Not willing to choose is also a choice.

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My own thoughts, my own words, my own agenda...

Pro-choice

I am all for a woman’s right to choose about being a mother.  In fact, I’m all for a woman’s right to choose everything in her life.  It’s unfortunate that so few women are able to really choose anything.  They float along the mainstream, desperate to receive approval from the majority, when it comes to everything they say, do, and believe in.  The self-confidence it takes to find your values from within and not from the environment is astounding.  I don’t expect most to be up to the task, but for those who are, I smile at their shining example of strength. 

Women are afraid to choose what it means to be a woman.  During those vulnerable and impressionable adolescent years of a woman’s life, she turns to external influences and images in the media, and of course, what she sees at home.  If her mother isn’t a strong enough figure in her life, or a positive enough influence, (I stress ‘enough’ because mom’s really up against stiff competition) then the images in the media will win.  In the United States, children and adolescents spent an average of 5 hours a day in front of a television.  That’s a pretty powerful source of influence, if you happen to not be in denial about it.  What a young woman will see on the screen, in sitcoms, reality/contest shows, commercials, and MTV will have an effect on what she places value in.  For the most part the strongest impression that a young person will get from the messages promoted in the media today is that young women (from a shockingly young age) are above all, valued more if they are blatantly sexy.  It doesn’t stop at a young girl learning that if she dresses more like Britney Spears, more people will like her or want to know her, but in addition, young boys will learn that women are supposed to be blatantly objectified, and even enjoy that kind of attention.  When children grow up in a household where neither parent is readily available for them (as is what inevitably happens when both parents work full time, and aren’t even physically present until after their working hours every day, --after that it becomes an issue of how much emotional energy they have left over to parent to their potential), they will automatically accept the substitute they are forced to settle for—television, shopping malls, and in general embracing the material and appearance obsessed culture we are living in.

But how did it get this way?  Western culture in the ‘50s certainly didn’t revolve around Victoria’s Secret g-strings and music which glorifies designer labels and promiscuity.  The feminist movement gradually liberated women from expectations to focus her energy on her family, while the husband of the family would provide financially.  Women finally had the opportunity to choose whatever professional career they wanted, and to instead invest her life and energies into academic, corporate, etc. ventures.  This was wonderful—to have that choice.  It was far from glorious for women who prefer some line of professional pursuits to be expected to walk away from education or other valuable experiences to stay at home and raise a family.  However, Women’s Lib didn’t end there.  It kept going in the same direction to the point of society reaching an extreme on the other end of the spectrum, where women were now instead expected to work full time, even if they had strong maternal instincts that would lend themselves to achieving greatest happiness through full-time motherhood.  The pressure is even more intense if the woman in question is exceptionally bright and educated.  It is commonly agreed in our culture that it would be a ‘waste’ for a woman of above average intelligence and aptitude to choose to raise children and postpone other time-intensive pursuits until she no longer has children to take care of.  More and more this strong cultural influences has pretty negative consequences for the women in question, but even more so for the children who are short-changed as a result.  Women with strong maternal instincts are led to believe that a) it’s low-class and limiting yourself to embrace motherhood at a young age and b) that if you want to have children, that’s no reason to slow down your career—that’s what day cares are for!  A young woman, with a high school degree, who would like to get married and start a family, is looked down upon from all of society.  After all, she must simply not be intelligent enough for any type of job if she is staying at home at 18, raising a family.  The pressure she experiences might lead her to instead opt for college, which while is in itself a wonderful experience, just increases the pressure (likely to be voiced by everyone she knows) once she receives the degree, to shun focusing her energy on family.  She will be constantly told (sometimes outright, but mostly between the lines) that it would be such a waste to pursue only motherhood after all that hard work, and why not ‘have it all’ and pursue a demanding and prestigious (the more above-average in intelligence and aptitude she is, the more intense the pressure and tempting the salary from working outside the home) career while also having children. 
Unless women today have tremendous self-confidence and are able to resist all these outside forces, she will opt to work and send any children to day-care from birth (after only a 6 week maternity stay where she actually spends day and night as a mother), in which case the mother only spends precious few waking hours with her children during the week, since women work until around 5 and small children go to bed so early.  This will lead to a less-attached bond between mother and child—mom never learns to really rely on her instincts in responding to her child’s needs hour to hour, day after day, or really become the ‘expert’ on that child that mothers who parent around the clock naturally become.  This is most acutely felt by the small child who needs his/her natural ‘expert’ (mommy) to provide custom care, who is then prone to more night wakings, to be reassured that mother is still there, and this is likely to be resented by a full-time working mother who needs uninterrupted sleep in order to function in her job the next day.   It doesn’t take that college degree to understand how a child is not going to be getting the best possible foundation in life from this arrangement.  Add to that foundation of insecurity a myriad of day care workers and revolving public school teachers who primarily raise him/her, and you can see how the child will not feel totally bonded to any one particular set of values.  He/she is likely to believe that mothers work and women are supposed to be sexy.  He’s also likely to believe that modern day success is two BMWs in the driveway, which will further shape his expectations and preferences towards whether his wife works outside the home (after all, it’s hard to pay expensive car payments as well as hefty mortgage payments on a house that will impress the neighbors with only one paycheck).  This perpetuates the young woman’s dilemma in trying to ‘do it all’ and look enticing/desirable, earn as much money as her husband, and be a sufficient mother, all at once.  Something has to give—and it’s always the children who pay the price.  This also perpetuates the young man’s dilemma from being taught to value women with sexy exteriors, to expect a woman with matching career ambitions, and to choose one who he entrusts the important role of mother to his children.  No wonder the average age of marriage is increasing almost as fast as the average age of having children.