got milk?

One of my favorite feminist bloggers, The Feminist Breeder recently posted this awesome entry about formula marketing in hospitals, to which another blogger named Jessica, who's blog I've never read before responded accordingly in a way that sparked much debate. They then each responded, both very eloquently. You can find Feminist Breeder's response here and Jessica's response here.

They both had well thought out arguments, but if I had to pick a side I have to say I'm with Feminist Breeder. That being said, I don't think we really need to pick sides. I love that it opened up some honest discussion about breastfeeding that is beyond the typical "Breastfeeding is a choice" rhetoric that I'm so tired of everyone being defensive about. It's really worth a read.

hit me baby one more time

I'm decidely not old enough to make any permanent decisions that will affect me for the rest of my life. This is why I have no tattoos. But this is not the reason I don't have children.

I just want to make the outright statement that my reason for not wanting children is not because I'm "not ready". I say that sometimes, I've even said it in this blog, but it's a short answer that somehow seems easier than truly explaining why I choose to be child-free.

I'm not even close to the end of my child-bearing years, I have a comfortable 15 more years to begin the journey of parenting, if that's what I chose to do. I'm not so naive that I would make a blanket statement of "never having kids". Life changes.

But I'm a bit offended by the "not ready" remarks, which admittedly are probably fueled by my own quick response, because I believe it is creating an absolute in which all women are called to be mothers and those of us who aren't are somehow not up to the responsiblity or not ready to give up our young freedoms. It is because I am comfortable with who I am and still deciding how I'll make my mark on this world that I have no need or desire to bring another human into the picture that is my life. Not to mention kids are the worst. Just the worst.

B and I occasionally discuss the "when we have kids" scenerio but that conversation usually ends with "ugh, kids are the worst." I know I wrote this post about how I didn't want to have kids because I was scared of gender socialization, but the longer I am not a parent, the happier I am as a non-parent, and the more I resent comments like "oh you'll change your mind" (okay well the same could be said for your choice to birth that thing that just shot poop up its back) or "it's different when it's your own kids" (that's exactly what I don't want).

Let me disect that last thing for a second. Sunday I was at a Panera Bread eating my grilled chicken ceasar salad in peace next to a table of 9-ish year old girls after a soccer game. These two girls were talking and the one was like...telling a story? Or ... a joke? I'm not sure. She was trying to set up a scene where there were these colored doors and you had to choose a door, and what was behind each one...I dunno. It was the worst thing ever. Listening to her ramble on about what was behind the green door, I wanted to throw my apple and have it hit her right in the face. That's how annoyed I was. And the parents either had completely tuned her out (awful) or thought it was adorable (also awful). I don't want either of that. That's what parenthood is. It's dealing with a person from conception getting bigger and bigger and learning how to negotiate the world. No thank you.

I'm going to stop myself here, and leave my post about why I want more rights for non-parents for a later date (seriously, if you choose to parent, don't shove that thing in my face, thanks) because I need to get back to my very busy life of non-parenting and keeping my money for myself. There is no poop or spitup on my shirt and I don't have to teach anything to pee in a toilet. And I don't have to pay for anything to go to college. Life is good. (Go ahead, blow up the comments about how rewarding parenting is. I might experience it someday. But this is my choice.)

lullaby

Tomorrow I'm going to a baby shower, and I am NOT going to be TFTF. I'm going to be super functional. I am not going to roll my eyes if someone makes a comment about the fetus's sports ability. (I think for my sake it's better she's having a boy and not a girl.) I'm going to be on my best behavior. I skipped out on any of the gendered gifts on the registry and went for baby bottles, pacifiers and breastmilk bags. I feel confident that I will make it through finger sandwiches and blue m&m's. I know I can do it.

But my anxiety right now is still high from my trip to Babies R Us. Between my anxiety over gender stereotypes to my dropped jaw at the overwhelming amount of stuff babies "need", my chest tightened and I suppressed the urge to run over almost a dozen children with my cart. I mean, I understand why people want to have babies. But I also think that's a personal choice and if I want to glare at your child because she won't move out of the way of my cart, that should be okay too.

mtv

I don't watch a lot of trash tv or guilty pleasure shows. I've never seen The Jersey Shore and we don't even get MTV. But 16 and Pregnant and its subsequent sequel Teen Mom is totally my guilty pleasure show. I love everything about it. If you've never seen it, it's about (surprise) 16 year old pregnant girls starting with about their 30-35th week of pregnancy through the first month or so after the birth. The show is on its third season and has had a sucecssful spinoff called "Teen Mom" which is in its second season. There have been 2 adoptions, a nearly 90% break up rate, and a million tears. It's fantastic.

No, this isn't a post about how MTV is glorifying teenage pregnancy causing a chain reaction of teenage girls getting pregnant across this country to try to get on the show instead of starting the more important discussions about the lack of safe-sex education in schools. Also, it's not a post about how quick C-list fame has turned most of the mothers into camera whores. (did I really just use that word? dayum, I need a better vocabulary) See here, here, and here.

This post is about how much I love this show. All the feminist cells in my body are screaming at me, and yes, a little part of me watches it as part of an informal and ongoing study on motherhood in this country, but the rest of me just seriously loves it. I love watching how their lives unfold in partially scripted and totally predictable dramas, and how the "don't have sex without protection" lesson just seems to completely escape every single one of them. I even love the narration, done by each teen themselves, which sounds down to the syllable and inflection like every other show on MTV. (Remember this show?)

And maybe, there is a teeny, tiny, microscopic part of me that watches the show with a smug self-righteousness that I made it through my teen years without getting pregnant, and somehow by that right better than the girls on the show. Or maybe that I have the wisdom to know that no, he's not going to stick around. When he's partying instead of attending the birth of his baby, he's probably not going to "come around" once you bring the baby home.

But mostly, I genuinely like the show, and I choose to set aside my overall issues with the conversation surrounding teenage pregnancy, pregnancy in general and ridiculously awful MTV programing in order to just zone out and love it, something that I find I can do less and less these days. Don't hate. I know you have a guilty pleasure show too.

edit: No sooner did I click "publish post" did I see this article on CNN from the creater of 16 and Pregnant. Apparently today is national Day to Prevent Pregnancy. I mean, I totes knew that already.

since the dawn of (wo)man...

I hate generalizing and would normally never make a blanket statement about all women, but it seems to me that women have a way of being petty, malicious and competitive in a way that men are not. No, I'm not talking about America's Next Top Model, I'm talking about women's (and for that matter couples') decision if and when to have children.

More often than not throughout history, women who have chosen paths other than motherhood have been treated like they were avoiding their god-given duty, as if being a mother (or desiring to be a mother) was the natural state of being and those who disagreed were the variation on their natural state. (You know, just like how being hetero is natural and being not hetero is some sort of "alternative lifestyle".)

As more and more women choose to delay or completely put off motherhood, I'm finding that there seems to be a (teeny tiny) backlash towards the women who still do choose to have children. Not by the mainstream, but by the feminist community. "Oh, you're getting married, buying a house and then having a couple kids? You can't possibly be a feminist." In the interest of full disclosure, I do not have children, and while I wouldn't rule it out as a future life-decision, I am not climbing up the walls waiting to get a baby in my arms. Children are pretty gross, and right now I'm totally okay with my life-decision to have beer and a box of mac n' cheese for dinner at least once a week.

That statement brings me to another point. Depending on your audience, you might have to defend yourself According to the mainstream; (I hate that word) women who choose not to have kids must be selfish and totally unable to grow up and give up their lifestyle for the miraculous gift of parenthood. According to some liberals; women who start families are brainwashed into thinking that that's how they need to live their lives and we need more people going against the grain if we're ever going to change the social structure of this society. Either way, someone will criticize you.

But two wrongs don't make a right, and retaliation is the opposite of progress.

I think that most thoughtful feminists would tell me that they respect whatever choice a woman makes, at whatever point in her life, but I think they would be lying if they didn't at least know what I'm talking about. I can be guilty of this too, like I said, children are pretty gross so it's better for my life if I choose my friends based on the amount of grossness in their lives, but I know it doesn't make it better. Why does it always have to be a comparison? Why can't it just be what it is? How did everything turn full circle from fighting for the right to prevent pregnancy to now fighting to be mothers without judgment? It would be nice if we stopped attacking each other and just became more supportive of each other's life-decisions, because that's what we're asking from everyone else.

Am I alone in this or do people know what I'm talking about?

what michelle duggar teaches us about choice

If you want to fight for choice, I’m sorry feminists, but here it is. You have to fight for a woman’s right to have a child, even if she is having it under all the conditions that seem to be ripe for a pro-abortion argument. If choice is genuine, it means choosing when and if a woman becomes a mother, even if that decision is to carry to term, over and over again. And additionally, it doesn’t just mean carrying the pregnancy to term, but the decision as to how and whether to get pregnant in the first place. That’s right, we have to stand up for Michelle Duggar.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that there’s this televised family in the south with 19 children, the last of which was born three months prematurely at 1lb 6oz due to Michelle’s undiagnosed pre-eclampsia. After spending 4 months in the hospital, baby Josie came home, followed by another brief hospital stay.

And if you’re familiar with the show, you know that the Duggars are fundamental Christians, and although they don’t promote one specific denomination of Christianity, it’s generally believed that they subscribe to the “Quiverfull” movement which discourages the use of any form of birth control, including natural family planning, and encourages its members to have as many children as “God allows”. The family lives in a very gender-structured household where all the children are home-schooled. They subscribe to the theory that couples should not kiss or hug before marriage, and value modesty in a very traditional sense. Needless to say, their upbringing is “different”.

When their 19^th child was born, you should have seen the interwebs. It was full of “This should be their sign not to have any more children!” “It’s reckless to have so many children!” “Michelle Duggar should have her tubes tied!” And even from some of my feminist friends… “Why wouldn’t she just use birth control! Doesn’t she know she has a CHOICE?”

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss why the Duggar’s choose not to use birth control, but the fact is that they have that choice. They do not consider themselves able to “choose” how many children they have, rather that God chooses how many children they have. Regardless, the argument can still be made that they “choose” whether or not to follow the teachings they believe to be true.

I think we might need to take a quick second to deconstruct the Quiverfull movement. The Quiverfull movement was started by women. It was a reaction to the feminist movement that popularized birth control, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily make it anti-feminist. I think people have a tendency to assume that this movement was started by some sort of patriarchal board that decided their women couldn’t use birth control, and that wasn’t the case at all. Women decided that the feminist movement didn’t speak for them and their religious beliefs, and so they congregated in groups and started this movement by themselves. That’s totally feminist! Now I know that Mary Pride, who some consider original author of the Quiverfull doctrine (although she has now distanced herself from being called the founder of this movement) considered herself to be an anti-feminist, but I’m confident that when she is mistaking being a mother for being the opposite of being a feminist. If you want to read more about the Quiverfull movement their website can be found here and some more balanced information (wikipedia) can be found here.

Is Michelle Duggar’s (and Jim Bob Duggar’s for that matter) choice to have 19 children any less defendable than someone’s choice to have an abortion? Of course it’s not. And for the sake of argument, her children are very well provided for, not just in the sense of basic necessities but in the sense of quality relationships with others. Obviously the camera only gives us a glimpse into their lives, but for all intents and purposes those kids have it better off than a large number of American children. But their quality of life isn’t really the argument here. The argument is the fact that Michelle Dugger is the quintessential example of choice. Just because her choice wasn’t abortion, doesn’t make it any less of a choice. Michelle knows she has a choice. She makes a choice every day. She’s made the choice to have 19 children, all of whom are well cared for, healthy and loved. She chose motherhood. How much more feminist could that be?

And this is the argument we need to get back to. Choice is about motherhood, not abortion.