The Extinct Millennial Mother

According to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics, only 3.8 million babies were born in 2017, which is the lowest number in 30 years. This data is attributed to economic factors and a growth in the number of women earning an education and joining the workforce. However, as the economy heals from the 2008 recession, women seem to have not received the pregnancy memo. It is still rare to see a millennial woman planning for her childbearing future. 

As always, women need to look at their economic standing before having a child. Paid leave and paid benefits are not always guaranteed for women. Student loan debt is at an all time high for both sexes. Unfortunately, the gender wage gap makes it harder for these debts to be paid back by women. For the modern day woman, motherhood has become draped with classism. 

I can recall discussing with a professor about feminism and motherhood and while this woman had a doctorate degree and multiple publications under her name, she still said to me that motherhood was one of the most prideful things she has accomplished in life. 

However, I can’t seem to understand how this feeling of success with keeping a child alive surpases the feeling of metaphorically giving birth to a PhD thesis or finally publishing a book you’ve spent years pouring over. 

Additionally, when I was interviewing PBS news anchor, Judy Woodruff, she gave a similar, lackluster answer. I asked how a woman can balance the exhausting career of a journalist and starting a family. She responded by quoting Michelle Obama, “Women can do a lot, but they can’t do everything.” 

When discussing feminism and motherhood, it is inevitable that Simone De Beauvoir will come up. In her renowned book, “The Second Sex,” she discusses what motherhood means (Part Two, Chapter 6, ‘The Mother’). Here Beauvoir expresses the dichotomoy between countries that frown upon women using birth control but also make abortion a punishable crime. Women are made to think that they are killing a part of themselves when deciding to have an abortion. 

Beauvoir also discusses how women relate to motherhood throughout their own upbringing. When we are children, we play with dolls as if they are our own children. We pretend to feed the doll, bathe it, change it and rock it to sleep. As an adolescent, we reject the dolls as toys because we are no longer children. However, Beauvoir says that we see the doll as a threat to the integrity of our precious person. 

Courtesy of CBC.ca

To Beauvoir, women who refuse to have children for a variety of reasons are actually refusing to admit that they fear infants. And in a sense, she is not wrong. Infants are something to fear. As a woman, your first contact with your infant is in a sterile hospital setting, where you are only allowed to have what the staff deems as your immediate family in your presence. A doctor assists in the birthing process, which to him or her has become a routine blood bath, and less of a miracle that it is described. More likely than not, a woman will rip her vaginal walls and require stitches plus a long and painful healing process. The medical staff will allow you to briefly hug the infant covered in your collective plasma, blood and feces after they briskly take him or her away for testing and probing. 

Afterwards, this team of people seem to disappear as quickly as they came. The mother is left to use her instincts that should have kicked in after conception. But what if these instincts that have kept the human race alive for centuries skipped over your generation? You are met with shame from other mothers who have a false sense of superiority for something that is out of everyone’s control. Additionally, if the child ends up to be an outcast or menace to society, it also the mother’s fault. She should’ve paid more attention to the psychological signs that showed during childhood, regardless of her knowledge of psychology. The mother should have done more to keep the father in the picture, regardless of the reasons he left. If she remarried, she should not have allowed a strange man to raise a child that wasn’t his. Women cannot win when it comes to motherhood because motherhood is inherently hollow.

A woman must abandon any inkling of their previous interest or personality once they are pregnant. They are now a ‘mother’ before they are described as anything else. This could be another reason why millennial women are shying away from motherhood. We have more freedoms than women have ever had before. It would be a slap in the face to our predecessors to throw away our degrees, careers and hobbies to simply become a mother. 

As is common in our present day, women choosing to have children has become a movement. It has been dubbed as ‘Voluntary Childlessness’ with the hashtag #ChildFree in use. However, this seems to cheapen it to me. Women choosing to not become mothers do not need a movement to validate their choice. These childless women are stronger for going against what society decided their lives should become. Therefore, a movement alongside a hashtag, make it seem like these women are not fully accepting of the decision they made and are trying to find an outside reason to prove they aren’t making a mistake before they reach menopause. 

Women finally have a choice on the path their lives will take, and that makes everyone insurmountably uncomfortable. While snide remarks from relatives is expected, it seems like everyone has a say in what is happening in a young woman’s womb. The only advice I can give is to a young woman suffering from “too many people are questioning the state of my ovaries syndrome,” is too learn from my mistakes and repress the crude responses you would like to give. Instead, learn to pity those hounding you with questions and comments. They are envious of your bravery in choosing to go against societal forces. These women are yearning for the successful and powerful women they could have become. They chose the easier path of changing diapers and watching Sesame Street instead pursuing their interests and changing the world.