Lately it seems that if you are without a child and a woman between the age of 25 – 25 then you’re society’s newest oddity. This is a funny realization because I qualify in this category, but more so because for most of the last seven years I qualified in another equally condemed status: single woman, no prospect on the horizon.
Why does society still think that we women are so strang outside of the house, on our own, without husbands or little hands gripping our skirts?
I understand this mentality in rural places all over the world But among the educated middle class of the rest of the world, why do we insist on putting these traditional expectations on women, but still sending them to school and out into the workforce.
If, as was my case, a woman wants to have these things but hasn’t found the right person and so instead of dropping into a deep depression carries on with her goals and ambitions, why do we make her feel like it isn’t enough until she has that husband? And then suggest that he isn’t happy without little ones?
I am now watching dear friends struggle through the barren landscape of modern dating – juggling the twin pressures of success and romantic expectations for women – it i a scary thing. I am excited for my friends with expanding families. The arrival of the first baby, then the second, the increasingly common navigation of the sadness of miscarriage. This is my role as a friend; to rejoice when she rejoices, to be sad when she is sad. But the chasm seems to widen as discussions of serving sizes, parenting strategies, ‘play dates’ encroaches.
How come we aren’t more supportive of the decisions that each individual woman makes?
Is it true, as my trainer says, that if you don’t have kids, you’re left out?
Why?