the egocentric
by rantywoman
Not having children isn’t an illness in the usual sense, and it certainly isn’t a life-threatening condition, but fertility experts send women a hugely reactionary message. They encourage them to think they’re failures if they don’t have babies, implicitly dismissing any individual or couple who chooses to remain childless.
There’s a very basic mistake here. For centuries, the fact that most women who had sex got pregnant perpetuated the myth of a universal maternal instinct. I don’t have it and I know plenty of other women who don’t. Quite a few men, I suspect, would be happy not to have children, but couples come under huge pressure from family and friends to start procreating. What few people – especially fertility doctors, most of whom are male and have massive egos – seem to realise is that there’s no evidence for the assumption that having children makes people happy.
Maternal intinct or not, sometimes you don’t know how much you’re going to enjoy having a child until you have one. And women don’t have their whole lives to decide. And while raising children can be stressful, many people still find it fulfilling. Ideally, having a family broadens your own community and social network. You’d think it would also help couples stay together for the long haul and do their best to work out their problems, although that’s less likely these days. I’m not convinced fertility doctors somehow play on feelings that people really don’t have.
I have heard from friends that fertility doctors can be terribly egocentric and rude.