t. The women without babies are then able to work the ungodly hours required of the top strata of high power jobs, and the women with them aren’t.

& I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but I thought that was the whole “revolution” birth control brought with it: that women can CHOOSE whether to have children or not. I wonder often if this assumption – that women need to have babies – isn’t a result of all that “women are nurturing” bullshit. I don’t know. I’ve wanted to be childfree my whole life, and what I see are a lot of women in my life who wanted children – wanted them more than their careers – and made that choice. So why the bellyaching? We all make decisions, and we all have to live with them. To me it’s such a fantastic thing that women have been freed from having to have babies, that there are healthy ways to prevent pregnancy and plan to have a family (or plan not to have one).

I have a funny feeling there’s a privilege thing in here somewhere that might blind me some. I just can’t imagine walking into the universe expecting the world to allow me everything I wanted. I mean, imagine if I wrote an article claiming that it was “discrimination” because I can’t hold a high power job *and* write novels – which I can’t, because of the time required of both. I’d be laughed right off my blog, and well I should be if I made that argument. But some feminists portray having a baby as some requirement of woman-ness, and I thought the whole point was – it’s not. We’ve freed women up to have careers if they want. Or to have babies if they want. & That’s all cool.

I mean, if women want babies and don’t want to give up their careers, adopt and marry a house-husband father type.

Of course it is expected that women raise their children once they have them, & that’s the problem, as far as I’m concerned. The expected gender roles are unfair, because fathers are and can be parents as much as women can be mothers. Is it “fair” that men can have children and expect their wives to take care of them? No. But I don’t see why women can’t decide to have children and expect their husbands to take care of them – especially if the women is the one making the higher salary.

But in speaking to a feminist friend recently, she told me she’s having an absolute blast raising her son and not working so much – but still somehow sees it as “wrong” that she can’t be a litigator at the same time. I just don’t get it. She not only chose to have a baby but to raise the baby; she could have gotten a nanny and gone back to work at that high-powered job. She didn’t. And again, that’s all good. But I don’t see it as discrimination; I see it as a decision. Would she catch some flak if she went back to her fulltime job and left a nanny and her husband to raise her child? Sure. But she could do that, if she wanted.

It’s not like those of us who are childfree don’t catch flak. Or that those who decide to stay home with their kids don’t catch flak. The thing about being a woman is that nothing you do is right: someone, somewhere, will have a problem with whatever choice you make. But for me, being a feminist is in supporting any woman in her choices, and that includes calling her out when she’s complaining about having to make them. Having a choice doesn’t mean you get everything; it means you get one thing & you have to live without the other.

But then again, I was raised by Devo.