So the weekend started with an outcry in Italy over the vaguely sinister Fertility Day campaign and, in a strangely circular fashion, ended with Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon explaining to the world that, yes, she is childless, but (rest assured) she did at least try to have a baby, only to miscarry when she was 41.
See the following headline from Sturgeon’s Sunday Times interview:
I ask you: does it really need that “but” in it – does the wording not suggest that her condition is something of a deficiency, a negative consequence of her success?
Many childless and childfree Italian women also felt compelled this weekend to publicly spell out to the media why they had ‘failed’ to reproduce, saying that the aggressive Fertility Day campaign feels accusatory, as if they are at fault for not having had babies.
Sturgeon made the announcement about her miscarriage in order to “challenge assumptions about childless women leaders”, perhaps with the New Statesman cover below in mind.
I’m a REAL woman, she’s effectively saying, I had a baby in me, once.
Will there ever be a time when women without children are left in peace to just be, without feeling obliged at some time or other to explain why they didn’t reproduce?
Is it just me, or do these things seem to be getting worse, more retrograde now than ever in recent times?
Or am I just listening harder, because of what I am?
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Different Shores, some part of me is happy that this subject is discussed in the media at all. I am happy that there even IS an outcry, that women without children are not just keeping silent. I am thankful that Sturgeon explaned herself. I think that’s better than the deafening silence that has ruled for decades. It may actually change things for the better. Taboos are such a burden, so every taboo that is broken seems like a gift to me.
I didn’t read the “but” as negative. Maybe because I have seen many of my friends trying to have both: a career and a family. Only to find out that you cannot have it all. You still can’t. Men can’t breastfeed, they can’t carry a child inside them. Which means that the woman has to do it and that therefore, her chances for a career are just not as good as her husband’s! My understanding of the “but” is that women can have a career, they can be political leaders, BUT that they cannot have it all. Usually the women who are leaders have no children.
Now I am curious how others read the headline ;-).
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Hi Elaine thanks for that, it’s great to hear your opinion on this. I hadn’t looked at it like that but I agree with you that the outcry of voices about Fertility Day is a positive thing, even if they are obliged to explain themselves – they are breaking taboos and myths: thanks for adding that dimension.
I’m also curious to see if people interpret the headline as a kind of negative slight on these women’s lives or as a more factual statement about the real-life opportunities/possibilities that women and men have.
Cheers Elaine 🙂
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Have done some further reading and found the following quote at thenotmom.com:
Chris Elmore, Welsh Labour MP for Ogmore, tweeted: “I’m a childless politician too. Guessing because I’m a man it doesn’t matter.”
Love that tweet!
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So true! The Sunday Times had an awful list entitled something like “Childless Politicians in 2016” – all female.
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It will always be impossible for the media to reconcile the complexities of women and their fertility with a straight-jacketed homogeneous view. I think it puts pressure on women to qualify their experience since it so often doesn’t fit with generalities. ‘But’ is a powerful word that implies too many correlations. Is fertility/family the price of effective and successful political leadership? They are still seen as the anomaly, but the reasons for this are chalked up their family circumstances. These limiting narratives are dangerous, but irresistible to a media incompatible with nuance.
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So beautifully put, Department. Yes lots of it is click-bait: they sit back and await the righteous indignation. There’d have to be a humongous paradigm shift for attitudes about childless women to change in my lifetime. The whole area just fascinates me.
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Sadly, I think you’re right. But I’m so glad you’re challenging these brutally narrow ways of thinking. But (!), that shouldn’t have to be necessary either.
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Just thinking – I didn’t know what Nicola Sturgen’s family circumstances were until now. I don’t see why I should have to. She’s someone I admire and respect regardless. Sorry. Over-staying my welcome on this post…
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Hey no such thing as overstaying your welcome round here! I just feel somewhere in the back of her mind is this feeling that she wants people to know she isn’t a barren career-driven husk, she was pregnant once… I could be totally wrong though.
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Yeah, and she should be entitled to do that. It’s as if the media can’t let an individual woman exercise her right to have people bear witness to her life on her own terms without filtering it through the crude economic and social factors of the world at large to erase her story.
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Ugh. Ugh to that “but.” So not necessary. Do they do this with men? Do they examine men who don’t have children but are successful? NO. NO THEY DON’T. That magazine cover (or article illustration) is horrific. Like all your accomplishments mean nothing if you’ve got an empty cradle, and it’s sort of better if “at least you tried.” The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like maybe you are listening harder because of your own story, but everyone should be listening harder to this kind of trend that is part dystopic and part harking back to a period where a woman was only as good as her ability to reproduce and keep up a nice home. UGH.
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I totally agree Jess – it’s as if women have to prove that they tried, that it wasn’t their fault…
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You’re unfortunately right and I empathize with you – despite being a man. 😉
At the age of 22 I lost both testicles to cancer with the effect that I’m as sterile as it is possible to be.
It hasn’t happened as much as I imagine it would with women, but I sometimes do have to dodge questions about if I ever want children. If the person is not aware that I am sterile it is easy enough to simply say that I don’t want any. It seems more difficult for women.
A woman should no more have to excuse her childfree state with tales of miscarriage than I should excuse mine by mentioning my lack of testicles.
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Hi thanks so much for your comment. I totally agree that no one should have to explain him or herself, in the same way that I don’t ask people why they had the number of kids they had, for example…
It’s great to hear from a male perspective: I do hope you’ll get your blog going and do some oversharing (just read your bio…) 🙂
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I can’t remember if I commented on the Fertility Day post or not….the idea of a Fertility Day is, at best, insulting.
On some level, I think that women have to justify their choices every single day. What we wear. Our professions. Why we do or don’t do something. If we have kids young, it’s presumed that it interferes with our career. If we wait to have kids, we’re judged for waiting too long and assigned blame if it doesn’t happen easily. And god forbid that someone doesn’t want to or can’t have kids. They are the scourge of society.
It’s almost like we have to try twice as hard for half as much, and we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Add to it the whole childless thing, and most of the time I feel like I’m trying to fit into a society that doesn’t want me, or at least doesn’t have a box for me to fit in.
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We definitely seem to have to do much more explaining about & justifying of our lives than fellas do
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I saw the story about Sturgeon over the weekend and wondered why her home life needed to come into play at all. I feel that way about most celebrities, too. Why is it our business what happens when they’re off the job as long as what they are doing off the job doesn’t conflict with their policies, etc on the job?
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Yes, that “but” annoys me too. Change it to a simple “and” and you get quite a different feeling. It infuriates me that women are still judged by whether or not they have children, and still feel the pressure to explain themselves. I support talking about a miscarriage, to remind people that some women wanted children but couldn’t have them, at the same time I wish that we didn’t then seem as if we were trying to say that “we’re okay, we’re normal, because we wanted kids.”
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I agree completely – I advocate the talking, but it’s a shame about the subtext
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I enjoyed this discussion immensely. I try to see it as another life choice rather than an expected pathway. As long as your choices do not negatively harm others they should not have to be justified. Put your ‘but’ away Sturgeon! There is no ‘but’. It fascinates me too that there is even anything to discuss. Great post and great comments.
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Absolutely – that ‘but’ is so loaded! Maybe it should be shoved up someone’s butt… Thanks for dropping in 🙂
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I don’t think people should be valued only based on whether they have children, and it is insulting to imply that the only true value of a woman is as a baby maker, be she a “successful leader” or a more ordinary woman.
Having said that, I see it like this: the drive to reproduce is a part of human biology, and our psychology, and at some level we are ALWAYS going to be preoccupied with reproduction and fertility. There’s always going to be a piece of our brains that looks at other human beings and assesses their sexual attractiveness and fertility, and even evaluates their overall worth based on that. It’s a species survival tool. Now that doesn’t mean we should see ourselves solely as a herd of animals trying to survive….people are way more complicated than other biological beings. But we still ARE biological beings.
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Interesting perspective, and dead true… These debates between those who can’t/won’t have kids and those who can will go on forever because of that fact
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