Babies won’t bring respect

Yesterday I became aware of a belief I’ve held unconsciously, probably since childhood.  I don’t believe women will be taken seriously until we show that we don’t need to have babies. 

As a child, I was horrified by other girls’ love of "childcare" games.  They were the usual sort of "when I grow up" games – parents and children, teachers and students.  I just couldn’t understand why, after two decades of waiting to reach adulthood and be taken seriously, they would want to go right back to being among children again, as soon as possible! 

But that’s not the only problem with motherhood.  The other is that it’s not valued.  And when I say valued, I don’t mean causing warm fuzzy feelings, I mean attracting payment.  No-one will pay you to have babies or raise them.  Not in this country, anyway!  The rest of the OECD countries except the US do have paid maternity leave, that’s true, but it’s not much and generally not for long.  From the little I know of the US, I get the impression that some there consider motherhood to be a legitimate full-time occupation, but that’s certainly not the case here.  And being a financially supported "wife and mother" is certainly not an unwritten part of the marriage contract any more.  I mean, we don’t have alimony here anymore. 

So what do we end up with?  Women still want to have babies.  Nobody will pay them to do it.  They have babies anyway.  Then they wonder why nobody is rushing to give them paid maternity leave. 

A serious baby drought might change all that.  I mean, at the moment it seems that the government considers having children as a hobby – something people do on their own resources, for their own enjoyment.  Not a vital and necessary function of society.  Which is probably part of the reason it allows so much brainwashing and mistreatment of children.  I mean, if a child was NOT considered to be the personal craft project of it’s parents, would we really approve him being sent to a school teaching that evolution is a wicked lie, condoms don’t prevent HIV transmission, and anyone with psychic abilities is in league with the devil?  Would we? 

Gosh, I’m depressing myself.  On the one hand, I’m sounding stultifyingly statist, almost Communist.  On the other, it’s all Lysistrata and 1970’s Feminism.  No, this is not just a feminist problem, this is a population problem.  Women just bear the economic brunt of it, that’s all.  It’s hard to support paid maternity leave while a carbon tax on babies makes sense too. 

Perhaps the real question is, what circumstances lead to significant and long-term reductions in the birth rate?  What makes people want babies less?  Because at the moment, folk want more than the nation needs or can even cope with. 

Maybe that’s the real source of the bleedingly obvious death-wish that’s been growing with every possibility of a serious pandemic over the last ten years.  Maybe there’s a collective wish to do it the quick, easy and brutal way.  With something as deadly as plague, we could wipe out say… two, three billion?  Without reducing the birth rate at all.