Monday 25 May 2009

A heartbreaking work of staggering stupidity

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Four days ago, an article of astounding bigotry appeared in a national newspaper. A prolific journalist called Carol Sarler had seized on a survey carried out by Dr Caroline Gatrell, which reported that company bosses were refusing promotions to childless women. These freakish creatures were, according to the good doctor, seen as ‘cold, odd and somehow emotionally deficient in an almost dangerous way.’ Employers are apparently loathe to have women working in their offices who ‘lack an essential humanity’ (and really, who could blame them? It would be like working with lots and lots of cross-dressing Dick Cheneys.). Ms Sarler was overjoyed; at last, she too could come out of the closet and admit that she too thought childless women were bizarre beyond words. She was giddy with relief and delight. She now had permission to state proudly what she had long been thinking: when she looks at a woman who chooses not to have a child she thinks: ‘Lady, you’re weird.’

For four days I have resisted writing about this. It’s partly that I am so damn bored of the confected mothers vs non-mothers divide that the media seems determined to keep chugging tiredly along. It’s partly that, old feminist that I am, I really hate attacking other women, even ones who write insane columns telling me how weird I am. It’s partly that almost all of my time has been taken up looking for my essential humanity (I could have sworn I left it down the back of the sofa).

I think if Carol Sarler had confined herself to the weirdness remark, I might have left it, and gone and done something more interesting. I might have shrugged my selfish shoulders and muttered about free speech and everyone being entitled to an opinion. But in the last line of her piece, she officially Went Too Far. ‘So three cheers for the employers who are catching on, who don’t want to people their workplaces with the cold, the calculating, the sad and the mad.’ This is so far off the reservation that I can stay silent no longer: I must speak. I must say: how would you like your prejudices Ms Sarler, over easy, or sunny side up?

Let us have clarity: I am not carelessly throwing words about. A prejudice is an unfavourable opinion formed without knowledge, thought or reason. There are no empirical studies that I can find which demonstrate women who have no children to be ‘cold, calculating, sad or mad.’ There are some studies which suggest that women who do not give birth actually have a slightly higher level of mental health than mothers, and the same or better ‘life satisfaction’ but these are quite small scale, and I would not necessarily find them definitive. The only absolute proved characteristic of the non-mother is that she is statistically likely to have a university degree. The number of graduates not having babies hovers around the forty percent mark. This much we know, this can be mapped. Everything else is pure, irrational supposition. It is blind, here-be-dragons, flat earth partiality.

Mothers, as we all know, come in all shapes and sizes. There are kind mothers and drunk mothers and funny mothers and mothers who can’t get through the day without a fistful of Xanax; there are organised mothers and academic mothers and confident mothers; there are tactile mothers and strict mothers and mothers for whom guilt is a way of life. I know very few saintly mothers, but I expect they exist. You could take all those descriptions and apply them just as easily to non-mothers. Women who decline to breed can no more be herded under one simplistic umbrella than can those who long for nothing more than tiny pattering feet. There are twenty-seven excellent reasons for not having children, not one of them on the Cruella de Vil scale; ‘I am evil and I hate sweet chubby little babies,’ is not necessarily the deciding factor.

What is so odd about the cold calculating mad sad vs selfless and filled with essential humanity argument is that it is so reductive. Working by Ms Sarler’s assumptions, we must conclude that Jane Austen and George Eliot and Louisa May Alcott and Helen Mirren are radically worse human beings than Katie Price and Kerry Katona. By this logic, we must infer that Angelina Jolie is six times finer than Oprah Winfrey. To follow this reasoning to its conclusion, we must state frankly that Kylie Minogue, Renee Zellwegger and newly famous singing sensation Susan Boyle are clearly inhumane, drunken, sex-crazed bitches. (Ms Sarler has a lovely little riff in her article that it is not the mothers who are bitching and coming in with hangovers and making eyes at the boss. You see, mummies don’t drink, cannot even see other men because they are so blinded by love for their husbands, and never have a common thought or mean.)

I could go on. I would quite like to explain why it is that not having a child is not a definitive act of selfishness. I might tempt you with a diverting little rant on over-population. But the awful thing is that this whole argument is boring me so much that I am losing the ability to type. There are women, they are different, they make different choices, some of them are nice and some of them are nasty. There are some females who like Play-Doh and some who don’t; it is not a mark of moral courage or higher integrity. So could everyone just stop with the stereotypes, and stop, stop, stop putting the child-full and the child-free into invented conflict, and calm down and have a nice cup of tea. I, obviously, will not have time for the tea part. I still have to locate my essential humanity. I am almost sure I left it in my coat pocket.

21 comments:

  1. I think what the author of the piece in the newspaper needs to remember is that some women want children and can't have them and others want children but never find a partner worthy of having children with.
    I have four kids but I don't blame anyone who chooses not to go down that life path. Being a Mum is one huge guilt trip and gives you (well me anyway) a life of constant worry, no matter what age they are. I sometimes wonder how parents of very sick children actually cope. I love mine dearly, but if I knew then what I know now.......

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  2. Euuurgh. I have not chosen to have or not have children. I don't have a large ticking clock accompanying me on my daily route, nor have I given up on the idea. There just hasn't been a man with whom I'd like to have children. How can I possibly be judged on what fate has brought me? Does she perhaps feel I'd contribute more to society as a harried single mother?

    Stupid woman (& I don't call people stupid lightly) how dare she pontificate upon matters upon which she clearly knows nothing? LLGxx

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  3. i have not read the article but one wonders - what about all the hubris-tic, calculating, sexist men that firms employ? or is that kosher? why attack women? when i was not married and couldnt make it to an event bec i was busy, i was told by colleagues, 'why are you busy? youre not even married. you have no responsibilities, as such.' now i am married and people say, 'surely, you cant be that busy, you dont even have children yet.' cum hoc, ergo propter hoc. we're always going to be catalogued, arent we? i can imagine your anger after reading the article, your post is brilliant.

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  4. Oops. Reading back that sounds as though I am all Daily Mail-ish about single mothers. Am not. Just know I, myself, wld be a disaster as a single mother in the workplace. LLGxx

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  5. Well done! I posted this outrageous story on my website Commentary last week ( http://bit.ly/DdbHe if you're interested) and have been participating in both Twitter and Facebook discussions on the many, many things wrong with it. It seems not an hour goes by that I don't think of yet another way in which it is wrong-headed. The one foremost in my mind at the moment is that misogyny is evidently the final frontier of acceptable discrimination. Can you imagine any non-fringe publication printing this garbage if she'd tried to make the same "essentially inhuman" point about a racial or ethnic group? About gay people? About the disabled? About men? Not a chance. But taking wholesale shots at women, in this case childless women, is still not only OK, but common.

    That this comes from a woman is heartbreaking and infuriating. IMO, we have an obligation to help one another succeed. There are certainly societal reasons for us to find ourselves at odds (including, significantly, discrimination and scarcity of opportunity), but women have a much better chance of changing the status quo united than we do divided - and at each other's throats. There is no one right way to be a woman, any more than there is any one right way to be a man. Personal life decisions such as whether or not to have children do not of necessity have any bearing whatsoever on one's worth as an employee, not should they.

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  6. The woman behind this article needs to take a long hard think.

    Presumably, she has found herself in a position where she decided to (and was able) to have children. Bully for her.

    And yet, if you follow her stupid, reactionary, so-called 'family values' thinking to its logical conclusion, she shouldn't be slaving over a hot keyboard but at home caring for her brood. (After all, don't 'traditionalists' claim that society started to disintregrate the moment woman entered the workplace?)

    With sisters like that, who needs enemies? The Male Chauvinists can just sit back and let her do their work for them.

    I am a mother - by choice. Of one - also by choice. And yet I would be deeply offended if I thought that I had my job virtue of my innate maternal humanity, rather my my ability to do the job well.

    And even though I have joined the elite club that is Motherhood, it has been implied that I am not really very maternal and clearly am rather selfish because I stopped at one - primarily because I wanted to be a responsible parent and not burden others with my offspring. Imagine what the woman (yes, they're woman) behind these comment have to say about childless woman?

    These stupid prejudices need to be challenged wherever we find them. Motherhood does not make a saint of anyone (in fact there are times when it can bring out the worst in the best of us). And not having kids does not signal any shortfall of compassion. Quite the opposite, in my experience.

    And. let's face it, when was the last time you heard of a man being considered less than employable based purely on the fact that he hasn't fathered any kids?

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  7. I am heartily sick of these stupid, simplistic articles. I've met plenty of horrible, competitive, superficial and materialistic mothers (and indeed fathers) and lots of wonderful parents. My best friends are mothers, girls who haven't met the right man, married and desperately want but can't have, married and don't want. I couldn't give a monkey's bottom so long as my friends are happy. I can't bear to talk about children endlessly with any of them, it drives me MAD with boredom. I just wish that horrible, small-minded people were banned from breeding but that'll never happen, sadly. In the meantime, stop this (wo)manufactured divide, it is utter nonsense.

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  8. (Please forgive the many typos in my above comment - I was just too fired up and furious to be as careful as I usually am).

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  9. . I went swimming at lunchtime and for some reason the title of Simone de Beauvoir’s Dutiful Daughter played on the first length of the pool. By the third or fourth I was on to dutiful wife and then horrors dutiful mother. The dutiful mother became an old grump, when other folk’s children jumped in on top of her. Swimming up and down I didn’t feel very child friendly and I don’t mind confessing it.

    I have enough children to make Jonathan Porritt consider a personal letter to demand that I plant a few trees but it is too late to worry, the evil deed is done .Our eldest son was green officer for his college and somewhat embarrassed by his number of siblings. He enjoys being part of a huge family but doesn’t think that he will go there.

    Our large family just happened we didn’t plan it, aren’t Catholics and do have a few televisions, although the house is so cold in winter so that possibly, we could use cosy bed as an excuse. Parenting is a learning process and I suppose by number six you are laid back enough to know that the tantrums will end and that nobody really cares if your child is academically brilliant, a future Olympic star or sadly, sick (we did a year of that). I think that it is the duty of parents to spend time telling their children that they are quite brilliant (even when they aren’t) but not to bother others with such information. Adults will form their own relationship with our children.


    Two of my best university friends scrabbled after the monopoly money but with the passing of years, needed expensive IVF. I didn’t dare confess later pregnancies until I absolutely needed to. I felt a fortunate woman but only because they were actively seeking children. Another friend has chosen not to have children and has ‘half adopted’ some of our more civilized kids. Sometimes I hate being told ‘Don’t ring him on a Monday, don’t you know he has choir practice’… but I bite my tongue. This friend has given my children much materialistically and also a really, really useful non parental ear Godparents are great until that is, they have their own children or you wonder what you ever had in common with them in the first place. The boys love her and we are privileged because she has chosen not to have her own children.

    My midwife (now retired) was born without a uterus and yet she chose to work with women giving birth. She didn’t mince her words.’ Having a child is not a god given right’. Sadly, for some, it would now appear to be so.
    I hope, I would never question your decision not to have children. If, it makes you feel better I am frequently criticised for having too many children. I know better than to whine about frequent two trolley trips to the supermarket, shoe bills or anything else that goes with having lots of children – mates tend to be low on sympathy. I didn’t work when the children were younger (another privilege) because it wouldn’t have been fair on my children or work colleagues.

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  10. I couldn't believe what I was reading when I stumbled across that article in the middle of the week. Almost incomprehansible to read what was being said, in 2009, surely not? But it bothered me that it had been writen and someone had decided to print it in a national newspaper.
    Surely then, I am inhabiting a parallel planet, because the picture painted of these childless women without humanity simply doesn't bear any resemblance to the childless women I know, or indeed am myself. And the woman writing it, I didn't recognise her either amongst the lovely mothers I count as my friends.
    But I am very glad to have things articulated for me so very eloquently here, and to hear the ripple of indignation.....

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  11. Carol Sarler needs to find something else to write about. Has she considered the millions of women who can't have children but would love to. I have many friends who have gone through intensive fertility treatments and are still childless.
    On the other hand, I haven't decided if I want children or not. I have never been one for dreaming of a pregnant belly. But must say I would be happy either way. What I would never do is judge those who have decided not to have children.
    It really blows my mind when writers take a stand without really thinking about the consequences. Women are just now being thought of equally in the workplace and this is one step forward, 10 steps back. xxC

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  12. Dear All - You know that usually I try to reply to comments individually, but these have all come in such a rush, and are so nuanced and thoughtful and comprehensive, that I would not know where to start. So I am sending out a huge collective thank you to you all - for being such lovely voices of sanity, for sharing my indignation, and for making the comments section of this blog such a joy for me. Talk about restoring one's faith in human nature.
    xxx

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  13. My husband and I decided to remain childless for several reasons, chief among which was the fact that neither of us had the powerful sense of wanting children that seems to be the experience of, probably, the majority of couples. I was sometimes told by friends, "You'd feel differently if you had a child". This did not seem to be a very good basis for taking responsibility for a tiny, helpless human being. I love dogs, but I would never suggest to someone who was indifferent to the idea of owning one that they would feel differently if they did!

    I am intrigued by the idea that women who do not have children are somehow lacking in compassion. While I would certainly not claim sainthood or anything close, I do not think that I would have got through the selection process for ordination as an Anglican Priest if I had been significantly deficient in the ablility and desire to care for others.

    The cynic in me wonders whether the reason that employers are reluctant to promote childless women is that, until they are 45 or so (and by then probably too old for promotion anyway) there is no guarantee that they will remain childless. The further up an organisation a woman goes, the more inconvenient it will be for her employer if she takes several months' maternity leave - but employers know that they are not allowed to discriminate on these grounds. Suggesting that a woman's character constrains her promotion prospects is perhaps seen as a way avoiding an employment tribunal. Why Carol Sarler should see fit to affirm them in their practices is a mystery.

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  14. Wooh. Deep breath. I find this a fascinating line of argument from Ms Sarler as myself and the Other Half are currently in the position of deciding when we might want to start to think about the possibility of gearing up to have children... (we just happen to really love our life together as 2 at the mo), so - according to her - the moment I decide to utilise my womb I immediately become a thinking coherent female - and no longer 'sad or mad' as I obviously am right now with our decision to carry on just a few months longer.

    Well the irony of that - and here was me thinking all those working mothers were a disgrace to the workplace, the economy and future generations with their inability to work 7-11 and grapple with childcare issues and struggling to close the pay-gap, all in some desperate attempt to prove for decades now that having children does not necessarily mean losing your marbles. Has she gone quite mad?

    It really takes some particular kind of vicious bloody-mindedness to have a viewpoint such as that. My friends and I are all variously around the baby-making ages - some have, some haven't - but never in a million years would I consider my successful co-food obsessive editor friend sadder or madder than my first-time mother/lawyer friend.

    Weren't we all supposed to be in it together? Wasn't that the much-vaunted phrase binding us as the height of our stilettos made our heads bump on those glass ceilings? Looks like no sooner do we manage to crack the glass a little than we peer up and find there's other women up there furiously papering over the cracks to stop the rest of us having a go.

    Right - off to do the weekly shop in the pouring rain now, like a good girl. Don'tcha just love staycations...?

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  15. Oh glory! I've not read the article itself, but its message is quite devastatingly stupid and badly thought-through...Leaving aside the plethora of unsubstantiated judgements, the bottom line is that if it's true that employers are avoiding promoting childless women (on the one hand) and equally wary of mothers (time off,sick children, lack of committment) on the other - they are STILL doing their utmost to discriminate against women. And here I was, thinking we'd made progress. Grrrrrr.

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  16. Seriously, is it possible to argue that Mother Theresa and Sr. Mary Scullion (of Project HOME in the US) and Sr. Helen Prejean have misplaced their essential humanity???

    I, too, am tired of the fractioning and factions. We are who we are, each of us, wonderfully made and unique; each of us, flawed, uniquely so.

    I have to say that your line about "organised mothers and academic mothers' made me smile. I read it first as if those, too, were oppositional categories -- as they certainly are in my life!

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  17. Just to add another comment, I wanted to express how lovely this post is. I won't go into detail - the rather fantatsic and eloquent group of posters above me has said it all.

    All I will say, is I hope noone was hurt by this article. I hope everyone saw the ridiculous core beneath the scientific exterior. The biggest judges, the people with the blackest and whitest thinking - they are the ones not worth listening to. In a world of grey, journalists like her end up knowing nothing.

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  18. Much as I like to trumpet the importance of a woman’s right to choose all things at all times, there’s one choice I simply cannot understand: the choice of an otherwise sane and healthy woman not to have children.”

    Notice the ‘poisoning the well’ tactic here – your ‘otherwise sane and healthy’ comment clearly states that the choice NOT to have children must be insane and unhealthy as a foregone conclusion. Without actually having PROVED it at all, you present it as a given. Why? If YOU want or like something, assuming that you are sane (and judging from this article that is a BIG assumption), all other sane people must think the same as you? Quite a large logical fallacy here, and were are only on the first paragraph. Not very promising.
    ….

    Yet if she says she hasn’t a shred of maternal feeling in her, moreover, if she says she would prefer to concentrate on her career and that a child would only get in the way of it, then my head might acknowledge her right to do so. But my heart whispers: ‘Lady, you’re weird.’

    So anyone who doesn’t like the same things as you is ‘weird’ by your book? And of course if she is ‘weird’ by YOUR book, she must be objectively really weird and damaged? And you are the one saying that OTHER people are the ones with the problems? Seriously? Archaeology is my life – that doesn’t mean that I need to expect that other people must want to be archaeologists too – and it doesn’t mean that I think that there is anything wrong with them if they don’t. I am confident and happy enough in my own self and path not to need to validate myself by negatively judging those who do not want to follow that path. It is a well known trope that those who are truly happy in what they do, do not feel the need to judge those who do not want the same thing.

    It was welcome news, therefore, to discover this week that I am not alone.

    Because if other people share the same delusion or bigoted idea, that makes it all OK? Would you say the same to those who are racist or homophobic? It is OK, because there are others who feel the same?
    A stereotype being makes it no less bigoted.

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  19. As a result, it is these single-track careerists who are increasingly likely to be vilified, refused jobs and denied promotion because many employers believe them to lack what the study calls ‘an essential humanity’. And I know exactly what they mean.

    I’m sure you do – it is already pretty clear that you can’t look beyond your own choices and lifestyle to allow that others may also be valid.

    And if that touch of ‘essential humanity’ - or its absence - colours such notably tough professions, it’s hardly surprising that employers are starting to notice that the same applies across the spectrum of workplaces.

    *Blinks* wait a minute – where exactly have you proven anything about lack of ‘essential humanity’? Did you drop a whole paragraph? The only mention you made was an idea held by some employers, and now you are trying to pretend that it is an established fact. You are trying to sneak in an unproven claim (a lack of humanity in those who don’t want kids) as a given fact. If you suggest that people who don’t have (or want) kids are less human you had better have something to support such an outrageous and offensive statement. How dare you.


    Of course, we need not be silly about it.
    Nobody wishes to see a female soldier in combat with a six-week-old infant in one arm and a rifle in the other.


    Assuming that she even WANTS the kid. But then you do allow for women who physically CAN’T have kids and here you allow a LITTLE for women who are in a career where they actually cannot have them (except they are just supposed to wait a bit). It is us evil wenches who CAN have them and choose not to that you have a problem with. Newsflash - it is not all abou thte career, either - some of us just do. not. want. them. PERIOD.

    ….But most jobs aren’t like that - and most children don’t stay babies for long.

    So what? Those who REALLY want to have kids will find a way to make it work, except for those hardest jobs. Therefore, those who don’t may NOT really want kids at all. Why is this such a shocking concept? Aside from the fact that YOU really like being a mother, and wanted to do it and were attracted to kids! Not everyone is the same as you. That does not make them wrong, damaged or faulty in some way. You are not the default for all women, and your personality is not the be all and end all for all women..

    [The mothers] They’re not there to compete for the attentions of the male executives;

    And women who don’t have kids are? Going after men is connected to whether or not you are in a committed sexual relationship, not whether you have children. You are conflating SINGLE and childless – these are not the same.

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  20. …and they’re there because they have mouths to feed other than their own and shoes to buy for someone else’s feet.

    So, I am not going to work hard because I am only paying my own rent, buying my own food and clothes and medications? If I don’t have kids, I can just live on air? Nice to know thta I do not have to eat! Or does it just matter less if *I* eat and have a place to live?

    Two-thirds of working mothers, a recent survey found, could not provide for the children they love in the manner they would wish if they lost their jobs. So there’s incentive for you.

    And if I lost my job, I couldn’t provide for myself - but I guess it is a crime for a woman to love herself and care aobut her OWN wellfare.
    And if I lost my job, I couldn’t provide for myself - but that is not suposed to be *real* motivation???!!!??
    Is that somehow less important? And I would have LESS access to public help, so I would be in WORSE shape. There is much less of a safety net for people without kids.


    The prioritising that may baffle other people is a cinch for a woman who has spent years juggling a household. Negotiating skills? A request for 10 per cent off an overdue invoice is nothing to a woman who has had to broker a deal on Britain’s Got Talent versus bedtime.

    Because if you don’t have children, you don’t have a household? Are you seriously suggesting that a deal that could affect multiple people’s job security is somehow LESS important than one kid’s bedtime????? If anyhting, I would take this as evidence that parenting (at least in YOUR life) has made you LESS caring - you now elevate the importance of your kids over that of other people.

    When it comes to emergencies, if you have run all the way to a clinic with a terrified toddler vomiting down your neck then, trust me, a package delayed in transit is a piece of cake.

    And again, emergencies only count (or exist) if they are baby related? The person whose job or pay might be in jeapardy because of that package would NOT agree with you that YOUR child is more important than everything else.

    And if those are the tangibles, the intangibles - the ‘essential humanity’ - are more important still.

    So? Are you saying that those without children don’t have ‘essential humanity’?
    Again on the idea that only those who have or want the same things as you are really human.
    Are you only allowed to get to be 'human' after having kids? And does this mean that you don’t think your kids are really fully human yet? (after all they have not had kids!)

    You cannot be a mother without knowing something about selflessness, compassion, generosity, commitment, fierce loyalty and plain hard work.

    Um - Really? Actually, you CAN very well be a mother and learn none of those things. Not a GOOD mother, but not all mothers ARE.

    Note the unspoken implication that the women who don’t have kids do NOT have those things. This implies that the ONLY way to knowing something about “selflessness, compassion, generosity, commitment, fierce loyalty and plain hard work” is to have kids. I would love to see you back this up!

    Why do you have to have kids for any of the above? Yes, you can develop in those areas through kids, but there are countless other ways, not any less important or valid. People are either originally essentially decent in those areas, or they are not. If they are, they do not need to have kids to develop as a person.

    You cannot - surely - be a boss and not value assets such as those in your staff.

    But apparently you can be a boss and only value those asssets in those members of your staff who have a similar personal life to yourself? Or does the ‘good’ boss assume that only the people who have a similar personal life to her could have those good qualities? Funny, that sounds more like a BIGOTED boss to me. Do you have the same views of people who don’t have the same sexual orientation or religion as you?

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  21. …But, more than all the things we want, we actually need our children; they complete us as women, they are our light and our love and our legacy.

    And so all other women need to feel the same? Who made YOU the judge of the entire gender? There is something wrong with me because I am complete as a person myself? Do you tell the lesbians that they are wrong because they don’t need a man to complete them?I will thank you to NOT tell me what I want, what I need or what will complete me. You do not know me.

    I have different lights, different lives, different loves and different legacies than you. You are not the basis for measuring the lives and interests of other people – you are not the default woman, and you have no basis for telling me what should complete me - and you have no right to do so.

    We feel desperately sorry for those who yearn for children they cannot have; the unwilling barren, if you will. But when we meet a woman who chooses her childlessness in the belief that there is something out there worth more, we smile politely even while - once again - our guts whisper: ‘Lady, you’re weird.’

    Why? What have you proved here? (Aside from the fact that you are narrow minded and pathologically incapable of projecting your own personality and motivations onto all other women and punishing those who do not conform).

    Every single argument you make is flawed and based on unspoken assumptions and leaps in logic.

    First you say that you feel that someone who does not want the same as you is weird, just because they are not like you and you can’t understand it. Now here you present it as some sort of objective observation. They are ‘weird’ because you feel that they are weird (because they are not (like)you), and because of that they are weird. This is circular reasoning that proves absolutely nothing.

    So three cheers for the employers who are catching on, the ones who don’t want to people their workforces with the cold, the calculating, the sad and the mad. The only question is: what took you so long?

    And here you take it even further – now you feel free to insult me openly. How dare you impose your life on mine?

    Each of the things you say here has not been even remotely openly or honestly addressed, yet alone proven.
    You have not once clearly discussed women who don’t want kids –instead you talk about mothers and their supposed characteristics.

    Apparently, that was supposed to imply that women who don’t want kids don’t have any of those characteristics. I guess by implying in a sneaky way you didn’t think that you have to support what you say.

    Mothers are ‘caring’ and ‘hard working’? Well apparently that is supposed to mean that non-mothers are not? Why? How did you make this point, let alone support it?

    Cold? Where did you get this from? Why is not wanting what you want cold? You have never supported this in anyway.

    As best I am able to reconstruct this argument, you are saying that motherhood causes you to be warm and caring, and therefore, you have to be a mother to be warm and caring so then not being a mother means you have to be cold and uncaring. This is full of fallacies.

    I could say that taking care of a big dog makes you warm and caring, but does that mean that people who don’t want a pet, or who prefer cats are cold and uncaring?

    The same for calculating. Again no proof.

    Sad? According to whom? So now I have to be sad if I don’t have what you do, regardless if I want it or not?

    And MAD???? Here we really see your bigotry, and crazed narcissism straight out. You honestly think that if someone is not like you and doesn’t want to be like and live your life they must be crazy. If you ask me, THAT is the truly insane point of view.

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