Why Having Kids Is Not a Retirement Plan

Who’s going to take care of you when you get old?

How to Live Solo Without Going Broke

Getting your own space doesn’t have to cost you a mint.

The Financial Book List for Single Women

Looking for financial advice aimed at single, childfree women?

Wishing Your Way to Financial Success

What Disney princesses can teach us about making your financial dreams come true.

The post Finances appeared first on The American Spinster.

Dating as a Solo Woman

Play the dating game the right way.

Dealing with Loneliness as a Solo Woman

Being happily single doesn’t mean never feeling lonely.

What Is Living Apart Together?

Could this be the lifestyle for you and your SO?

Do You Need to Get Married? (AmyRightMeow)

Artist AmyRightMeow has something to say about this assumption.

The Truth About Relationships and Expectations

Here’s what you should expect from every relationship.

The post Relationships appeared first on The American Spinster.

A Single Woman’s New Years Eve

Why I love spending New Year’s Eve alone.

New Year’s Resolutions for Single Women

Make this year your best year by transforming your life in the best possible way.

Enjoying Valentine’s Day as a Single Woman

Why ignore it when you can enjoy it?

I’ll Be Home (Alone) for Christmas

How to get the most out of your solitary Christmas.

Hosting a Holiday Party as a Single Woman

Host a fantastic holiday party.

The post Holidays appeared first on The American Spinster.

5 Steps to Creating Your Solo Bedroom

There’s an art to designing a single woman’s boudoir.

How to Create a Solo Dream Home

No matter where you are, you can create the living space of your dreams.

How to Love Living Alone

Enjoy the space and solitude of your solo home.

Is Living Alone Wasteful?

Concerned about the environmental effects of solo life?

How to Enjoy Your Solo Home

Banish the idea that living alone is a sad state of affairs.

The post Living Alone appeared first on The American Spinster.

How to Enjoy Cooking for One

Hate to cook? So do I. Here’s how to learn to like cooking for yourself.

How to Enjoy Eating Alone

Eating alone shouldn’t be a sad experience.

Cooking for One: You’re Worth the Fuss

If cooking for yourself seems like too much trouble, read this article ASAP.

Meal Planning for One

Wish there were more meal planning blogs that focused on single people? Your wish has been granted.

The post Cooking & Dining appeared first on The American Spinster.

How Wrong Expectations End Relationships

All of our disappointments, disillusionment, and much of our suffering comes from our expectations. That’s especially true for relationships. When a romance doesn’t work out, it’s often – fundamentally – because one or both partners didn’t meet the other’s relationship expectations.

“He didn’t express his love often enough.”

“She wasn’t there for me when I needed her.”

“They didn’t support my interests.”

We had expectations (for showing love, providing companionship, and offering support) that weren’t met.

The idea isn’t to lower your expectations or accept genuinely hurtful behavior. It’s simply to change the way you think about relationships and what they’re ‘supposed to’ provide.

Because I so highly recommend these books, I have included affiliate links on this page. Please read The American Spinster’s affiliate links disclosure here.

Relationships Are Assignments

In her book, Spirit Junkie, Gabrielle Bernstein explains that relationships are assignments from God/the universe. She writes, “I quickly learned that each relationship we enter into offers us two options: to show up as two separate people looking for completion in one another; or to show up as two whole people coming together to enjoy their wholeness.”

The two-separate-people-looking-to-be-made-whole option makes for compelling romantic storytelling. I love reading and watching relationships like that in books and movies. (“She’s got gaps. I got gaps. Together, we fill gaps.”) But when it comes to living a fulfilling life and creating a sustainable relationship, it’s generally not so effective.

Bernstein goes on to say that, “if we waited until we were fully healed before we started a relationship, we’d put Match.com out of business.” She continues:

Therefore, we have to recognize relationships as assignments that will bring all our neuroses to the table.

Relationships at their best, their most fulfilling, their most holy, are a means by which we can grow and heal ourselves.

Speaking of Match.com, want to learn how to date as a solo woman?

What That Kind of Relationship Is Like

Of course, what that really means is that your ideal partner isn’t the one who will be perfectly supportive as they gently guide you through your issues. That’s a therapist. The ideal partner that God/the universe has in store is someone who will, as Bernstein says, dig up all your shit.

I want to take a moment to make sure I’m perfectly clear about this point. This does not mean your partner should be cruel, abusive, manipulative, or antagonistic. (If you aren’t sure if you’re in an abusive relationship, see PsychCentral’s guide.) It simply means that they’ll probably get under your skin and force you – indirectly and unintentionally – to face your previously hidden issues.

One common example, especially for people who are often single, is, “They don’t really value me.” Here’s what that usually means.

They make jokes that hit too close to home
I have insecurities I don’t want to look at, and their jokes bring those insecurities to the surface.

They don’t pay attention to me
I don’t feel worthwhile unless someone else sees me as worthy of their time.

They don’t respect my boundaries
I’m unwilling to respect or enforce my own boundaries, but I expect others to do that for me.

Again, these can be signs of a problematic partner (see 21 Warning Signs of an Emotionally Abusive Relationship). But we often choose to see them as signs the relationship has gone wrong, rather than signs that we need to address challenges in ourselves.

Why do we do this? It all comes back to our expectations.

Resetting Relationship Expectations

We expect our partners to complete us. Few of us go into a new relationship expecting our partner to be someone who will (often unintentionally) help us complete ourselves.

If you’re planning on getting into a relationship, or if you’re struggling to make the one you’re in work, consider taking the following steps.

1. Think of your relationship like the hero’s journey. You will face trials. They will seem to be external trials (“my partner does/doesn’t do X”). But they will turn out to be internal trials (“I need to do/stop doing Y”). And when you’ve overcome them, you will be a stronger, more whole, and wiser person.
2. Read Gabrielle Bernstein’s Spirit Junkie, or The Universe Has Your Back. Both books talk about relationships as assignments.
3. Read this article if you’re unsure whether your partner is just rubbing you the wrong way, or being mentally/emotionally abusive.

If you choose to get into a relationship, do so with the knowledge that it will not be the answer to anything. Instead, it will be a means of ongoing self-development. It will feel uncomfortable some of the time. Your partner will brush up against your insecurities. And your response will have to be to look your issues in the face and deal with them head-on.

Images provided by Kaboompics

Are you in a living-apart-together relationship? Have you struggled with this issue? Share your experience in the comments below.

The post The Truth About Relationships and Expectations | For Single Women appeared first on The American Spinster.

You Don’t Actually Need to Get Married

I love the YouTube channel, JAMIEvstheVOID. The animation style and topics Jamie covers are right up my alley. Still, I never imagined watching something that would apply so directly to The American Spinster. So imagine my delight when a few days ago they posted a video all about why the don’t feel the need to get married.

The 14-minute original animated video shows the creator’s very respectful views on marriage, and why they personally don’t see marriage in their future.

I couldn’t agree with you more, Jamie.

If you want to commiserate with another single-by-choice person over the internet or you’re just curious about why anyone wouldn’t want to get married, this video is for you. And if you like original animation, JAMIEvstheVOID’s channel might be for you, too. Be sure to check out their other vids.

Is Your Family Waiting for a Wedding Invitation?

It’s hard for us Millennials and Gen Zs to remember this, but women did need to get married not long ago. While women have had the legal right to work for millennia (that’s where the word ‘spinster’ comes from), most didn’t until recently. Many jobs weren’t available to women. And most women had to choose between motherhood and a career. It was only about 50 years ago that the feminist movement helped women break into the workforce en masse.

That’s why many parents and grandparents still see marriage as a woman’s safety net. Marriage was a financial and social requirement for most of civilized human history. 50 or 60 years just isn’t enough time to erase that.

If you’re dealing with this, think about sharing JAMIEvstheVOID’s video. It might help your friends and family think critically about the need to get married.

The post Do You Need to Get Married? JAMIEvstheVOID appeared first on The American Spinster.

Is Meal Planning Worthwhile When You’re Single?

In How to Enjoy Cooking for One, I discussed the challenges and rewards of cooking meals for your solo self. I also admitted that cooking a proper meal for myself was something I struggled with. I don’t have an innate love for cooking or baking, and the preparation and cleanup made it feel like a real waste of time.

In creating that post, I set a goal for myself to make meal planning part of my weekly routine.This meal planning for one challenge did three main things for me:

1. It made my health and happiness a higher priority.
2. It helped me actually enjoy eating.
3. It saved me a ton of money.

My relationship with food has changed for the better, and I’m going to show you how.

Meal Planning Makes Health and Happiness a Priority

Because both my lifestyle choices (vegetarianism) and food sensitivities (lactose intolerance) limit my food options, meal planning takes a fair amount of, well, planning.

In the past, I used to content myself with eating ramen noodles (the prepackaged kind) for lunch and dinner because it was fast, simple, filling, and cheap. And while I don’t think processed ramen noodles are as bad—comparatively—as many believe, they don’t nourish my body or spirit.

Coming up with a variety of meals that I can eat, that are healthy, and that won’t completely break the bank is an ongoing challenge for me. But now it’s a challenge I value.

Eating a delicious meal that won’t make me feel physically or emotionally uncomfortable later is a true joy. I actually get excited about my food now. And, because I’ve prepared it for myself, I feel all of the self-love that went into it.

Past Me: Future Lilli is going to love this.
Me in the morning: Gets packed lunch out of fridge. Omg, this is going to be so good.
Me at work: This is the best lunch I love it.

To me, that’s what self-care and self-love looks like.

Meal Planning Helps Me Enjoy Food

Americans tend to have a lot of issues regarding food. Far more than I would even attempt to get into in this post. Suffice to say that food was an ongoing source of frustration for me for most of my adult life. And at first, my meal planning for one only seemed to add to that.

Cooking food for the week takes time and requires grocery store strategizing. But the payoff is that I get to eat Instagram-worthy food every day without funneling my entire paycheck into the local food cart industry.

Since starting my meal planning challenge, my food is:

• Healthy
• Visually appealing
• Well-proportioned

I’d go so far as to say my meal planning for one strategy is helping me develop a downright healthy relationship with food.

Meal Planning for One Is Less Expensive than the Alternative

I work in a major metropolitan area. I rarely have to walk a full city block to find a food vendor. Cafes and restaurants are also plentiful. It’s tempting to take advantage of these mouth-watering and pocket-emptying options. Fortunately for me, my meal planning for one challenge has paid off financially as well as physically and emotionally.

Even though I’m paying more than I would if I ate nothing but ramen noodle packs, my monthly food bill is nothing compared to what it would be if I were eating from the local food carts.

How to Start Your Own Meal Planning for One Challenge

Are you ready to start prepping your own homemade meals for one? Getting started is easy. All you need to do is take advantage of the abundance of resources on the topic. Then, turn your planning into your reality. To do this…

Visit Pinterest

Follow my Cooking for One Pinterest board. This board includes everything that a solo person needs to know about cooking, whether that means meal planning for one or hosting a dinner party for twenty.

Pick a week

Choose a week in the near future when you’ll put all you’ve learned into action. Decide before you go shopping exactly what you’re going to prepare and what ingredients you’ll need to do it.

Go easy on yourself

If things don’t go well the first time (or any time), cut yourself some slack. Eat out when you don’t have a good lunch or dinner prepared. Just because one week goes badly doesn’t mean meal planning isn’t a challenge worth continuing.

You should also check out my previous blog, How to Enjoy Eating Alone. In it, I address some of the awkwardness associated with eating by yourself.

Did this blog give you some new ideas? Would you like to see more posts on the topic of meal planning for one? Let me know in the comments below.

Images provided by Kaboompics

The post Meal Planning for One: Eating Convenient, Budget-Friendly Food appeared first on The American Spinster.

To the Conservative Christian Woman Against Abortion,

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and to consider my point of view.

I grew up in a conservative Christian church. If anyone had told me, when I was 15, that I would have a blog in which I write about the absolute need for abortion, and the need to uphold Roe v. Wade, I’d have been deeply offended. As a teen, I wrote anti-abortion poetry (I’ll use the terms “pro-life” and “anti-abortion” in the way I see as most honest—the poetry was 100% about the evils of abortion, and 0% about the goodness of seeing babies born, so I think “anti-abortion” is fair). I volunteered at Pregnancy Resources. I expected that, when I was old enough, I’d picket the abortion clinics.

So what turned me from such a stalwart Christian soldier to a pro-choice blogger? It started with the numbers.

Abortion by the Numbers

You know about numbers. Between 600,000 and 700,000 unborn murdered per year. Per year. The term “holocaust” did not seem dramatic or exaggerated to me. And let me come clean about my current views: I do genuinely believe that life begins at conception. I’m not a “mass of cells” kind of pro-choicer. I’m with Carl Sagan in that if microbial life exists on Mars, we must let it develop. So if I think single-celled life forms are sovereign over the planet on which they evolved… how could I possibly not believe that human life beings at conception?

I can’t.

So yes. I do believe that life begins at conception. I understand that it may not be sentient, human life, but it’s life, in my understanding. And I value it. You and I still have that much in common.

But, back to the numbers. Over 92% of abortions are the result of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. I searched and searched for contradictory stats, but I found none. Out of every 100 abortions, 92 occur because of an unwanted pregnancy. Only 8% happen because of things like severe illness, birth defects and fetal deaths. Growing up, I’d have heard this as, “Nearly all abortions are because of women who just can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of a human life.” But now… I hear something different.

Creating an Abortion-Free World

Now, I hear, “We could eliminate nearly all abortions if we could stop unwanted pregnancies from happening.” Think about it for a moment. If effective birth control were accessible (truly accessible) throughout the country, the abortion rate could drop by around 92%. Let me emphasize that. We could cut the abortion rate down to a little over 8% of what it currently is. And not in some utopian fantasy future. We have all of the technology needed to make this happen immediately. If we wanted to, we could send contraceptives out like the polio vaccine. We could teach students in every public high school how to use them properly. The only thing that’s standing in the way are the same people—largely conservative Christian groups—who claim that they want to end abortion.

And let’s just get this out of the way. These groups don’t want to end abortion. They want to make abortion illegal. They could cut the abortion rate by almost 92% by making reliable contraceptives available everywhere. Instead, they want to increase the demand for abortions while making safe and legal abortions inaccessible. So we’d get a dramatic increase in unsafe abortions, and an even greater increase in unwanted children. I’m not seeing a silver lining to this situation.

Is the Punishment Worth the Cost?

The only possible upside I can imagine pro-life advocates seeing is that people either…

1. Won’t be having sex in ways that disagree with lawmakers’ religions
2. Will be being punished physically, financially and emotionally for having sex in ways that disagree with lawmakers’ religions

That’s it. That’s the only “good” thing pro-life conservative Christians get out of defunding Planned Parenthood and overturning Roe v. Wade.

Is it worth it?

I grew up believing that abortion is literally murder. Women who had abortions had murdered their own children. So the idea that using a contraceptive was as bad as committing murder (genocide, as my church called it) was hard to accept. If some sins are worse than others, surely murder is worse than using birth control or having unwed sex. And if all sins are equal, surely it’s better to commit the sin that does not end a human life… right?

It was this realization that got me to start critically re-examining everything I’d been taught about abortion, contraception, and women’s health.

Women’s Health?

As a teen, I was taught, as you probably were, that “a woman’s right to choose” is just pro-choice code for “a woman’s desire to kill her baby.” I also heard that the entire idea that abortion and contraceptives are someone women’s healthcare is just insulting to women. But then, after a full seven years of suffering from debilitating ovarian cysts, a gynocologist prescribed me birth control. I was 18, so no one could stop me from taking it. And I knew as long as I didn’t use it for sex, it couldn’t really be a sin.

And it changed my life.

When you’re freed from a chronic condition, the entire world opens up. I could hold down a job. I could even go to college full-time (I’d been home schooled, so absences due to ruptured cysts weren’t an issue). It made me wonder about the relationship between women’s health and contraceptives. Could caring for a woman’s reproductive system really be about a woman’s overall health, like the pro-abortion people insisted?

And Then, There’s the Anti-Woman Aspect

And what about childbirth? I’d been taught during my home school debate class that the danger of childbirth in modern society was virtually non-existent. Furthermore, abortion is far more dangerous to a woman’s life than childbirth. But, again, the data told a different story. I searched for answers that supported what I believed. I thought for sure the actual scientific studies would prove that the idea of pregnancy and childbirth being dangerous was just pro-abortion propaganda.

But it wasn’t. Turns out, the female body simply wasn’t designed to endure one pregnancy after the next, year after year. Unless, that is, you believe that the female body is a disposable, biological incubator. Which, granted, wasn’t a foreign idea up through the 20^th century. Women dying in childbirth or due to complications from unending pregnancies was a pretty common way for women to die in civilized societies

The more I heard things like, “But what woman wouldn’t want to give her life for her child,” and the less I heard things like, “Shouldn’t women get to choose whether or not to become pregnant,” the more I realized something else.

Pro-Life Really Is Anti-Woman

You simply can’t be anti-abortion and anti-contraception without also being anti-woman. In the midst of these severe, sweeping anti-abortion bills, where’s the legislation demanding an immediate paternity test of every child born to an unwed mother, so that the father’s wages can be automatically garnished for child support? Why is it so difficult to hold a father legally responsible for his careless, ungodly actions? Why is that majority of blame placed on the mother?

I mean, you know why. At least, if you spend a chunk of your childhood in the conservative Christian church circuit you do. You learned it when you were 14 and told that if you wore certain clothing you were encouraging sinful thoughts in the minds of the men and boys around you. Women tempt men. Women kill their babies. Women make these sinful choices. So we’ve got to limit women’s choices. I tried not to question it growing up, but I can’t help questioning it now.

The Fictional Abortion

The most damaging fantasy I was ever fed was that bad women have abortions because they have rampant, casual, careless sex. Growing up in a conservative, Evangelical Christian church, I can tell you that this was presented as the gospel truth. Maybe you heard it as well. Now and then I’ll happen to run across an old friend on social media who—in her mid-30s—still believes that the women who have abortions use it as casual birth control. They just have abortions every month, right?

This belief comes, in part, from an intentional blurring of abortions with things like Plan B and even—believe it or not—the birth control pill. Birth control pill, abortion pill, it’s all the same. Until I got to college (yes, college), I genuinely believed what the authority figures in my life had told me: That the birth control pill automatically aborts pregnancies. You may think I’m just really stupid… but I know too many intelligent women who believe the same thing. It’s not stupidity. It’s just willful ignorance.

In fact, Ohio Representative John Becker also believes that the birth control pill is an abortifacient. What’s really interesting is that he also seems to believe that it’s possible to create genuine contraceptives, and feels that his bill will force “the drug manufacturers” to “reformulate” the Pill so it is a contraceptive instead of an abortion pill.

This is a grown man writing some of our nation’s laws.

Why We Believe in the Fictional Abortion

This is not a case of stupidity. It’s—as I said—willful ignorance. Who knows why John Becker chooses to believe what he does? I know why I believed it. I have a guess as to why many other women in conservative circles, believe it. We don’t want to be kicked out of the only community we know. It’s just so much easier to side against those hyper-sexual, brainwashed women who kill their babies than it is to risk learning that we’re the ones maintaining those high abortion numbers.

Becker and his pals are doing everything they can, not to end abortion, but to take away a woman’s option to decide whether or not she has children, as well as how and when she has them. In the process, they’re eliminating all other types of women’s healthcare. “A woman’s right to choose” does not mean “A woman’s right to kill her baby.” It means a woman’s right to chose when, if, and with whom to have children. When you take away contraceptives, you take away a woman’s right to choose.

These Bills Will Stop Your Friends’ Abortions, Too

Here’s something else to think about. These bills aren’t just aimed at the “bad” kind of abortion that your fellow church members rail against. They work against all the kinds of abortion that your matronly church-goers (quietly) approve of, too.

Unless you’re in a very extreme, closed Christian community, you almost certainly know someone who’s had a D&C. This is when a doctor removes tissue from the womb. The “tissue,” in these cases, being a fetus—or the remains of one. This usually only happens when doctors suspect that the fetus isn’t viable, that the woman will soon miscarry, or when she has not miscarried after fetal death. It’s also done after miscarriage to remove any pieces that weren’t expelled already. The most anti-abortion women I’ve ever met, would talk openly about their D&Cs, their daughters’ D&Cs, their friends daughters’ D&Cs and so on. That includes instances where the death of the fetus was not confirmed, but just suspected.

These bills would limit or prevent those, too.

Do you know someone struggling to conceive? These bills could even affect her access to healthcare after a miscarriage or missed miscarriage.

The Last Ugly Truth About Abortion

This is something that we just don’t talk about. Conservatives won’t talk about it because it undermines their position. And liberals rarely talk about it because they fear it will undermine theirs as well. But here it is: No one wants to have an abortion.

If I went by what religious leaders told me, or by what some really pro-abortion activists say, I’d never guess that. Both sides seem to want to make it appear that women just love them some abortions. But if you take away nothing else, please understand this:

No one gets a positive pregnancy test and rejoices that now she gets to go to the abortion clinic and get that abortion she’s been wanting.

I mean, maybe there’s someone out there severely afflicted with Munchhausen syndrome who kind of gets off on having invasive surgery or outpatient medical procedures, but… I’m kind of skeptical that even that type of person would enjoy an abortion.

Women want abortions that way someone suffering from appendicitis wants an appendectomy. No one really wants an appendectomy, but if you tried to make them illegal, the entire nation would be in an uproar. Why? Because having an appendectomy is better than the alternative. We want them to remain legal. We want skilled doctors performing them. And we hope we never have to get one.

How to Really End Abortion

Now, I’m sure you think there’s a huge ethical difference between removing a bad appendix and removing a developing fetus or fertilized egg. And that’s where we get back to the defunding of women’s health centers and the bills that would make obtaining contraceptives virtually impossible for most women. At the moment, there’s not much we can do to prevent appendicitis. But we can eliminate nearly all demand for abortion.

If everyone got behind making abortion unnecessary, instead of making it illegal, we could watch the abortion rate plummet. And I don’t mean watch it decrease, like we’ve been doing over the last decade or so. I mean cut it by like 90%. That’s more than you’ll ever get by banning abortion, I promise you.

I can’t accept the fact that we have all the means necessary to make unwanted pregnancies (and abortion overall) an absolute rarity, and we’re choosing to make abortion both necessary and illegal instead.

In Closing

By now, even if you don’t agree with me, hopefully you see why I’ve changed my stance so dramatically. I want something better than ending abortion.

I want to end the need for abortion.

I want a world where women can choose whether or not to become pregnant.

And if that chosen pregnancy fails for some reason, I want her to be allowed to take medical action to save her life.

Postscript

This is a much more personal post than I typically write for The American Spinster. As I’ve watched the news over the past couple of months, I’ve felt angry, of course, but also so frustrated that the issue of denying women contraceptives seems to have taken a backseat to the issue of denying women abortions. I absolutely understand the reason, and I’m not saying the focus on abortion is in any way wrong. But, knowing women who are against abortion, and knowing that they support eliminating access to safe, reliable contraceptives, has put a weight on my mind I didn’t think I could remove without using this platform to reach out to those women.

I wrote this open letter, as the title states, to conservative Christian women against abortion. But, in a small way, I wrote it for the women who support abortion, too. I want everyone to be able to understand where the anti-abortion Christian woman might be coming from. I wish everyone could understand the level of information control that happens in some small, religious groups, and how it affects our choices.

If you support abortion, please keep this in mind next time you talk to a woman who doesn’t. Some gentle education usually does a lot more than angry condemnation, however genuine and deserved it may be.

Thank you all so much for reading this and considering my viewpoint.

The post To the Conservative Christian Woman Against Abortion appeared first on The American Spinster.

Do Childfree Women Hate Moms?

The title might seem a little clickbait-y, but it’s a question I’ve had to ask myself over the last couple of years. Since seeing more of the online childfree community, I’ve seen the absolute disgust many childfree women have for mothers. It’s brutal. And it’s left me wondering, time and again, why?

You may disagree with me on this, but in my experience no one obsesses over the wrong-ness of someone else’s life unless it’s harming them directly or touching a nerve. Now, random mothers on the internet aren’t directly affecting childfree women’s lives.  At best we can claim they’re hogging resources for their children, that’s nothing compared to the disproportionate resources very wealthy individuals are using just on themselves.

So what is the real reason childfree women hate moms so much?

Mom-Bashing on the Internet

I come across some pretty hate-filled speech when I visit childfree groups. Besides the name-calling (breeder, mombie and crotch droppings for kids), I see posts filled with reasons that mothers are disgusting, gross, entitled, and trash. Any post that contains some sort of pain, discomfort, or unhappiness for a mother is met with more than a few words of delight. She deserves it, the stupid breeder.

And maybe you’re thinking, “Lils, it’s the internet. If you can’t handle hate talk, don’t log in.” And that would be fair. But my quest here isn’t to rid the world of impolite people on the internet. It’s to find out what is really at the bottom of this surprisingly vicious and unending anger toward moms.

Why the obsessive interest in moms?

It looks like childfree women are paying a lot of attention to a lifestyle we supposedly don’t care about. And sure, if you’re social media friends with a pregnant woman, you’re going to see posts about her pregnancy. And if you hate kids and pregnancy, it’s going to upset you. I also understand that many people keep contacts they don’t particularly like on the friends list. But… why follow them? Why keep up with their apparently distasteful lives?

Why create online spaces that help childfree women hate moms?

Are Moms Just Easy Scapegoats?

When you get right down to it, moms aren’t hurting us or cramping our style more than other groups. It is distressing to see the horrible ways some mothers treat their children. And it can be annoying to see mothers getting so much attention. But, that’s a lot of anger for such common crimes. Is it simply the fact that this is the internet, and being mildly annoyed at someone can translate to unreasonably angry speech?

All of it looks–to me–like a basically baseless hatred. The kind we need to hang on to to keep from looking more closely at something in our own lives or society. And so we make moms the “other.” We find their lifestyle gross, so we call them disgusting. We think they’re dumb for no knowing motherhood would be so taxing, so we call them brainless mombies. And, like any type of resentment-based, illogical anger, we back it up with ‘proof’ that they’re hogging resources and overpopulating the planet. They deserve our hatred.

Pardon My Soap Box, But…

So why the heck do I care so much about the way childfree women hate moms?

Because being childfree wasn’t always a choice for me. I grew up in a very conservative church group where birth control was never discussed. It could only be whispered among married couples who already had a few children.

I had no sex education whatsoever. And I definitely didn’t have the means to get any kind of birth control. I mean that. There was no possibility of me even going into a pharmacy on my own, much less coming home with condoms. If I’d ever had sex as a teen, there would have been no way I would have been able to use protection.

So, when I read comments like, “That stupid twat knew what she was getting into,” I think, “Did she?” Childfree women, overall, seem very educated about pregnancy and childbirth–which is probably part of why we opt to be childfree. But no-one (I mean literally no-one) ever told me about any of it when I was growing up.

My experience isn’t usual. A lot of kids grow up in similar situations. It’s easy for a childfree woman with unrestricted internet access to look down on teens and young, insulated adults for not knowing better. But when your school, parents and church refuse to discuss the realities of sex, childbirth, or birth control, how are you supposed to learn about it?

Despising the Less Fortunate

This is the case for most of the unhappy mothers I know. I imagine it’s the case for most unhappy mothers, period. They were herded into a lifestyle they didn’t choose freely (if you don’t know there are options, you can’t make a choice). They’re stuck in a society that idolizes birth but devalues mothers. They lose their selfhood in service to their kids. At times, they try to take pride in this martyrdom. And sometimes they turn to social media to vent their frustrations.

Childfree women, on the other hand, have lives we supposedly love. But we talk viciously about women who ended up in lives they don’t even like. Don’t misunderstand me, we need to vent our frustrations at times, too. And not every action we take has to be some glorious, altruistic move.

But maybe, instead of ranting about how much moms disgust us, our time would be better spent trying to reach young girls and women to let them know that they have other options.

Does this ring true for you? Tell me about your experiences in the comments below.
If you’re uneasy with the way childfree groups are often flimsy disguises for anti-procreation groups, I recommend checking out Respectfully Childfree.

Images provided by Kaboompics

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