A few days ago, this article from
the Guardian popped up on my social media news feed. I wouldn’t have clicked on
it were it not for this excerpt – “I don’t think it's
important to return to the shape you were before. I think if your body grew a
baby, that’s an amazing thing and you should be proud of that.”
On the face of it, this seems an
important and empowering message. I clicked on the article and read it. The
article itself was also undoubtedly important, as it highlighted how pressures
to return to a pre-pregnancy body lead some women to taking risks with their
health in order to stay slim. My only issue with the entire article was the idea
of pride in oneself and accepting one’s body being linked to the fact of having
grown a baby. The human body is amazing, and true, one of the amazing things
about women’s bodies relate to how they prepare and change for childbirth and childrearing.
But the pressure to conform to a certain body-type isn’t specific to pregnant
women and mothers. The conditionality introduced into the sentiment – “if your
body grew a baby- subtly disempowers and excludes women who aren’t mothers. This
isn’t to say that health risks of wanting to be slim aren’t more
pronounced in case of pregnant women. They are, and they’re vital issues to
address from a health perspective. However, rather than justifying why it’s
okay that we are “not the shape we were before”, the message we should be
putting out there in response to societal pressures around body-size/ shape
should be one of unconditional acceptance and choice (because I believe it’s
important for women to be able to choose whether or not their bodily appearance
is important to them, instead of telling them it “shouldn’t be”). Instead of
empowering people to stand up for their rights unconditionally, the “because
you had a baby” part is like giving someone a temporary crutch with which they
can ward off societal pressures to conform to an externally imposed standard
that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
I’ll segue into another example
from a few months ago to illustrate my point. Sania Mirza, a tennis player was
asked by an interviewer on Indian media why she hadn’t ‘settled down’ (the
colloquial meaning of which is “why haven’t you had children yet?”). Sania’s
response to the question was as follows:
“…that’s the question I face all the time as a woman, that all women
have to face- the first is marriage and then it’s motherhood. Unfortunately,
that’s when we’re settled, and no matter how many Wimbeldons we win or numbers
ones in the world we become, we don’t become settled. But eventually it will
happen, not right now. And when it does, I’ll be the first one to tell everybody
when I plan to do that.”
This response went viral as ‘the perfect response’ on electronic and social media. I -and others with
similar thoughts, such as my close friend TQ (who has appeared on this blog
before)- thought that while it was good in that it addressed the fact that
women are considered complete only once they’re married-mothers, it was just
short of perfect. This is because once
again, there was an implication that she shouldn’t be asked this because she
is a top tennis player. A society in which traditional, patriarchal
expectations are shut down through justifications grounded in successful
careers is desirable, but not perfect.
Perfection would be a society where people don’t have to justify their
personal choices, period.
Returning to the article, I
messaged TQ almost immediately (as I usually do, about most things) and shared
my annoyance about the “because you had a baby….” part. I said that as a
child-free woman, I resented the implication that the rest of us child-free or
childless (because the two mean very different things, and I respect a person’s
right to choose a term they identify with) shouldn’t be proud of our bodies
just as they are. If mothers get the “you just had a baby” crutch, what legs do
the rest of us have to stand on if the ideology itself-- that women should either
conform to external standards of beauty or give solid reasons as to why they
should be ‘exempt’-- goes unchallenged?
TQ agreed, and added “there is a
lot written about pride when it comes to mothers. Whether it’s about body image
or about work-life balance or many areas of life that all women, mothers or
not, struggle with. As a pattern, it becomes excluding, and therefore
problematic.”
This led to a discussion about
other situations in which as non-parents, we have felt excluded, disregarded or
dismissed. A classic example was offered by TQ, who found herself on the
receiving end of much eye-rolling by someone in her neighbourhood concerned
about the numbers of stray dogs in the area. A notice had been put up about
this “menace” (I use the quotation marks ironically, because neither TQ nor I
are the sort of people that would think of large numbers of dogs as a menace.
Far from it. More the merrier, we say!). The notice supposedly came from the
hearts and minds of concerned parents.
TQ told me how she and her
partner got into an argument with one of the concerned parents when they asked
if anyone had been harmed because of the dogs. “The guy stutters”, TQ went on,
“and then says ‘well no one yet, but I am sure you wouldn’t want your kids to
be the ones to be bitten first’. We replied that we aren’t parents…. The guy
just rolled his eyes as if to say ‘That explains!’ and walked off.”
I noted to TQ how the “concerned
parents” line is often used to close arguments. Is there a respectable retort to that that won't make you look like an evil sociopath
who wants the world-and-all-good-things-within-it to end?
I often find myself pushing back against the notion that the child-free are just, oh I don't know, soul destroying scum who clearly
don’t care about anything. We just guzzle fossil fuels from beer bongs, sit
around in our underwear scratching our crotches with one hand while clutching a
bottle of tequila with the other, watching trash on Netflix and you know, NOT
calling our parents because of course
we-are-not-parents-ourselves-so-how-could-we-possibly-know-that-parents-want-to-hear-from-their-kids.
While we’re at it, we also like to have sleeping parties to celebrate all the
sleep we clearly get (“Because you’re lucky you don’t know what it’s like to have
a toddler waking you up in the middle of the night”) and like to roll around
naked on all the wads of cash we have lying around (“Because you don’t have to
worry about kids’ college fees”).
I can’t keep track of the number
of times I’ve been told how I wouldn’t understand something because I don’t
have kids. Whether it’s debates about vaccinations, climate change or organic
food, casual conversations about being sleep deprived or Brexit (yeah, Brexit.
Apparently the legitimacy of my socio-political views is directly linked to
whether or not I’ve given birth. Sidebar: I #Remain terribly sad at the looming
prospect of Brexit).
The “you won’t understand because
you don’t have kids” line is strange for several reasons. Let’s start with the
fact that no one really understands – on an experiential level- what it’s like to BE another person. A lot can get in
the way of this. The laws of physics, for one thing. Privilege, for another. All we can do is try to understand
the other as much as possible. Of
course I don’t have experiential knowledge of being a parent. Just like I don’t
have experiential knowledge of what it’s like to be a skydiver. Or a beetle. Doesn't mean I can't imagine the anguish the poor creature must feel when it's lying on its back, tiny legs flailing, trying to turn itself the right side up. Secondly,
it implies that those who don’t have kids can’t empathise with being a parent – which is a very narrow and inaccurate view of
the capacity for empathy. There are people who can’t empathise with challenges
of parenthood. There are people who don’t have children. They don’t necessarily
overlap completely. Plus, due to things like, say, PRIVILEGE, it’s not like some
kind of magical shared understanding exists between all parents. A single
parent from a low-income household doesn’t see the world the same way, or even
see the same world as a parent with a
lot of financial and social support. If I were to represent the
capacity for empathising with parents in the form of a basic Venn diagram, it
would look like this:
So maybe it’s not just about some
of the non-parents not being able to understand till we have kids of our own.
Maybe it’s also a case of some parents not being able to see beyond their own
experiences and imagine a scenario in which someone could care about
principles, values and issues even in the absence of any direct offspring that may be affected by said issues. For instance, I don’t need to have children in order to be
concerned about climate change. My love for polar bears and feeling of solidarity
with people in the rapidly sinking pacific islands has that covered.
To this category of parents, I’d
just like to say the following: I am pleased for you if you anchor your moral
and ethical compass around your children. In some cases, maybe it took having
kids in order for you to discover or strengthen your morals and ethics. But if you could
please refrain from assuming moral, ethical and intellectual bankruptcy on the
part of those of us that don’t have kids, that would be great.
As for challenging social pressures, when you start to justify
yourself in response to ridiculous expectations, it gives them a legitimacy
they don’t deserve. Worse, it does absolutely nothing to challenge the insidious ideology
behind the expectations.
So I propose the following, alternative response. Here's how I'd like to see such conversations go-
Person A: “When are
you going to lose all that weight?”
Person B: “What’s your ATM PIN number?”
Person A: “That’s none of your business!”
Person B: “Exactly. Glad we clarified that.”
