The pandemic has been hell for many reasons. One of them is because parents have had such a hard time juggling work and caring for their children, especially when schools and daycare centers were shut down as well. Some companies have responded by giving more flexibility to parents, which is a good thing. But, some of that flexibility comes from demanding more of people without children. Which, in case you can’t guess, is bad. There was a letter at Ask A Manager related to this and one of the letter writer’s points was her frustration that people judged her negatively for her lack-of-child state. That elicited commiseration from several commenters, including me.
And it made me sad because I had recently read that there is still pressure on women and female-presenting people to have children. Most of the commenters commenting on the post (if not all) were younger than I am, which means this attitude hasn’t changed much or at all from my heyday. That’s depressing. I would have hoped that 30 years after my birthing years, we would have progressed beyond pressuring women to have children.
It’s so difficult to talk about this without seeming like an asshole, so I’m just going to embrace it. I don’t like kids. I don’t dislike them, mind, but I have never gotten the whole ‘kids are the light of the world’ thing that many women proclaim they feel.
I never got gushy and squealy over kids. Actually, I’ve never gotten that way over anything. I honestly thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have that proverbial ticking biological clock. It wasn’t that I had one and was stifling it or burying it in the back of my closet. I never had one and I still don’t.
When I talk to children, I don’t use a different tone of voice or dumb down what I’m saying. i mean, I’m not going to talk about quantum physics to them (not that I do to adults, either, come to think of it), but I refuse to say shit like, “Who’s a widdle-bitty baby? You are!” It’s just not me and would sound disingenuous coming from my mouth. I kept the discussions age-appropriate, of course, but otherwise, I didn’t change anything else.