No Right Number: Reflections On Family Size and Choice

I very much enjoyed this cartoon, mostly because it's true. Why is it that we trust women— sometimes even teenaged girls— to take on the exalted and serious job of parenting, but we can't trust people in their 20s to know that they wouldn't ever be good at that job?

I mean, my aunt said she never wanted kids, and guess what? She's in her fifties and she DOESN'T HAVE KIDS. She's happily married and loves her job and has a FABULOUS house (mostly because, without the children, she and her husband get to spend their hard-earned cash on cool stuff instead of diapers and college tuition) and she's perfectly content. I look at her, and then I look at a certain high school acquaintance on Facebook (who only ever talks about her baby, and who never seems to sleep, eat real food, have time with her husband, or enjoy any non-baby aspect of her life whatsoever) and I wonder: how and why did we decide that everyone MUST have a baby?

Now, I'm not anti-baby, by any means. As most of you know, I'm looking forward to having a baby in my thirties— I know that, for me, it'll be a rewarding experience, although I really really really want to keep it down to one. (For all those who want to tell me, yet again, that they planned on having just one and then had more and therefore I will do the same thing: uh, I'm not you, and I'm a pretty determined person, and I usually don't have any trouble making my life the way I want it to be [within reason, at least], so I wouldn't worry, because if I say I just want one, then I JUST. WANT. ONE.)

But I know plenty of people who don't want kids EVER, and I don't quite understand why there's such a stigma attached to such a choice. In fact, I think it's pretty brave and mature of them to admit that, to tell you the truth. These folks have figured out that they wouldn't make very good parents, or that they don't WANT to be parents (and I'm pretty sure that an unwilling parent isn't exactly the most nurturing type of parent), and they're at peace with that in themselves. So when did we decide that babies were everyone's business?

Perhaps society is so obsessed with babies, not only because it's part of our biological drive, but also because they make such heartwarming stories. Who doesn't like reading about babies? I mean, one of my favorite pieces on PNN this month was Jessica Lee's post, "The Pregnant Pause," about her best friend coming to visit and then finding out she (the best friend, that is) is pregnant. Jessica's writing is superb, and the whole arc of the story— taking a pregnancy test just to be sure that a night of drinking would be okay, then discovering the test was positive, then having such joy, such expectation, such sisterly affection bring them together to look towards the future— just makes you feel warm all over. Everyone likes to hear good news, but when that news involves something momentous in the lives of those we hold dear— "We're engaged!" or "We bought a house!" or "I got into college!" or, yes, "I'm pregnant!"— it's especially beautiful. Even reading about strangers' pregnancies can make people happy, as we can see from all the tabloid news over celebrity babies and pregnancies.

The problem is when we become so interested to having those happy feelings that we begin to apply our expectations and experiences universally. We like babies, we like knowing that other people are having babies, so we assume that babies are always a good thing to have, even when common sense tells us otherwise.

I think I've said this before, but I believe the whole Octomom debacle tells us some serious things about who we are as a society. I've written before about the disturbing things Octomom reveals about the ways in which we think about embryos and unborn babies, but today, I want to talk about what I think she tells us about babymania and baby pressure. Because, y'know, we didn't ALWAYS hate Octomom. In the beginning, we LIKED her. When we thought she was some random chick who wanted to have all these babies, a lot of people liked her— some even rooted for her. And what was it that made us turn sour against her?

Money.

We hated Octomom because she was poor, not because she had fourteen children. We hated her because she was taking taxpayers' money, not because she was contributing to overpopulation. It was her economic class that disturbed us, not her original intentions, and even I was certainly not above criticizing her decision on the basis of financial instability.

I was reading about "baby addiction" today, and I happened to come across this small blurb at Jezebel. The blurb in and of itself isn't that interesting, but the comments reveal a lot, to my mind. Over and over, women excoriate Octomom for being unable to afford all her children— yet they insist that Angelina Jolie is different, because she has MONEY. The comments were disturbing in that they blithely assumed that a rich mom was not only better able to provide food and clothes for her kids, but that a rich mom could pay someone ELSE to watch the babies:

"Angelina Jolie is in a financial position to provide a good home to the kids. Even when she's busy working, she can afford to have someone there to play with them, and she also has Brad."

Oh, okay— we're yelling at unemployed Octomom for being unable to have enough time with all her children, but Angelina Jolie, who is clearly a busy woman and spends a lot of her time on sets, doing TV interviews, doing charity work, etc., can pay someone to watch her children, so that's somehow fine. Apparently, being raised by a nanny is all right, but being raised by a poor mom who can't afford a nanny? BLASPHEMY.

Now, I'm not justifying Octomom's behavior, and I'm certainly not saying that Angelina Jolie is a bad person— for one thing, she adopted a lot of those kids, and I think that's waaaaay more responsible. I think adopting kids and giving them a home is truly noble. But I do just want to point out how much of our baby obsession is class-driven: we scream about the poor black woman who has five kids on welfare, but we get misty-eyed over the crazy cult of the 18-and-counting Duggars. Think about it: are there a whole lot of TLC shows devoted to black parents who have large families? Or Latino parents? Apparently, overpopulation is only awesome when it's white middle-class people who are doing it.

In comparing Angelina Jolie to Octomom, I wish we would focus more on the adoption factor (after all, she's not actually giving birth to all these kids— I think she's the biological mom of three of them, but the rest were adopted, and that's great of her to give them a home) and less on the fact that one is rich and one is poor. Sure, Octomom is going to have a lot more trouble paying for food and clothes and educational stuff for her kids, but I think both moms could potentially struggle to find time to be with each of their kids individually, and that doesn't have a thing to do with social class.

Which leads me back to my original question: why are we, as a society, so happy to pressure people into having babies, and then so disgusted when people buckle under that pressure too willingly? What is it with this double standard: women who have no babies are shriveled up, pathetic harpies, and women who have lots of babies are trashy or desperate or mentally ill?

One commenter on the Jezebel article hit the nail on the head here:

"Now that Tabloids have mastered the 'Too Skinny to live!/SOMEONE needs to lose weight!' Catch 22, they're finally moving on scientifically establish just HOW MUCH women should want babies. Enough to make them worthwhile, but not enough to look desperate, of course."

She's right, I think. According to popular culture, no babies is criminal, one baby is selfish, two babies is nice, three babies is better, eight babies lands you a cable show, and twelve babies is sick. Not only should women apparently not have the choice to skip childbearing, but they should ALSO not have the choice to give birth to seven children if they feel that need. Either way, the uterus is treated as public property, and should be used only to fulfill everyone else's ideals about perfect families. Either way, women aren't given the choice.

One of the many reasons why I'm such a big proponant of abortion rights is because I think your body is such a personal topic that its uses and limitations and desires can and should be exclusively the domain of each woman individually. The fact that I believe that abortion is acceptable in most cases does not give me the right to insist that people who get pregnant accidentally, some of whom I think would make bad mothers, should have abortions, just as people who think abortion is immoral don't get to force me to carry a child I don't want. I personally dislike the idea of giving birth to large numbers of children, mostly because I think it's gross, but also because I think it's socially and environmentally irresponsible. But that's MY BELIEF, and the only way I can express that is through controlling my own body, through using my body to not procreate, or to give birth once and then never again. I can't use anyone else's body to do that; I can't tell anyone else how many children to have. And I shouldn't be able to do that, because, well, what if they could use my body to enact what they see as its true purpose? What if some insane Duggar-esque fundamentalists got to choose what I did with my womb? Then I'd have thirteen kids, all of whom would be unwanted at this point, and then none of us would be happy— not the kids, and not myself, either.

When society tells women how to dress, what to eat, what the shape of their thighs should look like, how many kids they should have— this all signals that we don't believe women are capable of deciding these things themselves. Nadia Suleman is a sad woman, and she's not to be exalted for give birth to kids she can't manage; but at the same time, deciding on a set number of children that women should be allowed to have could raise some serious questions. If you can prevent a woman from having a baby she wants, can you also force a woman to have a baby she doesn't want? I don't even want to contemplate that possibility.

If only we could manage to think about these things wisely. If only we could take a 24-year-old at her word when she says she wants to look into some, uh, more permanent birth control. If only we could feel sorrow and not anger when we see a woman who has bitten off more than she can chew in terms of family obligations. If only we could assume that couples who have no children are either happy that way or having their own very private, very personal, very painful experiences with attempted pregnancies, and just keep our mouths shut about when and why future babymaking could occur, or not occur. If only the way a woman feels about her womb and her progeny were actually personal matters, instead of something that strangers should discuss endlessly on message boards. Wouldn't that be nice?

And I'm as guilty of it as everyone else. When I'm stuck in line at the grocery store behind a clueless young mom whose six kids are knocking over shelves, removing the caps on chapstick tubes, gnawing on unpurchased candy bars, and spilling their sippy cups of juice down my pant leg, I get pissed. I get judgmental. I think, "Who let this chick have these children?" But really, that's not an appropriate question, because no one should have "let" her do anything— it should be her choice. She should be a better parent, of course, and she should be more responsible for her children. But I can't tell her not to have kids, because I wouldn't want her to tell ME that I SHOULD have kids.

Instead of railing at women who have seemingly unmanageable numbers of kids, let's focus on giving them the tools they need to know when and where and how to have a baby: parenting classes, accessible birth control, economic and social choices, and a real perspective on the financial and environmental impact of bringing children into the world. Education should be our goal, not eliminating choice entirely.

Because guess what? I love my no-babies-yet choice, and I wouldn’t want anyone to take that choice away from me. Ever.