As a woman who is both gender non-conforming and who is planning a pregnancy in the near future AND who works with children, I am very invested in the conversation about the confines of femininity, the complexities of motherhood and the fascistic expectation of women to have children. I also often find it deeply frustrating.
I do not think it should need to be said, but unfortunately it absolutely is, that nobody should ever be forced to become pregnant, be a parent or carry a pregnancy to term. Ever. This requires both complete and total abortion rights & access but also the dismantling of the gendered expectation of women to want and need children. Remaining child free should not only be possible for women, it should also be normal and completely accepted. Anything else is oppressive.
However, I am deeply bothered by how many people who share these views talk about children. I have come across many posts describing children in cruel and dehumanizing ways, emphasizing how gross and terrible children are and how much of a burden they are to their parents. This, I think is also wrong.
Children are a particularly vulnerable population. They often have very little rights and autonomy and are at the whims of adults around them, which makes then particularly vulnerable to abuse. Children are real, fully realized people who have very specific needs and considerations. Constantly discussing how disgusting and terrible children are, means attacking people who have no power and cannot defend themselves, legally or otherwise. These views cannot be separated from calls to remove children from public life, like parks and transportation, the practice of which is both dehumanizing and oppressive. This goes hand in hand with the gendered oppression of women who are unfortunately still often the primary caregivers of children. Forcing children out of the public sphere means forcing mothers out of it too. And the right to not have children needs to go hand in hand with the right to have children. Women need abortion rights and access but they also need the right and access to give birth for free. They need robust childcare and child & family friendly infrastructure. Otherwise the only people who can afford to have children are wealthy elites.
The rights of women to not have children and the rights of children and mothers go hand in hand. They are not contradictory. Being a parent is a complex relationship, one wrought with a long history of violence and oppression of children and women. It is not easy to navigate, and nobody should be expected to do it. Simultaneously, the people who do decide to do it deserve help and support, not scorn or mockery. And most of all, children, all children, even the annoying, dirty and screaming ones deserve a safe loving world that sees their full humanity, respects their perspectives and their bodily autonomy. We are all a part of creating that world for them. Society should be about being good to each other, and that includes children too.
"Children are real, fully realized people"
But what about babies? Surely a newborn doesn't count as a person? Where do we draw the line? Age Three?
i dunno man, there is no age cap or line. babies are real people too. they experience pain and fear and love and have preferences and in general are alive and have complete real subjectivity. the fact that babies need help in both communicating and functioning does not make them any less real people than older children or adults. a baby crying on an airplane might be annoying and overstimulating to us adults but that baby is in genuine fear, distress or pain and has not yet developed the tools to cope with that, and for all we know it might be the first or worst time they've ever experienced this pain or distress before. it matters. the subjective experience of babies matters. yes, it matters because we know through studies that the first two years of life are incredibly important for a person's adult mental health, but also because even as a baby, even if that baby never ended up living to their adulthood, it would still matter because that is a real person who matters. I am not saying babies or small children are somehow unchangeable and on the same intellectual level as adults. of course not. that is obviously untrue. but treating children as just 'in progress adults' or somehow 'unfinished' is ignoring their real subjectivity as children who have children's perception and unique way of seeing things and experiencing things. every child is just as much of real person with genuine interiority as any adult is. they simply experience the world and communicate differently and have a lot more intense support needs than most (but not all!) human adults, which makes them very vulnerable to abuse.
"they experience pain and fear and love and have preferences and in general are alive and have complete real subjectivity."
That's just every animal. Does that mean a cat or a dog or a cow is a person too?
