I come from a long line of women who are quite dramatically split down the middle when it comes to deciding on having a career and no kids, or having kids and being a stay at home mom or kids and career both. The reason I say the line is dramatic is because those with kids, really had kids. They wanted kids as a sort of dream realized or more accurately, a dream fulfilled. Those that didn't want them, could not be swayed no matter how many pleas or more accurately, threats about loneliness and being eaten alive by cats were made.
This question is by and far one that is almost exclusively heaped upon the shoulders of women since the moment it is discovered in the womb that they are going to be born female. "Oh, she'll make a great mother someday." "Oh imagine it now, we'll be able to have grand kids." "Oh, let's get her a baby doll so she can practice for later." It is a low lying stress applied to a woman's life and the longer she is a female on this earth, aka, the older she gets, the more intense that pressure gets to do as some like to claim is the "duty of all women" to bear children. The duty? Really? A woman can make no other accomplishment in life unless she has kids? Now imagine you are a woman who cannot bear children no matter what herculean medical interventions you throw at the problem--are you less of a woman, not a real woman, incapable of achieving anything in life? That sh-t is harsh to both those who physically cannot bear children and those that simply don't want children.
Look around at this planet we have. Not every woman is cut out to be a mother. They just aren't. Being born with a vagina or a penis, no more makes you a great mother or father, or even a decent one. We should at least have the expectation that those that do want children, first and foremost, actually want them, and secondly plan to do everything necessary to ensure the health and happiness of that child. If a woman literally says, I do not want kids, there should come with that the express understanding that this is a person neither ready nor capable of having children and giving them the life they should have.
Worse, if a woman says "I hate kids," why should the reaction to such statements be, you...YOU, should definitely have a couple of them. This is a set-up for failure. The pressure these women have put on them to have kids as if that will solve something for them, is crazy. What business is it of yours to pressure someone to have children you, yourself, will not have to deal with or raise or provide for? So what if at 55, one woman feels as though they should have had kids---they are an adult, and they made their choice, and what of it. They will have to deal with that feeling, if it even comes because some women even at 40, 50, 60 and beyond have zero regrets about not having children.
Those that choose a path of having children and being stay at home moms tend to really want that job. They feel it in their bones. You can see the love and devotion they tend to spread between their kids and it is marvelous to see, and yet, some still don't consider that, the act of raising good and decent children to accomplish something in this world, "an actual job." Can you imagine as a woman being told or guided and believing in having children is part of being a woman and then being told afterwards that the act of raising them and caring and nurturing them is not worthy of someone's approval. These women are busy trying to groom the future of humanity, and this is not worthy, but rather cause for their condemnation.
It's the pointed questioning that some of these women go through, like how could you even leave a job to be..."a mom," like its some kind of disease they must be quarantined away from. Being a stay at home mom means you know who your kids are with, where they are, what they are learning, how they are growing, what foods they are eating. You never have to wonder or be fearful and set up nanny cams because you have no idea what allowing a stranger in to take care of your kids will do. This is the security these moms provide, and trying to shame them because they want this knowledge and to devote themselves to raising what they literally grew inside of them, is crazy.
Finally the mom who does want it all, home and career. She's spent the better part of her life investing in an education so that she may have a career, so why should she then have to choose between child and career? When things are important in life, you make time for them, and in many cases, that can be 2, 3, 5 things. Difficult, sure, but not impossible. Many employers feel that this is a mom to be punished for this pursuit. They tend to shy from promoting such women. Some women feel that they literally have to hide their pregnancies at work for as long as possible so that they can continue on their career path. You have some employers who literally say that these women can't do both and won't allow them to or at least position them in such a way that their will be no growth for them after their child is born, yet this is something that rarely happens to a man who decides to have children.
It's such a double standard between these things. Women "should" have children, they "should" have a job," but when the two combine, everyone seems to scatter in their thinking what is right or they fail to view a woman as an individual and focus on her merits and how she specifically is doing her job as opposed to how other previous women who have had kids have done their own. Choose to have kids should not be made into a crime.
The bottom line is there are no shortages of women having children on this planet. A scant 28% of women by the time they are 30-34 do not have any children. There is absolutely no danger at this moment in time of the world's population getting smaller. In fact, the danger has always been in modern times, that we are slowly but surely suffocating this planet by over populating it. Having a child is a lot of work, a lot of money, and dedication and those that want them should have them and those that don't, should be left to their own devices to make their own personal life choices. And for those that want both career and family, we need a system that allows this to happen. We need a system that doesn't punish mothers or fathers for that matter for taking time off to raise the futures of this planet; there are a few countries around the world that allow for this practice, and the world hasn't crumbled to it's knees. Let people decide for themselves what choices they want to make for their lives and their families. It's not your business to decide for them.
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