Are women without kids "selfish cunts?"

Ruby Warrington on pronatalism, the Mommy Binary, and patriarchal ideals of motherhood

I’ve written many times (here, here, and here) about how I rushed into motherhood unthinkingly hoping it would be a shortcut to self-actualization. Reader, it was not! Prior to becoming a mother, I was struggling to understand myself, my career aspirations, and my desires. After becoming a mother, I was still struggling to understand myself, my career aspirations, and my desires. PLUS I had a baby. PLUS the frightening realization that I had made one of the biggest decisions a person can make without first seriously considering the labor of mothering or my aptitude for that labor.

In an alternate universe, I would’ve grappled with the whole question of self-knowledge prior to even considering children. I would’ve interrogated my understanding of motherhood as the pinnacle of my “womanly destiny,” and I would’ve gotten clear about the differences between motherhood and mothering. In this alternate universe, I think I ultimately would still have decided to have kids, and I might even have still experienced postpartum depression, but (!) I might have escaped the crushing existential crisis of identity that accompanied that postpartum depression (it’s my alternate universe so I make the rules).

This is all to say that I’m immensely grateful for Ruby Warrington’s thoughtful consideration of motherhood OR NOT in her new book, Women without Children. We live in a culture bursting with representations of women with kids, and, as is much discussed in this newsletter, often these representations only serve to uphold and strengthen an outdated, harmful ideal very few mothers can adhere to.

This newsletter is about the cult of ideal motherhood, and the cult of ideal motherhood is simply an offshoot of the cult of ideal womanhood, which, as Ruby points out in her book, presumes the ideal woman is a mother.

While Ruby expressly directs her book to women without children, I can’t overstate how utterly nourishing this book is to all people who have faced the “mom question,” all people who have confused their self-worth with their ability to adhere to cultural standards of femininity, and all people who are eager to divorce their senses of self from gender performance and patriarchal pressure.

---

Sara: Talk to me about the Mommy Binary and the Motherhood Spectrum.

Ruby: The Mommy Binary is this false divide that splits mothers and non-mothers; mothers being in the camp of valid, respectable women who are fulfilling their duty, doing what they're meant to do. They will feel a nameable love for their children and will have someone to look after them when they're old, etc, etc. Non-mothers in this binary are seen as sad, lonely, dysfunctional, and as deluded, and having missed the point. They will live to regret not having kids. And within the non-mother camp, there’s also a binary between childless women who wanted to have kids but couldn’t for any number of reasons, and childfree women who have deliberately opted out of this thing which they are supposed to do.

And this binary all felt extremely reductive and toxic to me. So, in the book, I present the concept of the Motherhood Spectrum, to shine light on the fact that actually, any one individual's experience, desire, or aptitude for parenthood, will be influenced by a very diverse multitude of factors. Factors which might change their feelings about motherhood or non-motherhood throughout the course of their lives. This feels like a much more humane, compassionate, and genuine approach, and reflects both our experiences of motherhood and non-motherhood, both of which can be full of complexity, wherever you orient on the motherhood spectrum.

Sara: You write so insightfully about how motherhood is upheld in our culture as the pinnacle of a woman’s destiny, and that’s certainly a narrative I internalized, and one that’s responsible for me plunging into motherhood as a way to find meaning for myself. Unsurprisingly, this narrative was also responsible for me experiencing a total crisis of identity and a feeling that I’d been hoodwinked as a new mom. I’ve often wondered how differently I would’ve approached motherhood had I read a book like yours or been exposed to cultural conversations considering motherhood as a choice rather than as a mandate. Can you talk about how you see this conversation deepening and taking root? I love that you reframe the question of “Why don’t I want kids” to be “Why am I expected to want to be a mom?”

Ruby: By presenting motherhood as a choice versus a biological imperative, we encourage people to deeply consider all the implications of making that choice. I believe that this would help to circumvent some of those feelings that you describe of being hoodwinked into this role that nobody told you would be this hard. I don't feel prepared for this. I didn't realize I was gonna have to sacrifice so much. Of course people feel extremely guilty and ashamed for having any of those feelings because so many will have internalized that motherhood is a biological imperative. It's what you're built to do. It's the reason you are here and it's how you will find fulfillment.

Presenting motherhood as a choice will give everybody–mothers and non-mothers–more freedom to experience all the conflicted feelings that can be attached to either of these paths. So yeah, I do believe that motherhood as a choice needs to be normalized in our society.

Sara: You write that pronatalism is an ideology that says, essentially, “parents are more important than non-parents, and that families are more respectable and more valid than single people.” How does this play out in both systemic and cultural ways?

Ruby: On an individual level, pronatalism can make anybody who has not fulfilled the parenthood prescription feel defective. And that feeling of there is something wrong with me is ultimately what leads to non-mothers feeling ashamed of being who we are. Shame, in turn, leads to us suppressing aspects of our nature and not feeling like we're able to be fully expressed as individuals. Anybody who's experienced any degree of marginalization on a systemic level will be familiar with that feeling.

It's interesting because pronatalism is what drives anti-abortion laws, but it's also responsible for firms investing $20,000 to offer egg freezing to their female employees, whilst not offering the same benefits to people who want to perhaps invest in other things for their lives like further education, etc, etc. So pronatalism helps people become parents, but it diminishes or acts against the interests of people who don't necessarily want to be parents.

Sara: I love that you originally wanted to name the book Selfish Cunt, and after reading it, I fully see the rank absurdity in assuming a woman’s desire to not procreate is, in any way, selfish. Why do you think this notion that women without children are selfish persists? Especially in the midst of a climate crisis, and the fact that most mothers are dealing with unfair, untenable circumstances making their experiences of motherhood incredibly difficult? Is it simply misogyny? Or is it more complicated?

Ruby: I think on one level, painting women without kids as selfish speaks to the perhaps repressed resentment and regret that some parents may feel about the sheer level of self-sacrifice that is required of parents on a financial, energy, time, physical, and identity level. And I do actually believe that some of that resentment is then projected onto people who don't have children under the umbrella of You're so selfish. The implication being that it's selfish not to fully give oneself over to the nurturing and caretaking of one's children. When actually, the demand to do that is ridiculous.

Human beings are designed to raise children in community. Parenting is not supposed to be a solitary endeavor, and the level of self-sacrifice that is required of parents who are doing their parenting in a very siloed sort of nuclear family, disconnected from wider structural support systems, is unrealistic and unfair.

That said, I have connected to something since finishing the book around the sense that in some ways it is selfish not to be willing to give the gift of life to another human being, to sort of hoard the life force that lives within us for ourselves. But this is also to assume that human beings want to be born, you know? It requires one to believe that this might be a gift worth giving to another human being.

I think that sometimes when we don't feel called to bring a child into the world, we might have experienced the world as being a cruel or unforgiving place, and maybe on an unconscious level, there's a part of us that doesn't want to necessarily inflict that on another human being.

Sara: While you direct this book towards women without children, I (a mom) found myself cheering over and over when confronted with your clear-eyed understanding of how the ideals of motherhood hurt both mothers and women without children. I violently underlined this passage about which feelings about motherhood are “allowed.”

“Feeling excited about becoming a mother: allowed. Dreading the loss of physical, mental, and emotional autonomy: definitely not. Feelings of elation any time a friend announced they are pregnant: lovely! Experiencing pangs of grief for the inevitable weakening of your bond, and the feelings of jealousy toward the unborn child: selfish fucking cunt.”

Talk to me about how women without children, simply by existing, can help rewrite this narrative of allowance.

Ruby: The sociologist Orna Donath introduced the concept of “feeling rules” to me in her book, Regretting Motherhood. And it’s this idea that we’re only allowed to feel certain things about becoming a mother and about mothering once we are engaged in the role, meaning we're not allowed to feel resentful or regretful towards our children or towards the experience of mothering. We're not allowed to feel like it's something that we're not going to be capable of or that we just don't want to do. So, by simply existing, women without children live in defiance of the rule that mandates that women are built to be mothers and that motherhood must be our primary role and that motherhood is our most valuable job and contribution to society. Women without children live in defiance of that conditioning.

And hopefully, just by being us, we’ll be providing role models for future generations that it's okay to break the rules of motherhood. Rules which absolutely have been imposed by capitalist heteronormative patriarchy which insists or requires female bodied individuals to perform the nurturing caregiving work that is essential to the overall functioning of society and not only to perform it but to perform it without complaints and without compensation.

Sara: This newsletter is primarily concerned with the myth of ideal motherhood, but I love that you point out the inherent harm in any kind of an ideal. Can you talk about this a bit?

Ruby: Motherhood must be a labor of love. That is the cause of so much suffering among mothers and the root cause of so much of the resentment women experience in their mothering. Having an ideal to aspire to can be inspiring and motivating. And in our society, the ideal normal is often ascribed to people who are white, male, wealthy, educated, cisgendered, and heterosexual. And so, anybody who falls outside of these ideals is likely to be marginalized at best, and in a worst-case scenario, oppressed or even violated. And so, when we have ideals in our society, including this ideal of selfless motherhood, anybody who fails or is unable to live up to that ideal is going to experience persecution on some level, not least from ourselves, you know, the idea that I am defective, there is something wrong with me, and that I must live in a constant state of self-punishment.

Sara: You write about the “emotional charge” the word mother carries (as opposed to “parenthood”) and I firmly agree that the individual role of Mother and the cultural role of motherhood in many contexts carries so much more emotional freight than “parent” or even “father.” Why do you think that is?

Ruby: I was just speaking about how mothering is the original “labor of love.” It's something that women are expected to do because we want to do it, because we are biologically and psychologically wired to mother. But the vocation of parenting can be performed by anybody of any gender expression, and it’s actually a very challenging, relentless, physically demanding, emotionally and financially draining thankless task. Ideally, no one should be forced to undertake this vocation against their will, and so I think the emotional charge “mother” carries has a lot to do with this idea that mothering (more so than parenting and certainly more so than fathering) is a labor of love. I think it’s also more emotionally charged because the challenges of mothering are so often erased by the concept of “a labor of love.”

Sara: There’s so much talk about hashtag self-care, but your book beautifully makes an argument for choosing a life without children as the ultimate in self-care. It maddens me that consumerist culture is ok with self-care in the form of bubble baths but deems self-care in the form of opting out of a life you don’t want to live as “selfish.” Can you talk about how the decision to not have kids (for some women) can be the ultimate act of self-care and be a way of addressing generational trauma and confronting what you call our “collective emotional inheritance as women and women-identifying individuals?”

Ruby: There's a line near the beginning of the book where I talk about deciding not to embark on the path of parenthood. Whether it's a conscious choice like my affirmative no, or whether it's the result of carefully weighing a multitude of choices and deciding that this is not something we are suited to or have the capacity to perform. And this decision can be read as equal parts self-empowerment and self-preservation.

And self-preservation is, to quote Pooja Lakshmin, a form of “real self-care.” Her book came out two weeks before mine and we've done several events talking about this, but real self-care is giving yourself what you need on an emotional and mental level. And being able to recognize and act on information you have about what you can handle and what you cannot handle, or what the impact of embarking on certain life paths might be is a privilege. Especially a life path which is as demanding, as unrelenting, and as never-ending (literally) as parenthood.

The decision to become a parent is one of the only decisions that you can't unmake, and so shouldn’t be entered into lightly. And for many people, myself included, although I wasn't necessarily conscious of it at the time, in deciding not to be a parent, I was automatically buying myself more time for my own inner work. For my own healing, for my own rest, for my own mental and emotional well-being. If I had become a parent knowing how challenging parenthood would potentially be for me on an emotional, mental, or physical level, the person who would suffer most would be the child. So, this is an act of self-care in the form of self-preservation, but I think it can have a hugely positive impact in terms of not bringing any more human beings in this world.

Sara: You note that the 2020 US Census showed the biggest drop in birth rates since WWII. I’m curious what you think about the coinciding rise of “trad wives” and social media accounts devoted to celebrating the nuclear family ideal, traditional gender roles, and yes, a woman’s noble duty to devote herself to child-rearing and domestic endeavors.

Ruby: There has been so much progress over the past five decades in terms of gender equality, the feminist movement, and women’s liberation. Giving women the option not to become mothers is absolutely central to this progress; giving them the option in terms of birth control access, abortion access, access to education and access to financial security and independence. And I think this has been a huge driver of the drop-off in the global birth rate. And I think the rise of trad wives, celebrations of the nuclear family ideal and traditional gender roles, the rolling back of abortion rights, and the predicted rollback of contraceptive access is a reaction to this progress. For every progressive development, there is a conservative backlash. This is how ultimately how progress is made. But progress is unstoppable. And as much as we are seeing a backlash now, there's still so much more progress. And I think that's what we need to focus on. I also think the regressive conservative backlash often is fear based. The unknown is scary. The known feels safe and familiar, even if it is as restrictive and in many cases, oppressive, as the patriarchal ideal of motherhood has been for women throughout history. And I think the recent attacks on trans rights and LGBTQ rights is another reflection of how the volume of backlash has really been turned up.

Sara: You point out the allure of receiving unconditional love (and feeling that unconditional love) through motherhood, and in doing so, also point out that we need a broader understanding of community, kinship, and family. Can you talk about that a bit?

Ruby: The notion that there is an unconditional love that exists between mother and child is another ideal I think we all wish were true, but which our lived experiences reveal oftentimes not to be true.

As somebody who's not a parent, I want to try and get this right, but I wonder if sometimes parents confuse the biological imperative to protect their children as unconditional love. Parents often say that, you know, they’d do anything for their child. Anything to protect them from experiencing pain or suffering. I would always put their needs before mine. And that gets conflated with this idea of unconditional love. When actually that sounds to me like a strong inbuilt desire to protect one's children.

Unconditional love includes forgiveness, and it excludes conditions. It's not I will love you if you go to this college or I will love you if you get these grades or I will love you if you marry this person or I will love you if you are not gay or I will love you if you do not take drugs. And I think a lot of people don't experience that level of unconditional love from their parents. I also think that while parents are wired to have strong feelings of protection towards their children and strong feelings of love towards their children, their children are wired to feel that back towards their parents in the same kind of way, and I think that that can be the cause of a lot of family dysfunction. Anyway, these are just some thoughts I've been musing on. I actually think it can be easier to feel unconditional love for close friends. It can be easier to feel unconditional love for our furry friends, or even unconditional love for role models, idols that we worship out in the world. That type of unconditional love is easier because it doesn't come with all the emotional baggage that exists within family systems.

Family systems often include unspoken unconscious patterns, resentments, and conditioning that people are playing out in their relationships with their biological families. So, yes, I think if nourishing unconditional love is the goal, then I think focusing on how we can create that is important. We can create friendship groups and kinship groups beyond our biological families where we get to express and receive that unconditional love.

Sara: How would both a radical reconsideration of care work (who does it, how much are they paid, how are they respected within a cultural framework) AND things like universal paid leave, free childcare, universal healthcare, and, as you write, “unlimited therapy from birth,” make life freer for both women without children, mothers, and all humans? How would such a world make mothers less burdened by an unattainable maternal “ideal” and women without children free to live their lives unburdened by stigma and being othered?

Ruby: Care work comes under the umbrella of women's work. And all women's work under patriarchy is inherently devalued and labeled as work that is done because we can and because we care, versus because we have the time, energy and resources to perform it. Just think about how much of our taxpayer dollars are used to support the military (which is men's work), compared to the percentage of our taxpayer dollars that goes into health care (which is women's work). And health care is what people in this country really, really, really need on a daily, ongoing basis. I think that’s a really stark example of how devalued care work is because it’s seen as a feminine, and because it’s seen as women's work.

We need to show that we value essential care work in monetary terms. This is work that’s essential and it’s performed by all genders in all sorts of different ways on a daily basis. If we radically reconceptualized care work (and backed it up financially), I think we'd have a much healthier, happier society. And mothers and children in particular need a lion’s share of that care work. Because once you have people you need to take care of, you also need people who can take care of you. Mothers and children would be some of the primary beneficiaries of a reevaluation of care work.

Sara: In your chapter about (among other things) ableism, care work, and family, you write: “Privilege only exists in the context of those less privileged; the aspirational ideal-normal in relation to perceived abnormalities or deficiencies. Domination systems need ‘losers,’ basically, in order for there to be ‘winners.’” YES YES YES YES YES. What needs to happen for these culturally constructed “ideals” to hold less power over our lives and our imaginations?

Ruby: I think this is where we need to do our own inner work of dismantling our prejudices and noticing where we actually embody the domination systems which dictate that some people are more deserving than others based on their identity markers, their socio-economic status, their ability to “perform” or “contribute.” Once we start to notice where we hold those prejudices and when we hold those beliefs within ourselves, we begin to notice how unfairly structured this system is. I think we need to get to that place of honesty before we can even start to think about building new systems that are more egalitarian in their scope. And hopefully as a result of that individual work, we begin to notice how we can start to distribute our own resources in ways that help to bring about more equality.

That's an idealistic sort of response, I suppose. The idea that we could start to redistribute resources and start to dismantle these domination systems, but I do believe it has to begin with us. There can be a lot of anger and frustration that comes up when we see how politically intractable some of these systems are. But I think that only when we can really feel the unfairness inherent in domination systems, can we actually start to think about ways that we can build better system.

Sara: I really appreciate your reckoning with role models, and again, I couldn’t help but consider my own personal history growing up surrounded by interesting, vibrant women who were also mothers. Might I have pursued the question of motherhood differently if I’d had more childfree role models, for example? I also loved your chapter on cronehood and grandmotherhood, and in seeking out elder women without kids. You write: “Listening to them describe their lives, they seemed very much the same people in their seventies as they had been in their thirties. If anything, not having made the transition to motherhood meant never having to become somebody else–even if only until their kids were grown. As such, rather than a diminishing, it was as if the aging process brought a deepening and a ripening of the women they had always been.” This makes so, so, so much sense, and also highlights how much women are expected to tick off boxes or adapt themselves to whichever archetypal role society expects of them. I don’t think men, for example, view their lives as being organized into distinct chapters the way women are taught to view theirs (girl, ingenue, mother, crone). What do you think?

Ruby: I've been thinking a lot about how up until probably our 40s, we’re encouraged to be mature, and to “grow up. And then once we hit our 50s, older people are praised for being “young for their age,” youthful, and ageless. And it seems like we just can't win as women, right? We're either told to grow up in the first half of our lives or to suspend the aging process and stay forever young in the second half.

I don't think men necessarily are pressured to cycle through these life stages in quite the same way, and I think so much of that is connected to women's reproductive potential. The transition from girl to maiden to mother to crone is very much organized around a woman's childbearing years and her menstruation. And people who menstruate do experience these very physical biological transitions as we age, but again, the fact that so much emphasis is placed on menstruation shows the extent to which women's value and identities are expected to center around motherhood. So I think by not becoming mothers, we're sort of defying that conditioning that says we should our lives should look a certain way and we should be preferred performing certain roles or behaving in certain ways that a different life stages. And that's why, in a way, I perceive women without kids often as quite ageless which is an exciting proposition.