No one wins when women are pitted against each other. We are all responsible for each other, kids/no kids, young/old, women, queer, men -- all of us are going down if we don't help hold each other up. Love that you brought this conversation into this space, Lane!
I knew from a young age that I never wanted children and the one and only time I got pregnant, which happened to be the first time I had sex, I knew I was pregnant the next day and I knew I would be having an abortion. This was in 1984 and I had that abortion less than six weeks later. I am 62 now and have never come close to regretting not having children. It's the opposite. I am so grateful that I KNEW this about myself and that I had the option.
I never had any real push-back from anyone regarding my choice although early on I sometimes got comments (from people who didn't know me well) like, "you'll change your mind." I never felt stigmatized by it. And I think the reason is because I was so damned sure about it. I am proud of myself.
I have spent a fair amount of time wondering why I didn't want children and suspect it's because my mother and my grandmother never wanted kids (or at least not under the circumstances in which they had them), even though they had them. And it showed in the way that they treated their children.
Having and raising children was never meant to be the isolating experience it has become, thanks mostly to the Catholic church's erosion of clan- and tribe-based family units in favor of the "nuclear family."
Back to the question at hand:
Chappell Roan is 26. I had a bunch of privileged ideas at 26 and said them out loud (but there was no Internet back then and I wasn't famous).
As a friend said, "I am getting tired of the perfectionism police... I can't handle it in my own head anymore, and I don't like seeing it outside me either. We eventually figure things out...or we don't. I choose to believe in her growth because I believe in my own."
The lack of structural support for parents is the problem. I actually do think we all bear the responsibility for raising the children of our society, whether they came from our bodies or not. You don't get to opt out, because when you were a child, people raised you, and now you have to participate in raising the children, and that's just what it means to live in a society. Those children will grow up to be the labor supporting society when you're old, whether you're biologically responsible for their existence or not.
But we've broken the community, hands-on aspect of that societal activity (the raising of children), and in the U.S., we haven't replaced it with anything.
So "you have to participate in raising the children" is now meaningless or worse, because we're not raising the children through a social safety net funded by taxes, so when I say what I said (I said what I said) I'm saying that childfree people do owe parents their labor. Because there's nothing else.
This all ties in to "what do we actually owe each other" discussions I've seen a lot of floating around the internet right now, because for a long time the approved liberal I-go-to-therapy answer is "nothing, you don't owe anyone anything" EXCEPT WE DO because that's what being human is. We live in a society. We do owe each other things. Adults owe children care. As a collective, the adults of a society owe their children care. You can't opt out of it. You can't just be like "well I chose not to have children because I knew I couldn't afford it so anyone who has children and can't afford it deserves for their children to starve". Those children still belong to you.
And the more people who opt out of it, the harder it becomes for the people who don't, and then we're pointing fingers at each other over who has the harder life, and ragging on each other for our individual choices, because isolation and individualism are all we know, and all the while the ruling class is laughing at us as they take a Scrooge McDuck dive into their swimming pools full of money.
"As a collective, the adults of a society owe their children care. You can't opt out of it. You can't just be like "well I chose not to have children because I knew I couldn't afford it so anyone who has children and can't afford it deserves for their children to starve". Those children still belong to you." Love this! Thanks for spelling it out to clearly!
I came here to say this, but you said it much more eloquently than I'm capable of. Thank you.
I do believe community is one of, if not the, major missing element here.
I would like to add, that while approaching it from the perspective of "owing" it to others is apt in our particular society, if we could all pull our heads out of our collective asses, we could maybe realize that beyond owing our participation to our communities, it's simply something one does to be a decent person.
I don't mind what CR said because someone who can sing and dress like that can say what she likes! She's young and everything she says gets picked over which is unfair.
I *do* mind that so-called feminists were posting her comments and praising her "forbidden truths" and saying that feminism means being honest about how some choices (aka being a parent) just suck and anything else is bad "Sex and the City choice feminism" Of course, not having or wanting kids is still stigmatized so I get why comments like CR might feel brave or fresh. But, first, the idea motherhood sucks is everywhere these days, its' not new or fresh. And second, if what CR says is true to her experience, shouldn't feminists being angry that her friends are sad? Shouldn't feminists want to liberate women not only from forced motherhood but from misery if we choose motherhood? How can you be a feminist who understands how social institutions shape us and say motherhood is just one thing and we can't transform it? Like WTF?
Maybe if not wanting kids was less stigmatized fewer women would have them, and that would be fine. But even with historic low birthrates, about 80% of women-idenitfying folks become parents at some time. Can you be a parent and just say fuck you to that 80%, in your next lifetime don't get brainwashed?
How we steer clear of the single story is - - talk to each other instead of post, or post more places like this, I suppose.
I don’t have children and most likely won’t for health reasons (fatigue is a component so merely skipping pregnancy is not enough). I found Roan’s comments resonant! Not only do I fear to become the exhausted mom she describes but I already have those moms in my life and they want my help. They even act entitled to it at times and did especially when I was single. American motherhood exhausts more than mothers: it drains your entire network. I can’t perform “auntie” for people now! My health is now the crying, draining, time-consuming creature keeping me from taking on more responsibilities, even if it is invisible to others.
You asked what a young woman would need to feel okay mothering. I say healthcare and research as well as professional childcare.
I think you're touching on something here that's real and also tricky--the idea that we are supposed to "call on a village" as parents, but there's no real village, bc the village is also drained! Largely by the same/similar forces of modern work life and living in a culture w little safety net!
I also don't have children, and I know others in the childless & childfree communities would agree with your comments. I'm happy to pitch in & help with other people's kids (and do, especially with my great-nieces & nephews). But as you point out, sometimes we're just not in a position to provide the help that the moms around us need. Sometimes we WANT to help, but our offers get rebuffed, because people assume we don't know anything about children and would rather get help from someone who's also a mother. And sometimes WE need help ourselves -- but too often, people are too busy with their own families to return the support. As Lane says above, "the village is drained."
I’m a stay at home parent and I didn’t feel attacked by her inarticulate yet accurate and astute observations about the difficulties of motherhood and privilege required to enjoy it. As someone who loves many trans people enough to spend 20 hours plus each week advocating at the state capital for protections, I’m thoroughly offended that she sat there in a full face of drag while complaining about being political rather than answering for the Sharp turn she has taken away from the Trans community since she first appeared in 2023 with an amazing teen vogue interview describing how she performed in Nashville on the day my home state banned and criminalized drag performances. She donated proceeds from the concert to house POC trans individuals, and to provide healthcare to transgender youth. I’m offended that she made ineffective statements about motherhood while claiming she didn’t want to be political when politics underpins everything that traps women in this country. I’m offended that she went from someone I admired to someone my children are as ashamed they ever liked. Most of all I’m sad that she accumulated privilege and then decided she wanted the ability to run her mouth without consequences rather than use it to stand 10 toes down with the people who need her most, the people she claimed were her people, the communities across the country that gathered to hear her music in 2023 and 2024. I wanna know how she went from someone giving brilliant interviews to someone sounding like an entitled spoiled brat while wearing a full face of drag makeup with zero self-awareness let alone awareness for the communities she’s letting down right now.
Also, it’s important to know that Chimamanda is a TERF. We won’t have solidarity until we are speaking and fully including the trans community and trans. Women in every single thing we do. As long as we are afraid to put them on the Democratic Party platform, as long as we think that trans rights are a divisive issue, as long as we’re willing to go through our day, pretending that children are not dying from a lack of gender affirmative care, we’re not gonna get anywhere.
The problem with chapel is not her comments about motherhood the problem with Chappell Roan is literally everything else and until we address that we’re going to continue to be divided over petty grievances. The war on mothers is and has always been a distraction. It keeps us yelling at each other while refusing to “be political” instead of yelling at the policy makers.
Woah woah I didn't know this about either of these! Thank you for this context!
FWIW my students were also most upset about this part, too: I’m offended that she made ineffective statements about motherhood while claiming she didn’t want to be political when politics underpins everything that traps women in this country.
So many eyerolls from them on this "not political" comment.
Sorry! But kinda not sorry this is just how I talk. It’s been a wild week in the Colorado state legislature. We have passed a number of measures to protect trans individuals and to protect doctors that are offering and performing gender affirming care. All of this strong wording lives in my brain rent free I promise I’m not yelling at you most people don’t know this. White women love Chimamanda and her first two books were great, and then she outed herself as a turf and instead of responding to the criticism by examining herself, she doubled down. It was a huge disappointment, but it was a disappointment that wasn’t really felt or heard outside of the transgender community because that’s how marginalized it continues to be. Most people weren’t aware and still aren’t aware of how chapel RUN presented herself in 2023 because most people hadn’t heard of her until that Rolling Stone article in the middle of 2024, I think it was July. I can’t begin to tell you as someone who loves transgender people to be furious at Joe Biden for not putting our rights directly and clearly on the platform and then for Kamala to decline to do it too, and then read chapel‘s own words in that interview saying that she refused to perform at the White House Because of what Democrats don’t do without asking them to do it?? That’s insane. That tells me you don’t love any trans people that tells me that you don’t have a single trans person in your inner circle. If I’ve been in her shoes if I had been in her inner circle, I would’ve said “girl you’re not gonna be able to get a ceasefire but you could potentially get us on the platform no one else can get this close to Biden and make this ask. No one has been able to successfully do it demand to perform at the DNC Demand that they put us on the platform extract something from the party as a whole now is your time!” And this is the thing that was unspoken after that Rolling Stone article came out- if it was really clear that she did not have a single transgender person in her inner circle anymore. Maybe she never did. Maybe it was all BS and we’d been used for clout once again. But she didn’t need our full throated support anymore because she’d gone mainstream. Now she’s just a bratty white girl performing in drag for no apparent reason.
And I think that’s part of the problem- somehow the Takeaway of 2020 became “white people need to shut up and listen” which is only part of it. It’s our job to listen and then to amplify whatever voice is the least heard in any given room. It’s a paralysis. It’s a living example of white fragility that blank stare that comes over the face of a white woman when I say “ maybe this isn’t the right voice to be amplifying because of XYNZ they exclude trans people” and the response I get is something about skin color, not about the continued exclusion of another marginalized person who shares that same skin color. It’s white people who are completely unable to work and think intersectionally, there are so many amazing queer and trans creators calling Chapel out, but their voices are not the ones that are being amplified and picked up by the media. The media has glommed onto the angry chatter of like three white Republican women who are offended that anyone would not run screaming towards motherhood, notthe cacophony of queer voices saying et tu, Chappell?
I'm 64 and don't have children (for reasons that include stillbirth & infertility), although I did very much want them. And I will admit I know very little about Chappell Roan.
But I did want to thank you, Lane, for including women without children in this excellent post (and the other childless & childfree women who have already commented) Something like 20% of women over the age of 40 do not have children, for various reasons -- not all by choice (which is something we wish more people would realize) -- and that number is growing rapidly. Mothers may still be in the majority, but 20% and growing is a significant portion of the adult female population -- and our particular unique concerns and needs (and we do have them) are mostly ignored -- by our families (and we do still have families, even if we don't have children), by our communities and by our governments and policymakers.
We continue to assume that Woman = Mother, and that is simply not always the case.
Oh Beth, thank you for sharing and I’m so sorry for your losses.
What you wrote here resonates SO much w me bc I didn’t have a kid until I was 40 and so much of what you say here about being child free was my experience. One of the first essays I published that helped launch MR was basically “stop conflating the worth of women with motherhood!”
As a married childless woman in my 50s with 13 nieces and nephews, I want to be there for my siblings, and have been, quite a lot sometimes. And I am in total solidarity with parents. They need way more support that the US gives them. It's not just a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. It actually really does. I do not understand the people in this country who make and have made those systemic decisions to not give mothers and families with children the support they need, especially the people struggling financially the most. Explain to me that logic. And yes, I am privileged to have lived in some of our peer sister nations and seen a better way. And, I was also brought up inside a community (read, cult) however flawed, that nurtured and offer community and child supports.
"I do not understand the people in this country who make and have made those systemic decisions to not give mothers and families with children the support they need, especially the people struggling financially the most."
Amen! I didn't have kids until I was 40 and at no point would I have withheld things from *kids** that they need to thrive. Spend the money on the school! Feed the kids! Give the low income families the payments for the basics for their kids! The psychic weight of living in a society where kids don't have the basics sucks for EVERYONE!
Interesting what you say here about church settings that do support families in many ways (and also can be damaging/have tradeoffs in others). I grew up in a high demand religion and noticed that too.
I’m a married, part time freelancer (remote work, honestly sometimes does verge on full-time) and part time SAHM (1 10 year old child who is in school and has free aftercare at her school if needed). I realize my situation is immensely lucky and privileged. My present day experience of motherhood is not hell, but I’m also not at all offended by what Chappell Roan said. I do think early motherhood with very young children in our country and with our lack of support systems does very much feel like hell at times. Even with the privileges of full-time dual income that paid for 5-day-a-week childcare, early on in my child’s life I was desperately unhappy. Not because I was a mother, but because I was supposed to work like I wasn’t one and make it invisible and actually spend precious little time actually mothering. My current situation is my attempt at being able to do both, but it puts me in a much more precarious and dependent financial position. It is an unwinable equation and I don’t blame young women for saying “the math is not mathing.”
"Not because I was a mother, but because I was supposed to work like I wasn’t one and make it invisible and actually spend precious little time actually mothering"
This is such a common experience, thank you for sharing! I think it was Amanda Montei in "Touched Out" who wrote that she doesn't resent her kids at all, she resents the circumstances under which she is forced to parent. That's the gist anyway!
Thank you for your article, and I especially resonate with the gist of the “Touched Out” comment that you cite here. I too feel no resentment towards my children, but a lot of anger and resentment about the circumstances around American motherhood/parenting. It is structured in an impossible and punishing way! Those structures need to change so that current and future young people can make meaningful choices.
In some ways I feel I was able to live both lives -- planning to be childfree for life, and then swerved at 38. As a result I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the stigma and low grade ostracism I firmly believe still exists for single, childfree women. I also now understand the profound lack of support networks and practical scaffolding for mothers.
Moreover as long as having a child is still the thing that earns you the most plaudits and praise and attention (compare, for instance, the reception of social media posts about the hard-won 5-year anniversary of my business, versus acknowledging my pregnancy), then the accomplishments of both childfree women and mothers will be diminished.
If you're going to quote Hood Feminism in an article like this, please recognize that book was mostly written to bring attention to *single moms*, who are an entirely different motherhood experience. Relating a book like that to a generalized working mom audience like yourself is inherently incredibly tone deaf and minimizes what us single mothers, especially the millions of us with full custody and no child support, are surviving. Not to mention, Hood Feminism, like most motherhood "feminist" spaces, focuses mostly on the married and divorce experienced if feminism. These "feminist" conversations are still frankly still dancing with the rules of the patriarchy; most space is held for the mothers who played by the rules the most. I've run a lot of mothers groups in middle class areas, and in low income areas- it's entertaining to watch middle class women preach the gospel of "helping raise each others kids" while simultaneously wanting to relate to poor mothers who can't relate to them back.
No one wins when women are pitted against each other. We are all responsible for each other, kids/no kids, young/old, women, queer, men -- all of us are going down if we don't help hold each other up. Love that you brought this conversation into this space, Lane!
💯 thank you!
I knew from a young age that I never wanted children and the one and only time I got pregnant, which happened to be the first time I had sex, I knew I was pregnant the next day and I knew I would be having an abortion. This was in 1984 and I had that abortion less than six weeks later. I am 62 now and have never come close to regretting not having children. It's the opposite. I am so grateful that I KNEW this about myself and that I had the option.
I never had any real push-back from anyone regarding my choice although early on I sometimes got comments (from people who didn't know me well) like, "you'll change your mind." I never felt stigmatized by it. And I think the reason is because I was so damned sure about it. I am proud of myself.
I have spent a fair amount of time wondering why I didn't want children and suspect it's because my mother and my grandmother never wanted kids (or at least not under the circumstances in which they had them), even though they had them. And it showed in the way that they treated their children.
Having and raising children was never meant to be the isolating experience it has become, thanks mostly to the Catholic church's erosion of clan- and tribe-based family units in favor of the "nuclear family."
Back to the question at hand:
Chappell Roan is 26. I had a bunch of privileged ideas at 26 and said them out loud (but there was no Internet back then and I wasn't famous).
As a friend said, "I am getting tired of the perfectionism police... I can't handle it in my own head anymore, and I don't like seeing it outside me either. We eventually figure things out...or we don't. I choose to believe in her growth because I believe in my own."
I think we create solidarity that way.
Thank you for sharing Karen. “I am so grateful that I KNEW this about myself and that I had the option.” I love this for you!!
This is a wish that I have for all girls and women…to be able to know themselves and act on it ❤️
I also love that you are proud of yourself. Good for you!!
I love your response re: a growth mindset as a way to move forward too :)
The lack of structural support for parents is the problem. I actually do think we all bear the responsibility for raising the children of our society, whether they came from our bodies or not. You don't get to opt out, because when you were a child, people raised you, and now you have to participate in raising the children, and that's just what it means to live in a society. Those children will grow up to be the labor supporting society when you're old, whether you're biologically responsible for their existence or not.
But we've broken the community, hands-on aspect of that societal activity (the raising of children), and in the U.S., we haven't replaced it with anything.
So "you have to participate in raising the children" is now meaningless or worse, because we're not raising the children through a social safety net funded by taxes, so when I say what I said (I said what I said) I'm saying that childfree people do owe parents their labor. Because there's nothing else.
This all ties in to "what do we actually owe each other" discussions I've seen a lot of floating around the internet right now, because for a long time the approved liberal I-go-to-therapy answer is "nothing, you don't owe anyone anything" EXCEPT WE DO because that's what being human is. We live in a society. We do owe each other things. Adults owe children care. As a collective, the adults of a society owe their children care. You can't opt out of it. You can't just be like "well I chose not to have children because I knew I couldn't afford it so anyone who has children and can't afford it deserves for their children to starve". Those children still belong to you.
And the more people who opt out of it, the harder it becomes for the people who don't, and then we're pointing fingers at each other over who has the harder life, and ragging on each other for our individual choices, because isolation and individualism are all we know, and all the while the ruling class is laughing at us as they take a Scrooge McDuck dive into their swimming pools full of money.
"As a collective, the adults of a society owe their children care. You can't opt out of it. You can't just be like "well I chose not to have children because I knew I couldn't afford it so anyone who has children and can't afford it deserves for their children to starve". Those children still belong to you." Love this! Thanks for spelling it out to clearly!
I came here to say this, but you said it much more eloquently than I'm capable of. Thank you.
I do believe community is one of, if not the, major missing element here.
I would like to add, that while approaching it from the perspective of "owing" it to others is apt in our particular society, if we could all pull our heads out of our collective asses, we could maybe realize that beyond owing our participation to our communities, it's simply something one does to be a decent person.
I don't mind what CR said because someone who can sing and dress like that can say what she likes! She's young and everything she says gets picked over which is unfair.
I *do* mind that so-called feminists were posting her comments and praising her "forbidden truths" and saying that feminism means being honest about how some choices (aka being a parent) just suck and anything else is bad "Sex and the City choice feminism" Of course, not having or wanting kids is still stigmatized so I get why comments like CR might feel brave or fresh. But, first, the idea motherhood sucks is everywhere these days, its' not new or fresh. And second, if what CR says is true to her experience, shouldn't feminists being angry that her friends are sad? Shouldn't feminists want to liberate women not only from forced motherhood but from misery if we choose motherhood? How can you be a feminist who understands how social institutions shape us and say motherhood is just one thing and we can't transform it? Like WTF?
Maybe if not wanting kids was less stigmatized fewer women would have them, and that would be fine. But even with historic low birthrates, about 80% of women-idenitfying folks become parents at some time. Can you be a parent and just say fuck you to that 80%, in your next lifetime don't get brainwashed?
How we steer clear of the single story is - - talk to each other instead of post, or post more places like this, I suppose.
whoops, I meant, can you be a *feminist* and say fuck you to 80% of women? lol.
I don’t have children and most likely won’t for health reasons (fatigue is a component so merely skipping pregnancy is not enough). I found Roan’s comments resonant! Not only do I fear to become the exhausted mom she describes but I already have those moms in my life and they want my help. They even act entitled to it at times and did especially when I was single. American motherhood exhausts more than mothers: it drains your entire network. I can’t perform “auntie” for people now! My health is now the crying, draining, time-consuming creature keeping me from taking on more responsibilities, even if it is invisible to others.
You asked what a young woman would need to feel okay mothering. I say healthcare and research as well as professional childcare.
I think you're touching on something here that's real and also tricky--the idea that we are supposed to "call on a village" as parents, but there's no real village, bc the village is also drained! Largely by the same/similar forces of modern work life and living in a culture w little safety net!
I also don't have children, and I know others in the childless & childfree communities would agree with your comments. I'm happy to pitch in & help with other people's kids (and do, especially with my great-nieces & nephews). But as you point out, sometimes we're just not in a position to provide the help that the moms around us need. Sometimes we WANT to help, but our offers get rebuffed, because people assume we don't know anything about children and would rather get help from someone who's also a mother. And sometimes WE need help ourselves -- but too often, people are too busy with their own families to return the support. As Lane says above, "the village is drained."
I’m a stay at home parent and I didn’t feel attacked by her inarticulate yet accurate and astute observations about the difficulties of motherhood and privilege required to enjoy it. As someone who loves many trans people enough to spend 20 hours plus each week advocating at the state capital for protections, I’m thoroughly offended that she sat there in a full face of drag while complaining about being political rather than answering for the Sharp turn she has taken away from the Trans community since she first appeared in 2023 with an amazing teen vogue interview describing how she performed in Nashville on the day my home state banned and criminalized drag performances. She donated proceeds from the concert to house POC trans individuals, and to provide healthcare to transgender youth. I’m offended that she made ineffective statements about motherhood while claiming she didn’t want to be political when politics underpins everything that traps women in this country. I’m offended that she went from someone I admired to someone my children are as ashamed they ever liked. Most of all I’m sad that she accumulated privilege and then decided she wanted the ability to run her mouth without consequences rather than use it to stand 10 toes down with the people who need her most, the people she claimed were her people, the communities across the country that gathered to hear her music in 2023 and 2024. I wanna know how she went from someone giving brilliant interviews to someone sounding like an entitled spoiled brat while wearing a full face of drag makeup with zero self-awareness let alone awareness for the communities she’s letting down right now.
Also, it’s important to know that Chimamanda is a TERF. We won’t have solidarity until we are speaking and fully including the trans community and trans. Women in every single thing we do. As long as we are afraid to put them on the Democratic Party platform, as long as we think that trans rights are a divisive issue, as long as we’re willing to go through our day, pretending that children are not dying from a lack of gender affirmative care, we’re not gonna get anywhere.
The problem with chapel is not her comments about motherhood the problem with Chappell Roan is literally everything else and until we address that we’re going to continue to be divided over petty grievances. The war on mothers is and has always been a distraction. It keeps us yelling at each other while refusing to “be political” instead of yelling at the policy makers.
Woah woah I didn't know this about either of these! Thank you for this context!
FWIW my students were also most upset about this part, too: I’m offended that she made ineffective statements about motherhood while claiming she didn’t want to be political when politics underpins everything that traps women in this country.
So many eyerolls from them on this "not political" comment.
Sorry! But kinda not sorry this is just how I talk. It’s been a wild week in the Colorado state legislature. We have passed a number of measures to protect trans individuals and to protect doctors that are offering and performing gender affirming care. All of this strong wording lives in my brain rent free I promise I’m not yelling at you most people don’t know this. White women love Chimamanda and her first two books were great, and then she outed herself as a turf and instead of responding to the criticism by examining herself, she doubled down. It was a huge disappointment, but it was a disappointment that wasn’t really felt or heard outside of the transgender community because that’s how marginalized it continues to be. Most people weren’t aware and still aren’t aware of how chapel RUN presented herself in 2023 because most people hadn’t heard of her until that Rolling Stone article in the middle of 2024, I think it was July. I can’t begin to tell you as someone who loves transgender people to be furious at Joe Biden for not putting our rights directly and clearly on the platform and then for Kamala to decline to do it too, and then read chapel‘s own words in that interview saying that she refused to perform at the White House Because of what Democrats don’t do without asking them to do it?? That’s insane. That tells me you don’t love any trans people that tells me that you don’t have a single trans person in your inner circle. If I’ve been in her shoes if I had been in her inner circle, I would’ve said “girl you’re not gonna be able to get a ceasefire but you could potentially get us on the platform no one else can get this close to Biden and make this ask. No one has been able to successfully do it demand to perform at the DNC Demand that they put us on the platform extract something from the party as a whole now is your time!” And this is the thing that was unspoken after that Rolling Stone article came out- if it was really clear that she did not have a single transgender person in her inner circle anymore. Maybe she never did. Maybe it was all BS and we’d been used for clout once again. But she didn’t need our full throated support anymore because she’d gone mainstream. Now she’s just a bratty white girl performing in drag for no apparent reason.
Far be it from me to look askance at anyone having strong words that live rent-free in their brain and then writing it on the internet :)
I appreciate this perspective, thank you for sharing. The way that queerness complicates *all of this is important and we don't talk about it enough!
And I think that’s part of the problem- somehow the Takeaway of 2020 became “white people need to shut up and listen” which is only part of it. It’s our job to listen and then to amplify whatever voice is the least heard in any given room. It’s a paralysis. It’s a living example of white fragility that blank stare that comes over the face of a white woman when I say “ maybe this isn’t the right voice to be amplifying because of XYNZ they exclude trans people” and the response I get is something about skin color, not about the continued exclusion of another marginalized person who shares that same skin color. It’s white people who are completely unable to work and think intersectionally, there are so many amazing queer and trans creators calling Chapel out, but their voices are not the ones that are being amplified and picked up by the media. The media has glommed onto the angry chatter of like three white Republican women who are offended that anyone would not run screaming towards motherhood, notthe cacophony of queer voices saying et tu, Chappell?
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8jRw6ut/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j8eUjh/
I'm 64 and don't have children (for reasons that include stillbirth & infertility), although I did very much want them. And I will admit I know very little about Chappell Roan.
But I did want to thank you, Lane, for including women without children in this excellent post (and the other childless & childfree women who have already commented) Something like 20% of women over the age of 40 do not have children, for various reasons -- not all by choice (which is something we wish more people would realize) -- and that number is growing rapidly. Mothers may still be in the majority, but 20% and growing is a significant portion of the adult female population -- and our particular unique concerns and needs (and we do have them) are mostly ignored -- by our families (and we do still have families, even if we don't have children), by our communities and by our governments and policymakers.
We continue to assume that Woman = Mother, and that is simply not always the case.
Oh Beth, thank you for sharing and I’m so sorry for your losses.
What you wrote here resonates SO much w me bc I didn’t have a kid until I was 40 and so much of what you say here about being child free was my experience. One of the first essays I published that helped launch MR was basically “stop conflating the worth of women with motherhood!”
I’ll see if I can find the link…
Here’s the link to that essay, lmk if you hit a paywall and I’ll fix it!
https://open.substack.com/pub/matriarchyreport/p/we-dont-need-mothers-day-we-need?r=ywbs&utm_medium=ios
As a married childless woman in my 50s with 13 nieces and nephews, I want to be there for my siblings, and have been, quite a lot sometimes. And I am in total solidarity with parents. They need way more support that the US gives them. It's not just a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. It actually really does. I do not understand the people in this country who make and have made those systemic decisions to not give mothers and families with children the support they need, especially the people struggling financially the most. Explain to me that logic. And yes, I am privileged to have lived in some of our peer sister nations and seen a better way. And, I was also brought up inside a community (read, cult) however flawed, that nurtured and offer community and child supports.
"I do not understand the people in this country who make and have made those systemic decisions to not give mothers and families with children the support they need, especially the people struggling financially the most."
Amen! I didn't have kids until I was 40 and at no point would I have withheld things from *kids** that they need to thrive. Spend the money on the school! Feed the kids! Give the low income families the payments for the basics for their kids! The psychic weight of living in a society where kids don't have the basics sucks for EVERYONE!
Interesting what you say here about church settings that do support families in many ways (and also can be damaging/have tradeoffs in others). I grew up in a high demand religion and noticed that too.
Link to Chappell’s 2023 interview, a far cry from the child running her mouth on CHD last week: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/chappell-roan-casual-music-video-trans-rights-pink-pony-club-of-dreams-interview
I’m a married, part time freelancer (remote work, honestly sometimes does verge on full-time) and part time SAHM (1 10 year old child who is in school and has free aftercare at her school if needed). I realize my situation is immensely lucky and privileged. My present day experience of motherhood is not hell, but I’m also not at all offended by what Chappell Roan said. I do think early motherhood with very young children in our country and with our lack of support systems does very much feel like hell at times. Even with the privileges of full-time dual income that paid for 5-day-a-week childcare, early on in my child’s life I was desperately unhappy. Not because I was a mother, but because I was supposed to work like I wasn’t one and make it invisible and actually spend precious little time actually mothering. My current situation is my attempt at being able to do both, but it puts me in a much more precarious and dependent financial position. It is an unwinable equation and I don’t blame young women for saying “the math is not mathing.”
"Not because I was a mother, but because I was supposed to work like I wasn’t one and make it invisible and actually spend precious little time actually mothering"
This is such a common experience, thank you for sharing! I think it was Amanda Montei in "Touched Out" who wrote that she doesn't resent her kids at all, she resents the circumstances under which she is forced to parent. That's the gist anyway!
Thank you for your article, and I especially resonate with the gist of the “Touched Out” comment that you cite here. I too feel no resentment towards my children, but a lot of anger and resentment about the circumstances around American motherhood/parenting. It is structured in an impossible and punishing way! Those structures need to change so that current and future young people can make meaningful choices.
I've been working on a post that starts from this same "single story" issue--this puts it so clearly!
Thank you for writing this!!
Aw thx Robyn! Thank you for reading :)
And here’s an excellent primer on the single story of being trans in Africa a direct response to comments made by Chimamanda: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/dismantling-single-story-being-trans-africa
Thanks for sharing this! Oy, this is disappointing...did not know!
In some ways I feel I was able to live both lives -- planning to be childfree for life, and then swerved at 38. As a result I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the stigma and low grade ostracism I firmly believe still exists for single, childfree women. I also now understand the profound lack of support networks and practical scaffolding for mothers.
Moreover as long as having a child is still the thing that earns you the most plaudits and praise and attention (compare, for instance, the reception of social media posts about the hard-won 5-year anniversary of my business, versus acknowledging my pregnancy), then the accomplishments of both childfree women and mothers will be diminished.
If you're going to quote Hood Feminism in an article like this, please recognize that book was mostly written to bring attention to *single moms*, who are an entirely different motherhood experience. Relating a book like that to a generalized working mom audience like yourself is inherently incredibly tone deaf and minimizes what us single mothers, especially the millions of us with full custody and no child support, are surviving. Not to mention, Hood Feminism, like most motherhood "feminist" spaces, focuses mostly on the married and divorce experienced if feminism. These "feminist" conversations are still frankly still dancing with the rules of the patriarchy; most space is held for the mothers who played by the rules the most. I've run a lot of mothers groups in middle class areas, and in low income areas- it's entertaining to watch middle class women preach the gospel of "helping raise each others kids" while simultaneously wanting to relate to poor mothers who can't relate to them back.