Thread by @RVoronaCote

To which I ask in response: Why do we keep reintroducing this question as if it hasn’t been asked—and answered!—countless times. There are no mysteries here.

1. It is often punishingly difficult to be a parent in this country.
2. Some people do not want kids. There are multitudinous ways to live a rich life.

What most annoys me is that this convo inevitably motivates some to imply or to state outright that being a parent, and especially being a mother, negates the possibility of committing oneself to one’s work. If that’s true, it’s a social failure that demands rehabilitation.

Every person deserves the conditions to live the full and varied life they want for themselves. Those who don’t want/have kids deserve every protection parents have. And parents deserve more than the hollow fetishizing of a nation that denies them any meaningful systemic support.

I think, however naively, that if we rejected the false binary of kids/no kids and instead thought more rigorously and collectively about how to make life livable for everyone, we’d regard those who make different choices from us with less suspicious, and ourselves less smugly.

Of course, if the powers that be keep posing the initial question, as if they don’t already have ample information to both answer it, they don’t actually have to take the next step: systemically addressing the concerns of both parents and child-free people alike.

I also want to acknowledge that the original question implies the pernicious assumption that everyone should want to have kids—and esp that all women should want to be mothers. It’s indicative of a political system that resists reproductive choice ideologically and legislatively.

Haven’t had a twitter thread gain momentum in awhile, so I dunno, maybe you’d like to buy my book?

hachettebookgroup.com/titles/rachel-…