Growing up, it was an expectation that I would have children. And when I say an "expectation" I mean the following:
15 year old girls in my school having to carry pregnancy to term due to the expectations of their families.
Me say at 15 "I have no interest in having children" and being met with, "Oh, you'll change your mind!" / "They're different when they're your own! / "When you meet the right man, you'll change your mind!"
Me, literally never having stopped saying "I don't want children" for ten years, and my father saying, "Well, you don't know yet." And I stared at him because we'd fucking met more than once, and I said, "Do you say this shit to [brother]?" And he said. "No. Of course not. Why would--OH."
Me saying to many, many, MANY strangers who asked VERY personal questions if I mentioned I was married or engaged, and they responded with "Oh, when are you having children?" With "I'm not." With "Have you talked to [the man] about it?" Like the underlying issue was that I hadn't been refused my own bodily autonomy by a man, so could I really know?
Me finally realizing that "Don't you want kids?" answer that shuts people up the fastest is "Oh, god, no. I'm how serial killers get made." Which didn't STOP the "what does [the man] think?", but at least it slowed them.
I only got one chance to reply to "What does [the man] think?" with "Oh, god, I NEVER mentioned it. Do you think I should tell him???"
All of this is very fucking important because of all of the years (and it was YEARS) that I had to deal with this shit, Sean has no more than 3 stories about dealing with similar. He very occasionally had strangers or co-workers ask him about HIS feelings about having children, and when he said, "Well, I don't want children," he got "But what does your wife think?" and he'd say, "We both don't want children," and the people asking didn't know how to deal with the idea that a man was told no by his wife on kids and did not dig down to try and figure out how to trick her into doing it.
Also, I will never ever forget all the 15-year-old boys who impregnated those 15-year-old girls and when those 15-year-old boys fled fatherhood until they were ready at 25 and got married and had kids, suddenly, those boys were AMAZING for being FATHERS and everyone pretended like the ten years they were allowed to ignore and disown their first born was a totally normal thing, even if we all fucking knew they fuck and ran at 15 and left those 15-year-old girls to hold the guilt and shame and responsibility forced upon them by their families. And god fucking forbid those girls demand anything of those boys. Don't they understand how hard it is for them to be deadbeat dads at such a young age?
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
