Lately, my past and my present are getting mixed up. It is a function of bad behaviors repeating themselves, and it is disappointing.
I am referring to recent attacks on women and their choices —- specifically women without children. Hearing these heartless personal accusations threw me back to a time when young women lawyers reacted harshly on the Internet to one of my columns and accused me of having no credibility on the subject matter because I was a woman without children.
I remember thinking at the time how inappropriate that accusation was and how hurtful it would have been if I was, in fact, childless. I am not. My two children are testament to my very real motherhood. But what if I had chosen to be childless? And what if I had been childless but not by choice? Who would have been entitled to be that judgmental about such a personal issue? Even the suggestion that I had no children was hurtful because it lessened the importance of my children and ran counter to the reality that I have never taken for granted the precious gift of becoming a mother.
And that is the point. For so many reasons, no one has the right to criticize a woman for not having children. Not men, and especially not other women. Many women have difficulty conceiving children, and some women choose not to have children for other reasons. Those are personal problems and personal choices. No one should be hurling such criticism at women for any reason.
And certainly not for political gain. Yet, here we are today listening to disparaging attacks on “childless cat ladies” by a political candidate, and claims that women must have children “to be humble” by a female Governor/campaign surrogate. It is hard to imagine what will come next. And these are not uninformed young people on the Internet. These are national leaders.
Disparaging remarks about childless women are heinous on their face. But, even worse, they are extremely hurtful to women who do not have children or are unable to have children in spite of their most sincere hopes and prayers. Even though many people may believe that having children brings out the most humble and caring qualities in a woman, it is in no way true that those qualities depend on motherhood. There are just too many examples to the contrary.
These irresponsible negative judgments about women must be rejected. There is no place in our society for such cruel and heartless behavior.
If we truly believe that “We are better than this,” it is time we insist that those who want our support remember it.
