I don’t understand why more women don’t want to be mothers in this country that doesn’t support mothers
But for real, can we all stop bashing on childless women?
Dear Loves,
It’s been a minute since I wrote satire. But watching Republicans disparage childless women who may or may not have chosen to have children makes me want to smear glue on some cretins’ toilet seats. Until these clowns offer legislation to help raise our children, no one should be commenting to anyone on their decision to have or not have kids.
Lest we forget, these are the same bros who voted against helping women conceive via IVF and would save the life of a fetus over that of a woman. Good Goddess. I can’t even keep a straight face, much less want to make a baby, because just living in the same country as these asshats is such a boner killer.
Indeed, the only proper response is satire. So here you go. Shout out to Donnie Gott, who helped me write this piece. 🖤
Dear Childless Cat Lady,
Thank you for taking time from your sad life of Girl-Bossing while browsing boutique hotels in Portugal during work breaks to listen to why you should have children. As my friend Sarah Huckabee Sanders says, children make you humble, and you, Boss Lady™, are way too confident.
You should have kids so you, too, can have your favorite dry-clean-only pants used as a napkin by your syrup-smeared daughter. You need to experience the pleasure of only being able to buy clothing that is solely machine washable. Just kidding! You don’t get to buy anything because you already blew your budget on winter coats and boots for the kids.
You, too, deserve the ancient and sacred knowledge of a collapsed pelvic floor and the excitement of wondering, “Will I completely wet my pants in public today? Or just a little?”
As JD Vance said on that one podcast, “You have women who think that truly the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working…instead of starting a family and having children… They don’t realize…that that is actually a path to misery.”
True, women’s liberation is found in working 168 hours a week, unpaid, and looking good while doing it. Take that, Audre Lorde.
As a mom, nothing brings me more joy than spending all my free time doing unpaid, invisible household and emotional labor for my children and husband. What could be more fulfilling than sacrificing all my needs, wants, time, low back, internet bandwidth, and sense of self to my children? Yes, I’m up with insomnia worrying about them getting shot up at school, hooked on drugs, or falling victim to online bullying because ’Merica. But all that time up at night frees up space for deep cleaning and meal prep!
Again, I refer to JD Vance, whose qualification to tell women they should have children is that he’s a man. Vance says that childless Americans are “more sociopathic” than those with children and make the country “less mentally stable.”
Boy howdy, is he right! I have never felt more mentally stable than I do when spending my Friday nights in the lap of luxury behind a locked door in my bedroom, folding laundry and processing my week of maternal and marital bliss. Turns out it DOES take a village — of voices in my head — to keep me from burning it all to the ground.
Why would you want to climb Annapurna with your girl squad when you can win all the Mother of the Year awards? Sure, those awards don’t exist, and if they did, they mean nothing, and wait — what’s this? Oh, the father just took the children to the pool for an hour and fed them one meal purchased from the grocery store deli — and the award has just been renamed, wait……wait for it….the Father of the Year award! And really, he deserves it because of this and that one time he picked up the children from school.
What it comes down to is this: who wouldn’t want to have kids in this late-stage capitalist hellscape that doesn’t support mothers or offer enough paid leave or affordable childcare, where if you’re lucky enough to find childcare, it takes half your wages to pay for it? Sure, it costs, on average, $331,933 to raise a child, plus your sex life and infinite expenses in out-of-network therapy. Absolutely, women’s salaries plummet by 40 percent after childbirth, while new fathers experience virtually zero loss in income. But to watch your child’s naked tush parading in the background of the Zoom? Priceless.
Sincerely,
A Mom
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~ Summer
Your satire is far too real! 🥹. I raised 3 daughters in the 80s and was a stay at home, JD Vance style mom until they were out of elementary school. I love them all, but sometimes wanted to beat them when they didn’t act like obedient ducks in a row as they should. I contemplated suicide because I thought they would be better without me. I spent five years in counseling that wasn’t covered by insurance. I had a lawyer for a husband, so we could afford it and he wanted to stay married. He had his own set of expectations to fill. No, this isn’t satire, it was my life.
My daughters are grown. Two are married and one is not. Counseling is their friend when they need it. My oldest is a married cat lady with no kids by choice. She owns her own business. The second is married and has 2 children-living the dream of two in diapers. Her career as a high school teacher is now occasionally substituting. Oh, and she is in a mixed race marriage. The youngest is single. She has no cat. She works for her oldest sister, she visits her 90+ year old grandmas every week. She advocates for Palestinians, homeless….
The parenting struggle is real.
This country is incredibly weak. It doesn’t know how to focus on what is important—its children, families, and communities. It has lost its focus on the value of human beings. 😢😭. It has forgotten how to love.
And God forbid that you get a divorce after decades of marriage and raising said children and have to depend on your ex for spousal support which he resents paying and isn't enough to support yourself because you were dumb enough to give up your career out of love to stay home with and raise your children. But the good news is that I'm now a childless dog-lady... and I'd be a cat-lady too if my dog wouldn't eat the cat.