Mom, will you still love me if I die alone?
my first oppressor
People were angry at me on Twitter last night because I posted the following thoughts after I had to hang up the phone on my mother:
Comforting my girlfriend one moment who has been crying her eyes out because a man has betrayed her and the next I have to hung up on my mom because once again her first reaction when I mention the name of a friend is to ask me if they have a partner yet and act shocked when I say they don’t (part of her life long manipulation tactic to make me feel urged to get married).
I used to think moms did this short of shaming out of ignorance and lack of empathy, or even genuine concern, but now I see it for what it is. Jealousy and competitiveness. Many boomer women can’t stand to see their daughters surpass their own limited ambitions. It makes them look so weak in comparison. Getting married and having kids is the last upper hand they have over young women to defend their ego. Not saying this is all neurotic moms, or that that’s all it is, but it is clearly there. I don’t buy the concern.
Most people want to find happiness. You can’t “urge” anyone to have kids who already wants to. It is literally not in our control whether we get married or have kids. All we can do is try. It is cruel, cruel, cruel, to shame people for not having obtained things they have expressly said they want but that is not within their gift to secure independently of others/nature.
We are raising a generation of really depressed and anxious women, as we’ve always done, because we are planting the seed of self-loathing early on. We make them scared of ending up childless when they are young and when inevitably for many of them life does not pan out the way they wanted it and for one reason or another they can’t conceive (very very rarely because they themselves chose to delay trying) they have a poison ivy of self-hatred in their brain. Regardless of how hard they tried, it must be their fault. They are the unloveable ones, the selfish ones, the arrogant ones, the stupid ones.
The context of this tweet is thus, I have a lot of friends in their 20s, 30s and 40s who struggle with finding a partner, both men and women. The ones who have the hardest time are the ones who want to have children and always knew they wanted to have children. They have a career they enjoy or at least interest in their life outside of work, but if they had it their way they would be focusing more of their energy into raising a family. I am not in that category as I am not feeling broody, but I would like my own family when I find a suitable partner (who I must be in love with, thank you very much!).