Man, the crazy starts from graf one:

Much as I like to trumpet the importance of a woman’s right to choose all things at all times, there’s one choice I simply cannot understand: the choice of an otherwise sane and healthy woman not to have children.

But really, EVERY other choice, she’s down with your rights! Just not the most important one!

If a would-be mother is a singleton of 40 who decides to have a baby without a partner, I might wish she’d thought of it sooner and prepared for it better - but I understand.

Yeah, so, about that trumpeting of rights to choose ...

If she’s half of a lesbian couple who ‘borrows’ the wherewithal, I might cross my fingers that the child is not teased at school - but I understand.

I was led to believe there would be trumpeting ...

Even if she’s a 66-year- old pregnant pensioner, threatening to turn motherhood into a freak show, I might (indeed, I do) think she’s monstrously selfish and dangerously wrong - but again, more or less, I understand.

Do you know Joe Lieberman?

Actually, Amanda ...

I have my suspicions this is less aimed at women, and more written so grumpy old men can nod vigorously about how terrible women are, and how much it takes to turn them from wild animals to domesticated appliances.

You must know that this was written and published because positing that people other than white men have something inherently wrong with them that patriarchy fixes, well, that’s just “interesting” and “provocative” and “outside the box” and you’re uptight and intolerant if you don’t think so. Now, is there something inherent in white men that makes them start wars and ruin economies so they can have fourth cars and third boats and long-lasting erections? That’s just crazy talk.

The author, perhaps someone who has children or desperately wants one, is engaging in a bit of self-deception. It’s not those with children who are favored in the workplace. It’s those who are married. Unmarried does imply that you’ll take off on a whim and don’t have any responsibilities to tie you down. Now, you’re theoretically not allowed to ask about a person’s personal life during an interview, and I’ve known people who openly discussed the possibility of showing up to an interview wearing a wedding ring. The interviewer can’t ask, but the employer sees the ring and thinks, “ah. this is a responsible grownup.”

This just makes me think of the parents I know whom I wouldn’t trust with a goldfish, let alone a child.

Neat trick, this, getting a woman to sell her own gender down the river.  I wonder if she has kids herself, or simply considers herself a dispenser of wisdom to the lowly proles because she certainly doesn’t need the advice…

After reading the entire “article”, this looks to be some sort of opinion piece or commentary, not any piece of journalism.  I’d put it on par with the nonsensical dreck spewed by Brooks, Krysal, Coulter or any of those rightwing shills.

The telling point is the reference to “studies”, but none of the actual research is cited.  I figure it came from the firm of OOMBR - Out of My Butt Research.

Tyro, I don’t think even that’s true, for women.  If you’re married and childless, employers worry that you’re about to get pregnant and take a bunch of time off work.  That’s why there’s all these laws forbidding them to ask in interviews.

Married men do benefit.  There’s data that shows that marriage improves men’s career paths, but degrades women’s.

It’s not the mothers, for a start, who are going to turn up late and hungover after a night on the razz; they’ll have been up, dressed and alert for hours, having cooked a family breakfast and delivered their children to school. On time.

Right.  This paragraph reminds me of an advertisement featured in Pink Think to encourage women to join the women’s auxiliary military branches during the war, which likened being a Marine to going to summer camp.  I think it’s the fantasy gloss both examples are washed in.

There’s a new mother where I work, and she certainly is the earliest one there every morning.  Of course, that’s because we have a super-flexible work schedule, so she can be out by 3 and her husband can come in and work the evening while she’s on baby duty.  Of the rest of us sinful singles, the men are as likely or more to show up late and hungover as the women.

Incidentally, I told the new mother that I didn’t really like babies, which are mostly tubes to convert food to crap.  The other parent and the other single person in the room seemed a bit shocked, but rather than being offended, the mom instantly began boggling over how there’s no conservation of mass in the process, and she can’t believe how something that eats so little can poop so much.  Just a reminder that there don’t really have to be mommy wars as long as everyone keeps their senses of humor tuned up.

I’d like to see any actual reference to this supposed study—-a name, a link, anything.

To see the “study” you’ll need to perform a colonoscopy on the author of the article.

The movie I’m thinking of is not Sex and the Single Girl, but Working Girl, with the evil single Sigourney Weaver.

She pulls out all stops, including openly calling the childless not-human.  (Only women, again, need to have children to be admitted into the human race.) But rarely do you see this anymore, where women are openly told to have children not because children are great, but because you’re a wild animal who needs taming.

Yes, this. I got/get told this by my mother, members of my family, my ex-husband (at least I don’t have to deal with HIM anymore but it was a major contributing factor in the “ex” - although I wonder why I even did it in the first place), random people who have kids… all because I’m not going down the road of “wanna bee a mommee” from my own childbirth. There’s still tons of toys for girls that have something to do with taking care of someone (sometimes some thing - but being a female veterinarian is still a little too “edgy” for some) cooking sets, baby dolls that shit, piss and cry (even when I was little I was repelled)... etc.
I used to play war or rescue or something active with my little brother and his G.I.Joes a lot more than I ever played with dolls that my mom tried to force on me. She did eventually learn as those dolls sat in boxes, unplayed with.

I get so sick and tired of having motherhood shoved down my throat on a daily basis while men my age (34) are able to go about fairly immune. I think that when men get the whole thing tossed at them it’s more along the lines of “Yeah my kid and I go play soccer once in a while and it’s cool to be a dad”. It’s never the vicious, judgemental b.s. that women get. At least for my family it should be obvious that, like Amy Sedaris, I want a monkey a lot more than a baby. (actually a French Bulldog, Pug and a Boston and a nice house with a big yard to put them all in)

but one thing I’ve noticed across the board is that single, childless women get promoted a lot faster than mothers

and I’ve noticed that it’s much of the time married women (no matter how young) and mothers. To each their own observations.

Is the Daily Mail a tabloid?

‘Cause if so, it was the equivalent in the early 1970s of the NY Daily News in appealing to the blue collar mouth breather, which featured on Page Six every damn day a topless cutie: the Page Six Girl.

Righto, an otherwise (highly-slanted) “news” paper, sold over the counter to, oh,  anybody and it featured tits and nipples.

Quite a shocker to an American college student, a fucking news paper with bare breasts!

That’s how “feminist” the Daily Mail was, and the “news” was similarly anti-women, Playboy had more pretence to being female friendly.

So if this is that Daily News it comes by it’s brand “feminism” by a long history.

You just have more opportunities to shine if you aren’t being distracted by a family.

I think it’s more along the lines of having more opportunities to shine when you aren’t burdened by stereotypes. In my line of work, there’s a kind of “new math” that’s operative, wherein the three-to-five days per year I take off for my daughter’s inevitable illnesses magically transforms into an assumption of more time spent off work than the average 2-3 weeks my male counterparts spend off per year for various things (hunting, fishing, ballgames, concerts, Harley-riding, hangovers, skiing, camping, working on their house, etc.). The only men I know who take time off for their childrens’ illnesses or doctor appointments are single custodial fathers. They don’t carry the same stigma that I have for that though. My family isn’t a distraction, but carrying the burden of having to prove myself as twice/three times/x times as valuable merely to get a chance to stay employed (because, y’know, men “need” the job ‘cuz they’re “supporting a family”—-even if they aren’t yet——while what the fuck am I—-the single mother——doing again?)—-that’s a distraction.

Have there actually been any real studies, any comparisons done that focus on how much time full-time workers spend off work per year, broken down by sex and parenthood status, and reason for taking time off? I ask because anecdatally, I hear the same thing from other mothers—-that they are also afraid to take unnecessary time off because of the necessity of reserving a block of time for kids’ illnesses, and the stigma that carries. It’s a common trope that mothers take more time off, but I’d actually like to see if it is true, and if it is true—-why.

Yes, Judybrowni, the Daily Mail — a/k/a the Daily Fail and the Daily Heil — is a tabloid. It’s slightly more literate than the Sun but oodles more vicious, specializing in misogyny and racist dogwhistles.

As for Sarler, It’s rather appalling that I wasn’t shocked at all when I found out that, three years ago, she’d written the requisite rape-victim-blaming column that every “respectable” journalist seems to need to crank out these days. I’m not even surprised it was in the Guardian rather than the Daily Heil, as I’ve seen similar columns there before (I think the most egregious was by one Matthew Fox).

However, my jaw absolutely hit the floor when I saw this column of hers from last winter, in which she defends a woman who’d covered up for her 11-year-old thuglet after he’d murdered another boy (both egg donor and thuglet are now in prison):

God forbid that I would raise a monster; I’m happy to say that I have not. But I know in every ounce of my being that if a child of mine got into trouble I would cover up, lie, cheat, perjure or provide false alibi - whatever it took - to protect him.

We have had a rash of stories about mothers who do otherwise. The mother who turned in a junkie daughter, the mother who reported a son for rape; perhaps most notably, the story of Carol Saldinack who, last summer, turned in both her sons for an assault and saw both banged up for her pains.

She was hailed, at the time, as a heroine. Won awards, even, for being a model citizen. And perhaps she is.

But from where I sit, that makes her a model citizen of another planet. She and I inhabit different worlds. I don’t even begin to understand her.

Janette Mercer, although almost certainly not my cup of cocoa as a person, I do understand.

...Mothers and children are, of each others’ flesh and blood; the instinct to preserve one blends inextricably with the preservation of the other.

No matter how many judges and juries might seek to have it any other way, I doubt that they could - and I also doubt that they should.

We value families. In this country we have a preference for the nuclear version, even if we are learning to embrace different structures, too; in other countries there are other models, other living arrangements.

But the root of them all is the bond between mothers and their offspring; a bond that is deeper than anything else, deeper than ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and certainly deeper than a manmade construct such as the law.

We are programmed to give our lives for our children, if necessary. Emaciated mothers in times of famine still hand the one, meagre crust to their babies - and if we are prepared to die for them, to lie for them is, by comparison, simply trivial.

It is a bond that lasts a lifetime. When I was a strapping adult and a mother myself, my own mother would still automatically hold my hand when we crossed a road.

It is beyond question the most nourishing of all human relationships in all functioning societies and we mess with it at our peril.

...Mercer is already serving a life sentence of where-did-I-go-wrongs. No punishment we can think up could come near to what it must feel like to know you gave birth to something vile and then to watch as he, still in his teens, gets locked away for at least 22 years.

Sarler is .... a piece of work. I resort to that phrase because there really are no words to describe her ilk.

he mom instantly began boggling over how there’s no conservation of mass in the process, and she can’t believe how something that eats so little can poop so much.

When you add spitting and throwing up it becomes even more mind-boggling.

There’s two types of parents in the world.  Those that recognize how tiring children are - and what a rare feat it is to arrive at work alert and put together, having accomplished the morning’s tasks on time - and liars.

So the single person who has “more opportunities to shine,” i.e., is doing a better job, is the beneficiary of discrimination?

Yes. When there’s an automatic assumption that a woman’s dedication to her work and ability to do her job are reduced by her having had children. Can you show me where this is operative for men? Can you point me in the direction of any evidence that single men without children are given opportunities and promotions at a much higher rate than men with children? Why not? Aren’t they doing a “better job” than the fathers? Y’know, because the fathers have that “distracting” family?

Or maybe it has fuck-all to do with parenthood status and everything to do with which gender the parent is.

There’s two types of parents in the world.  Those that recognize how tiring children are - and what a rare feat it is to arrive at work alert and put together, having accomplished the morning’s tasks on time - and liars.

Heh. I really wondered which planet this woman was typing her drivel on when I read that sparkling account of what can only be Martha Stewart’s morning routine. Does she even know any mothers? I mean, flesh-and-blood mothers, not tv characters? BWA ha ha! at the idea that the average mother has been dressed and alert for hours! Ambulatory, maybe.

So the single person who has “more opportunities to shine,” i.e., is doing a better job, is the beneficiary of discrimination?

Well, I think it is like was described above, with the ‘new math’ of mothers taking off 3 to 5 days a year for sick kids being a bigger deal than others who take time off to do other things like take vacations.

For example, I knew this single mom of three kids at a previous job who came in very early in the morning, left at around 3:00 to gather all the kids up from school, and came back at six or so and worked a couple more hours almost every night. She also worked many Saturdays. We had the kind of job where as long as you got your work done, it really didn’t matter when you did it. There were meetings and stuff, but she always made those. But there was this impression from the higher ups (men) that she was never there and always running after her kids. Lots of people worked flex-time. Many men and single women (including myself) did a ten to six thing. But that was all okay and not frowned upon. She did lose out on opportunities because of the “impression” that she was doing less work and not there, not that she really was not there or did less work.

I get so sick and tired of having motherhood shoved down my throat on a daily basis while men my age (34) are able to go about fairly immune.

Danica

You and me both. It’s come to the point where I have been well conditioned to not talk about my plans for birth, unless it’s with my gyno/doctor and even then I’ll try to be vague so I don’t get some kind of lecture that I have to clench my jaw through.

I’ve even come up with a drinking game, where, in a party where you’re with friends/new people, mention that you don’t want kids and then every time someone says, “You’ll change your mind/You don’t know what you want right now/You’ll regret it/You just haven’t met the right man/etc” then take a shot. Though I have a feeling I’d most likely die of alcohol poisoning. Though there have been times where I’ve met other women who also don’t want kids and it’s kind of a relief when we discover each other, and that there are two (or three) of us we can’t be as easily brow beaten by people if it were just one and it shocks some people to discover that there are women, plural, who don’t want kids and I’m not just some isolated incident.

It’s never the vicious, judgemental b.s. that women get.

It’s also that women aren’t doing their “jobs”. Amanda’s talked about it on Pandagon before but it seems like society has this fear that if women were allowed to just be, and make their own decisions then probably no woman would EVER have children, like they see that men have to be hunted down and forced into monogamy and marriage (like the post from yesterday about Hollywood and the evil matriarchy) and child rearing. For them, you can’t ever know the “pleasure” of something until it’s forced on you (“You might think you don’t want it now, but once that baby’s outta your vaginal canal you’re gonna LOVE IT!”) and then you see what you were “missing” in your life. But if there are women who can opt out of this then it’s like the entire house of cards will fall down and it’ll end up being Children of Men or something.

La Lubu, I googled around and didn’t see any controlled studies on the question.  Mothers have more rights to take off than non-mothers, but the flip side of that is that mothers are more likely to just take themselves out of the workforce instead of using all the time they have coming to them.  So who knows?

AJones: a perfect illustration of why women are damned if they do, damned if they don’t, and it’s their own damned fault either way.

‘Is the Daily Mail a tabloid?’

Indeed it is. UK feminists know it as the Daily Male (and you can add white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class and middle-aged to that).
It is vile.

What a piece of work Sarler is. I haven’t seen an article so utterly pulled out of the writer’s arse and reliant on huge generalisations and stereotypes in a long time. Absolutely, of course, all single women go out partying (have to find that man, after all, of course in Sarler’s world everyone is straight) and are irresponsible. Of course, we all work to buy shoes, not to y’know, support our silly little selves…suppose daddy is supposed to pay the rent when adult daughter spends the rent money on shoes again, in Sarler’s world? I mean, I suppose Sarler is assuming that women can’t possibly work because, er, most adults need to make their own money, not to mention they might find it fulfilling. The closest she comes is to mention ‘adult company’ - the *best* reason she thinks women have to go to work is for the company??

Sarler is hardly complimenting working mothers, portraying them as reliable drones. If my review said ‘oh well, at least she turns up on time, and not hungover, is reliable and does what she’s told fairly efficiently’ I would be disappointed.

Love the cartoon too, note women must have nails, and all we are good for is typing (and other exciting duties such as filing and stuff…)

She really is a throwback. Suppose we ladies should leave the hard thinking to the menz and be happy to be secretaries.

Some people work hard and go above and beyond, some just do the minimum so they don’t get sacked…some will come to work hungover and some are responsible adults…I don’t think parenthood has a lot to do with it.
A family is a ‘distraction’ but so is an outside hobby or interest, whether sport, partying or activism for a cause, even feminist blogging. I hate the culture of presenteeism. I agree that people should be promoted on merit and effort put in, but more hours at desk doesn’t equal harder working. It could mean the person is struggling to get their workload done, or hell, are playing World of Warcraft.

I don’t think being single is necessarily an advantage, it depends, I think, on the individual women. Some will be seen as the party type, some as responsible. Also it depends on the organisational culture - and the individual boss in question - of course, some will favour young ambitious types who are happy to work all hours, some prefer to promote what they see as sensible responsible and loyal family people.
Women have it worse than men either way - we can’t win. The scary thing is I don’t think Sarler’s views are unusual - most people think of a woman who doesn’t want children as ‘cold’ and ‘unnatural’. Women with children are assumed to be less dedicated to their work - at best as reliable drones, which are not qualities that get you beyond the middle ranks. Sarler is not exactly complimenting working mothers, as I said earlier.

<i>mention that you don’t want kids and then every time someone says, “You’ll change your mind/You don’t know what you want right now/You’ll regret it/You just haven’t met the right man/etc” then take a shot.<i>

While there are women who change their minds, so what? Those women are not you. Such people are bores. If someone told them they were going backpacking, they would be quick to tell them about their backpacking friend of a friend who was eaten by a bear.

Try thisin response: for someone who does want kids, tell them “Oh, you’ll change your mind/They’re cute right now./You’ll regret it/Just wait till you have kids/they become adolescents/you have to put them in rehab/you bail them out of jail/they move back in with you./etc”

This reminds me of nothing so much as the ancient Greek definition of hysteria (defined by ancient Greek men, of course): A young woman suffers from emotional distress because her uterus is roaming, like a wild animal, around her body and pressing on her organs and the seat of her emotions (Greek medical theorists thought the soul was located in the center of the body). Her uterus needs to be literally tied down by being filled with babies.

The rest of it seems taken directly from SATC (single women spend their income dressing up glamorously and going out and drinking).

I read this article as an excuse men will be able to use for why they refuse to promote competent, career-minded childless women (they already have an excuse for not promoting the mothers, because you just know they couldn’t handle the extra workload…). It’s basically “watch out for those women who really focus on their jobs and careers, because they’re going to be a threat to you guys.”

And why a threat? Because their personal situations are closer to the stereotype of an ambitious, highly successful man. Whose lack of “essential humanity” seems to be considered a great advantage for making the “tough decisions”, whether it be torturing people or outsourcing a few thousand jobs through a consultancy run by a golfing buddy.

Sarler can not have possibly worked in an office in her life.  It doesn’t correspond to my experience of British Office Life or many of its practices.

The mothers I know in the offices I worked in are as varied and as likely to be hungover on occasion as the fathers and non parents, rather than a stepfordian mass of worker bees who played nicely and didn’t bitch.  (In my limited experience the biggest bitch fests where from the mothers but that’s by the by.)  Also in my limited experience I saw no correlation in quality of work, attendance, hungoverness, and whether they were mothers fathers or non parents.  If someone was likely to spend all day talking crap they did it before they had children and after they had children,  the parents were perhaps slightly less likely to down a sackful on a Thursday night but from what I saw it was more to do with getting home especially if their partner was not willing to wake a small child to collect a drunken mummy/daddy from the pub.  My own shift from the occasional late start with a hangover came not with getting pregnant but with moving from close to work so I could take the bus to having to drive up to three hours a day to get to work.

I was only asked once when I was going to have children which was straight after my honeymoon, so I suppose I got off lightly.  When I did become pregnant soon I got fed up with being told that women’s priorities change after childbirth by some of my male colleagues.  I was very lucky to be offered a golden handshake, which I found out I had got just before I discovered I was pregnant, because of this money I can afford not to go back to work after maternity leave.  This is something I want to do, take a career break and raise my child partly because I had become rather disenchanted with my career.  It’s my choice and I respect and support those who wouldn’t choose this or don’t have the choice either.  In fact if I had had a career worth the name I would be investigating quality childcare arrangements right now.

When I told people that I would not be looking for a new job immediately after having the baby a small minority of my colleagues went out of their way to tell my that they thought I was doing the right thing because working mothers are bad for children which horrifies me.  I also hated being seen as a fellow traveller to such a wrongheaded view.

So ... you don’t and can’t care for other humans or have other than a career focussed life if you don’t have children?

I think the women who live across from us are living proof of how strongly that is bullshit.  Two married nurses in one house, two married veterinarians in another.  One couple has a lot of friends and entertains regularly and makes their house beautiful, the other couple participates in various sporting communities, gardens, and hangs out with the neighbors.

I’d have a hard time thinking either childfree marriage is “lacking humanity”.

“As a result, it is these single-track careerists who are increasingly likely to be vilified, refused jobs and denied promotion because many employers believe them to lack what the study calls ‘an essential humanity’. And I know exactly what they mean.”

Aww, for cryin’ out loud.  As though the lack of “an essential humanity” could be deemed a disadvantage in the modern workplace!  From my own point of vantage it looks more like a requirement.

So that can’t be the reason for the Sarler outcry.

“I enjoy the entire subgenre of articles intended to bully women into having children, but this might be my all-time favorite.  She pulls out all stops, including openly calling the childless not-human.  (Only women, again, need to have children to be admitted into the human race.)”

There.  That’s probably more the gist of the matter: unaccomodated woman minus a man and/or kids is as empty a vessel (which is what “lacks an essential humanity” has historically meant) as a vending machine with no candy inside.  You shove in quarter after quarter and get nothing but frustration.  Who needs that?  Whereas a woman with a man around (or with kids to sober her) is the equivalent of a vending machine attended by a reliable supplier: pop in a few quarters and press a few buttons and, hey presto, out come the goodies that slide down the chute.

Oh well.  At least this stuff is consistent, so far as it goes.  But subtle, not so much.

The line about the women-with-children not being the bitchy ones around the office made me blink. First of all, I’ve never heard that women with children were inclined towards more bitchiness and gossip. Secondly, where are the men in this ? I’ve seen plenty of bitchy male coworkers, but apparently it’s only the province of women according to this lady.

...

I want to have kids AND a career. Men do. Why not me? When I try to explain my plan for having kids, taking a few months off, and then figuring out daycare, some folks look at me like I’m plotting to commit child abuse. But for kids to have a sane mommy, mommy needs to be happy and fulfilled. (Plus, I’m thinking about my own stay at home mom. On a direct basis I didn’t spend that much time with her because she was taking care of my four younger siblings. She was there, but if she’d been a day care worker or a sitter, the results probably would have been much the same. I was a bookworm kid, and loved books, and the time my parents spent most directly interacting with us often revolved around books and museums and learning activities. I still plan on doing all that, but balancing it out with my career as an artist/writer.)

What’s especially funny is the idea that there’s enough willfully childless women out there to even draw a generalization from.  Many of the women that Sarlar is whining about are actually pre-mothers.  Women like me who haven’t, don’t want to, and never will are really rare.

At the end of June, I’m going in to speak with one of the surgeons in my ob/gyn office to see if they’ll approve me for the tubal ligation I’m seeking. I wish I could just go in and say “I want permanent sterilization” and be taken seriously. Articles like this remind me I can’t. It has nothing to do with whether or not I want to be a mother. It has everything to do with the fact I have my priorities straight—and giving birth to “my own” child is simply not worth the risks involved.

I am not coming off my mood stabilizer. That’d ensure a relapse of bipolar symptoms, making me a threat to myself and the people and animals around me. It’s also a blackly terrifying idea—I’ve worked (and continue to work) hard to control my bipolar, because it’s a terrible disease I never want to experience (or subject others to) again.

On the other hand, I’m not going to intentionally conceive while on my mood stabilizer. It’s teratogenic. I have no intention of being stuck in the situation where I am both pregnant and, twice every day, I must take medication that saves my life but actively and seriously harms the child inside me.

And, of course, there’s the very real possibility that motherhood may be too great a stress for me to handle with my illness. I am interested in being a parent, but I absolutely must know—beforehand—that being a parent will not cause me to relapse or become psychotic*.

The contraception methods we currently use are not 100% effective, and I don’t think less than 100% is acceptable in my situation. It’s certainly not acceptable to me. There is no good way for me to conceive—only bad ways. Additionally, the hormonal contraception I take (made less effective by my mood stabilizer!) interacts with my bipolar medication.** I would really prefer that the only medication I take is my bipolar medication, so that it is free to work without interference. Fortunately, there is a way for me to come off of hormonal contraceptive!

But I’m very worried the surgeon will turn me down. The office’s official “guideline” is that they don’t recommend the procedure for a woman unless she is 30 or has 2 children; I’m only 26 and I have no children (my husband will be 25 by the time of the appointment). She’s never seen me before and has no way of telling how serious I am except by talking to me that day. I’ve only seen the other doctors there twice. I won’t be able to talk about the subject without crying—which won’t help my case, I suspect, since crazy emotional women are crazy, and can’t be trusted to make important life decisions. The only things I really have going for me is that my husband will be there to back me up, and is of the same mind I am (he doesn’t want to lose me to my illness…again) and there’s a small chance the surgeon will be prejudiced against the idea of the mentally ill reproducing.

I guess this is mostly an off-topic and self-serving post, but I needed to type it out somewhere. The only “feminists” in my life that I get to vent to are my husband and my mom, and sometimes that’s not enough. It feels a little lonely and sad sometimes.

* Handy link provided for those who aren’t familiar with the actual, medical definition of ‘psychotic’.
** Too bad there’s no “nuvaring” for men! My husband doesn’t take any daily medication, so there wouldn’t be all those nasty interactions to worry about.

La Lubu, I googled around and didn’t see any controlled studies on the question.

I haven’t found any yet, either. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Mothers have more rights to take off than non-mothers,

Not if you’re talking about written work conditions (like your contract) or written job descriptions. Not to mention, the extent to which this plays out in reality is entirely dependent on the culture of your workplace. My workplace is almost exclusively male. The workplace culture is such that a certain amount of taking time off “just because” is expected. But the workplace culture is also male-oriented; there’s the assumption of “don’t you have a wife at home to do that?”

And it’s maddening, because in my world, if one person takes off half-a-day at the last minute (regardless of the reason—-whether they’re picking up their sick kid from school or going to the tavern), it isn’t the end of the world. The work just gets done tomorrow, or the following Monday. No big deal. It’s also worth mentioning that we don’t get paid for time off.

flip side of that is that mothers are more likely to just take themselves out of the workforce

Well, yes and no. Most mothers can’t afford that, and not just the single ones.

Here’s the thing—-the workplace culture has to change. It has to change to accommodate the changed workforce. Today’s workforce is no longer interested in having their entire identity be wrapped up in their job (a pretty valuable attitude to have in today’s economy, as jobs are not permanent). But today’s workplace culture is still lugging around the baggage of yesteryear. To use an analogy from my workplace: we use hammer drills now instead of star drills. We use electric drills instead of a brace and bit. But the expectation of who does the work, and how the work is done hasn’t changed. The attitudes from the era of the star drills and brace-and-bit are still around.

That’s why shit like the article you cited gets top billing every now and then. It’s designed to obscure the real problem, which is that the way the workplace is currently designed is not serving us—-those who do the work—-very well. And that benefits a handful of people and oppresses the vast majority. “Mommy wars” are designed to keep women from uniting on common ground—-mostly because the way in which they highlight relative privilege, bring in immediate class and race dynamics, and all the while make the men (‘cuz how else are all those “mommies” getting pregnant?) invisible.

As a 39 year old woman with no offspring, I find I do have to deal with the weird perception that it’s abnormal for me not to have kids. It really seems to create some cognitive dissonance in people because, well, I sort of radiate niceness. So I *can’t* be the soulless robot woman who hates kids. But I don’t have kids.
I’ve found the best way to diffuse this is to talk more about my personal situation, while validating their own experiences. “I love kids, but I don’t have the energy to keep up with them all the time. They’re a lot of fun as long as you can hand them back at the end of the day—I guess I’m one of nature’s babysitters. I’m probably missing out on a few things, but then again, with my health problems, passing them along to another generation wouldn’t be a kind thing. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to adopt.”

Now, I do have other issues; I’m scared that babies are too delicate and I might not be good with them. I don’t want a parasite in me. I think the planet is overpopulated. But people often take those reasons the wrong way, so I’ve learned over time which ones create a comfortable rapport instead of a dust-up.

I’m scared that babies are too delicate and I might not be good with them. I don’t want a parasite in me. I think the planet is overpopulated.

Get out of my head!  I’ve been thinking about babies lately, but mostly because I have relatives who have just finished adopting, and I’m thinking, yeah it was expensive and a pain in the ass but that looks like the way to go.  Except for the part where properly-bought-well-in-advance insurance doesn’t absorb some of the direct costs, I can’t see too much of a downside to just getting my sprogs pre-made.

As a 39 year old woman with no offspring, I find I do have to deal with the weird perception that it’s abnormal for me not to have kids. It really seems to create some cognitive dissonance in people because, well, I sort of radiate niceness.

But if you *did* have kids you would clearly read them the book Where is My Cow? right? :D (I love your name.)

Diane, good luck.  I was pushing 30 and already had one child, yet I STILL could not find a doctor who didn’t seem to think that I really didn’t mean it.  My husband ultimately did have a vasectomy, although he uses blood thinners, but he had no issues with “too young” or “but you’re not done yet” with his doctors, being 36 at the time.

Even though I have kids, I sometimes get blank looks and awkward reactions because I really do not wish that they could be little forever.  I enjoy the change of seasons, the growing up stuff, etc.  As a friend with a child with a genetic disorder who will never talk and will never meaningfully “grow up” puts it, they wouldn’t say this sort of thing if they had a child who will never grow up!

That’s why there’s all these laws forbidding them to ask in interviews.

Actually, no, it’s not illegal to ask those questions in interviews. It is illegal to base a hiring, firing or promotion on prohibited reasons (such as “women will just get knocked up and quit”), and it is a bit hard for a company to pretend it didn’t reject a female applicant when 90% of the interview consisted of questions about her reproductive and marital status. So HR warns interviewers not to go there.

And what La Lubu said. There’s nothing quite like knowing you have to work twice as hard because if the single guy co-worker takes off early to go to the Big Game, why that’s understandable, but if you have to leave an hour early with a sick kid you’re oneathem mommies instead of a hard worker.

As a 39 year old woman with no offspring, I find I do have to deal with the weird perception that it’s abnormal for me not to have kids

If it’s any consolation, people will ask that of men of that age as well. More than that, I have a friend 40 years old who I think should be married by now. He had a girlfriend all through his 20s, but they drifted apart. He’s a real mensch, and one of the funniest people I know. I asked him about it one time, and he slapped his forehead and said, “Gee, I forgot to get married!” If he were gay, I’m sure somebody in our gang would have clued me in by now.

The articles that run in obvious tabloids, that are pitched to people of a lower socio-economic class, who perhaps have been a bit hasty with their own reproductive choices and really need someone to pat them on the head and tell them that they made the right choice and all those rich bitches—all those women trotting around with their disposable income and their fun weekends partying with girlfriends—inside they’re so miserable for not having made the same choices that you! Tabloid reader! have made. That all of your minor grumps and grumbles of having had kids too early and too often and the numerous ways in which that has totally fucked over your life are nothing compared to the daily longing, that vacuum of the soul, nay, that gaping inhumanity that accompanies making the choice that you secretly wish you’d made.

I’ve been mommytracked in my current position—and I haven’t managed to carry a pregnancy to term. Last year, right around the time I would have been up for promotion, I suffered a miscarriage and was hospitalized overnight. My husband called my office to let them know I was in the hospital and would be out several days. My female boss got it out of him that I’d miscarried. When I returned to work the day after, she pulled me aside to let me know she was sorry, and also that it was rather flakey of me to have lost a pregnancy right in the middle of our busy season. A week later, I was passed over for promotion (as were the two mothers in our department). I’ve reapplied for the promotion as often as I can, I’ve worked hard, but as my boss likes to tell me, they can’t depend upon me. Two sick days in one year, all related to my uterus. I’m looking for a new job.

http://ucfamilyedge.berkeley.edu/marriagebabyblues.pdf
http://ucfamilyedge.berkeley.edu/babies matterII.pdf

These are the two studies I have links for in hand, both on the academy and motherhood, but in my packed away paper files I know have have reports on similar studies for professional women more broadly, but my google-foo failed me tonight. 

It isn’t quite what Amanda was looking for, but it is the beginning of hard numbers demonstrating that working mothers *do* really suffer from adverse perceptions about their commitment to their employers and their jobs after they have children.

If a would-be mother is a singleton of 40 who decides to have a baby without a partner, I might wish she’d thought of it sooner and prepared for it better - but I understand.  I told the new mother that I didn’t really like babies, which are mostly tubes to convert food to crap.

Jesus Christ.  Or maybe she didn’t have any luck finding a good guy to be the father of her children so she’d rather go it alone, because it would be such a great deal for her AND her kids for her to settle for any schmuck off the street.

I told the new mother that I didn’t really like babies, which are mostly tubes to convert food to crap.

I really don’t understand the love for babies.  Is it because they’re still helpless?  In my opinion, most don’t start getting cute until toddlerhood.

Oh man this hits a lot of sore spots:

I left a job in which parents of both genders - and women in general - were routinely overlooked and disrespected. It didn’t matter how long and hard I worked (harder than nearly anyone besides top brass, I know for a fact), it only mattered if I’d maybe have to take off an hour early one day to pick up a sick child.

There really is no conservation of mass between food and poop in babies. And much as I love my offspring, I’ve long said that they’re cute so that they survive to adolescence. Because, man, just sometimes… sigh…

That said, I agree with the above poster(s?) who wonder why people don’t want their kids to grow up. Although I think at least one reason for the desire connects to the Oooo baaybeez! thing: They are adoring. Not just adorable, but adoring. They will love you just for being there, and consider you practically divine. Until they get old enough to be interesting, and form enough opinions to realize that you’re not infallible (although, annoyingly, that happens right about the time they think they are. infallible.). I still like them growing up. I want to see who they’ll be! And I like who they are becoming. Minus projectile vomiting.

I’ve seen enough lousy parents to wonder why anyone would think that forcing people to procreate is a good idea. But then, I’m a live-and-let-live kind of person anyway, so what would I know?

<i>I really don’t understand the love for babies.  Is it because they’re still helpless?,/i>

partly helplessness, partly innocence (if what they do irritates you, it’s not their fault) but mostly…
mostly it’s the way the top of their heads smell.

If they could bottle baby scalp aroma it would soothe a lot of jangled nerves.

Try thisin response: for someone who does want kids, tell them “Oh, you’ll change your mind/They’re cute right now./You’ll regret it/Just wait till you have kids/they become adolescents/you have to put them in rehab/you bail them out of jail/they move back in with you./etc”

I’m due to pop at any time, and oddly enough I HAVE gotten this stuff pretty frequently this pregnancy, most often when people find out I’m having a girl. The amount of misogyny and anti-procreation stuff really seems to come up once you mention you’re gestating a girl.

As for me, I’ve always wanted kids, but I by no mean have ever thought this desire was or should be the default. Pregnancy is hard, and sucks. Kids are difficult, and frankly the newborn period terrifies me. I have many friends who want kids, many who don’t, and many who are ambivalent, and shockingly us breeders can respect all of these attitudes.

Being a father of two who is very much involved in the childcare for two young children (two and a half for the older and three months for the younger), I can tell you that I’m more likely to come in to work tired and a little out of it than before we had kids. No problem doubt in my mind on that account whatsoever.

My son (the younger) already sleeps the night, but the older one crawls into our bed and lies across me, pokes me in the face and asks to see a movie… generally makes it impossible to sleep. It’s irritating and makes it impossible for me to get enough sleep.

I only got enough sleep when I was single.

Matthew,

Free advice* - set limits now, while you still enjoy your kids. It’s better for both of you: they get stability, and at least as importantly, you get some peace (and sleep) and will continue to enjoy them.

<quote>I get smacked in the back of the head with absolute fascination that you can see babies forming cognitive processes! Look! Now she can track an object across her field of vision!. At no other point in a human life can you actually see the brain’s operating system coming online, and I think that’s really cool day to day.</quote>

Definitely the most fun to be had with infants. When the little one got his ears drained at 6 months, and had a lot of catch-up to do, it was amazing to see his rapid progress. Now at 1.5 he sings Boom Boom Boom (not sure that qualifies as progress but it’s hysterical).

*and worth every penny…

Diane - thanks for sharing that, just wanted to say that, and you’re right, it’s screwed up that women can’t get sterilised.

Samantha Vimes, oh yes - I too radiate niceness, and am not the ‘soulless robot/ bitch’ stereotype either. I am sure people expect me to get married and pop out offspring. (That said, I have had ‘I hate children’ conversations with colleagues in the pub, and no-one said the ‘ah you’ll change your mind’ type things…).
I am told I should be *more* assertive at work. (But not of course *too* assertive because that would be being a soulless robot bitch, not to mention castrating, aggressive and manly, blah blah…)

Speaking personally - part of me does want kids - part of me doesn’t.
I feel I would be a good mother. I would probably leave the baby on the bus, having forgotten its existence…
Not to mention the unfeminist crap that comes with motherhood - being made to feel not good enough no matter what you do. Expected to give up your own identity in some kind of sacrifice.

Oh and - absolutely people without children are not lacking in humanity - I kind of figured that went without saying but anyway.
As I said, long hours culture…sucks. It really does. Everyone, with kids or without, whatever gender, whatever age, deserves a life outside work. Being young and unmarried does not mean work should be your life. There are so many things to do - community/ volunteer work and activism, amateur sport or arts, cultural things, y’know, it’s called having a life and interests…also, some people have caring responsibilities for a sick/ elderly parent or other relative.

Oh yeah and I don’t *actually* hate children…not wishing to start the mommy wars…

I too am thinking of adoption, if I ever did have kids; I also have medical issues and it seems wrong to take NHS resources for expensive treatment and support. Not to mention that yeah, the world is overpopulated, and there are unwanted kids already.

Afaik it *is* illegal to ask personal type questions at interview in the UK. This doesn’t stop some arseholes wishing they *could* - because of course if they can’t, they must assume all healthy women between 20 and 35 want to breed, going back to women without children being unnatural…can’t possibly make decisions on merit and not gender and deal with it if she does have kids, can’t trust women applying for a job to actually intend to do that job to the best of their ability for a reasonable length of time, nope, damn women are always scheming to get maternity leave (paid at a whopping £100 or so a week) and then never come back…

I simply tell people the truth about why I don’t want kids.  Frankly, I don’t like them.  Also, I have zero maternal instinct.  Babies get passed to me at parties and immediately cry.  For which I am eternally grateful.  I get to hand them back instantly.

People ask me all the time about why I don’t have kids.  I say, truthfully, the kids would be dead or maimed by now.  Cause I have no clue about kids.  People look at me like I’m crazy.  I imagine if I were a guy saying that, there would be no weird looks.  Cause guys are supposed to be clueless about babies.

Diane: I’m 24 and no kids (but I want them eventually) and loove my copper IUD. Sometimes doctors are still horrible about giving them out to anyone who wants them like with a tubal, but I it’s a lot easier since it is reversible. My doctor was great and even though he prefers the one with hormones he was totally fine letting me pick and going hormone-free was a big deal for me. It’s good for 10 or 12 years though (can’t remember which) and requires no maintenance. It’s well over 99% effective, though not 100%, but getting a tubal isn’t actually 100% either unfortunately.

I know it’s likely you already considered an IUD and ruled it out for whatever reason, but in case you didn’t you ought to know. Lots of women in the US are weirded out by them largely because of the Dalkon Shield problems from the 70s (my own grandmother got an infection from hers, so I ought to know), but the modern ones are very safe, relatively speaking.

(This is information is specifically about IUDs in America, though hopefully not totally useless if you are elsewhere.)

I am thinking long and hard about whether it’s possible to do what the patriarchy thinks I should do without knuckling under.

purpleshoes, that is absolutely the last thing you should worry about. No matter what decision you make about anything, regardless of what “the patriarchy” says about should-or-shouldn’ts, you can rest assured in knowing that if you’re a woman, ur doin’ it rong. There are contradictory messages handed out to women on every freakin’ thing, and commentary on all the various ways and means we’re screwing it up (for society, for other women, for history, for…pick your poison).

So, if you remain childless, you’ll be considered a selfish bitch. If you choose motherhood—-you still get to be the selfish bitch. Just in a different way. It isn’t possible to please the patriarchy. Not. possible. So, you aren’t going to “knuckle under.”

Purpleshoes: Think of it this way - you’ll raise kids that, in spite of absorbing the world around them to some degree or other, will also absorb your values. It’s populating the planet with at least one or two more individuals capable of compassion and critical thought. We need that!

Also, worrying about “the patriarchy” defeats the purpose of living on your own terms. They’re there anyway, and they don’t worry about what you think.

Some women are judged not because of their work, but because they’re mothers and assumed to be bad workers. That’s unfair. What’s not unfair is this:

“it’s not fun to be treated like the single, childless lady who has to cover for mothers tending to sick children…, the ugly fact of the matter is this gives you an unfair advantage, as you come across as the one who goes the extra mile around the office”

You’re not just coming across as doing the work, you’re actually doing it as well. I just don’t see it as unfair if people are advantaged because they do more work. If anything that’s a fair advantage. I don’t think it really helps to blur this together with discrimination because of stereotyping.

Leeders, if and when that really happens.  My workplace experience, as a person without and with children, is that the people paying for daycare tend to keep meetings going on time and people on task so they can get their work done and get out on time.  I have seen my interest in productivity in short time spans wax and wane over the years with my husband’s employment status, my childbearing status, and whether my kids will have to be picked up at a particular time.

In other words, it’s a nice cultural myth with extra truthiness - let’s see some actual studies, please!

Eric’s random music picks .....

single - Foo Fighters, “Monkey Wrench”

Album - Don Henly, “Building the Perfect Beast”.

The distressing thing about the Mail is that it has the highest female readership of any UK newspaper, over 50%. Especially in the last 15 years or so, its business model has been based around peddling anti-feminism to women. In its way, that side of it is far more pernicious than the overt racism and other crap it publishes, in that minorities just don’t read it. On the plus side, its readership skews old, with more than half aged over 55.

It’s not the mothers, for a start, who are going to turn up late and hungover after a night on the razz… they’re there because they genuinely enjoy some adult company

Huh? What else are they doing on the razz, if not enjoying adult company? You can’t go out on the razz with children.

purpleshoes: I know. I already have a copper IUD and my doctor was great, but I participate in a very large online women’s health community and it’s not so easy for everyone. Some doctors are just as bad about it as getting a tubal, facts be damned. The chance of getting pelvic inflammatory disease from insertion (almost all PID occurs in the first 6 weeks after you get it) is very, very small if you don’t have an STD at the time and even then the chances that your fertility will be affected is only something like 8%. I don’t know if that’s true of all cases of PID, but that’s what the numbers were in a very large WHO study on IUD use. But nooooo. Some doctors think that that risk is too large, period, regardless of whether the woman wants children in the future or not.

IUDs are not for everyone, but I wished they were thought of as a more viable option in this country because they have some asskicking advantages over other forms of BC. My birth control was $25/month with insurance before, but they paid for my IUD and even if they didn’t I would have recovered the costs pretty quickly, so I was able to save a lot of money. I don’t have to be on hormones (lots of benefits here, though I have to give up the most perfect skin ever), but still get the level of protection of hormonal birth control. I don’t have to remember to do jack shit and I’m always protected for years and years. When I’m ready to have kids I get the doc to yank it out and I’m good to go. For my situation it’s the bestest thing ever.

Oh my… that lady on the right just loves her work *so gosh-darn much*! Isn’t she lucky to have to get up hours earlier than the other woman? By the time she’s done taking care of her kids, she’s *glad* to go to work, by jiminy! Not having the freedom to choose how you spend your evenings guarantees that you’ll never have any regrets whatsoever! Or, you know, any fun. But women don’t understand the concept of “fun” anyway, amirite?

...Which is not to say that having kids=NO FUN EVAR - but it’s funny how appealing Sarler’s description of a working mother’s day might be to the male boss, but not to anyone who would actually have to, y’know, LIVE through it. Exactly who is she trying to sell this to?

And why doesn’t the woman on the right have eyes? o.0
Do you have to get those taken out to obtain your Mommy (tm) Certificate?

“The distressing thing about the Mail is that it has the highest female readership of any UK newspaper, over 50%....On the plus side, its readership skews old, with more than half aged over 55.”

I wonder if it’s the same sort of thing as you get with older men and the current inclination to reject marriage/parenthood as the death of everything fun.  They got stuck with or suckered into so much pointlessly soul-destroying bullshit when they were younger that the only thing they can really do now to avoid the reality of it is yell “UR DOIN IT RONG” at the younger generations.

The “mothers enjoy the company of adults” is not properly described. Mothers NEED adult conversation after hours of toddler speak. Single people enjoy adult conversation but don’t need it to the point of despair, because they can have it any time they want.

Not sure why the author would think this is a plus though. As Amanda points out, this need for adult conversation tends to make gossip a good outlet for it. A lot less work gets done.

“Mothers NEED adult conversation after hours of toddler speak.”

Mother Avenger used to tell Professor Avenger, after a full day with all 4 of us 6 and under, “Talk to me.  I’ve been with the BABIES all day!”

“Much as I like to trumpet the importance of a woman’s right to choose all things at all times, there’s one choice I simply cannot understand: the choice of an otherwise sane and healthy woman not to have children.”

Notice the ‘poisoning the well’ tactic here – your ‘otherwise sane and healthy’ comment clearly states that the choice NOT to have children must be insane and unhealthy as a foregone conclusion. Without actually having PROVED it at all, you present it as a given. Why? If YOU want or like something, assuming that you are sane (and judging from this article that is a BIG assumption), all other sane people must think the same as you? Quite a large logical fallacy here, and were are only on the first paragraph. Not very promising. 
....

Yet if she says she hasn’t a shred of maternal feeling in her, moreover, if she says she would prefer to concentrate on her career and that a child would only get in the way of it, then my head might acknowledge her right to do so. But my heart whispers: ‘Lady, you’re weird.’

So anyone who doesn’t like the same things as you is ‘weird’ by your book? And of course if she is ‘weird’ by YOUR book, she must be objectively really weird and damaged?  And you are the one saying that OTHER people are the ones with the problems? Seriously? Archaeology is my life – that doesn’t mean that I need to expect that other people must want to be archaeologists too – and it doesn’t mean that I think that there is anything wrong with them if they don’t.  I am confident and happy enough in my own self and path not to need to validate myself by negatively judging those who do not want to follow that path. It is a well known trope that those who are truly happy in what they do, do not feel the need to judge those who do not want the same thing.

It was welcome news, therefore, to discover this week that I am not alone.

Because if other people share the same delusion or bigoted idea, that makes it all OK? Would you say the same to those who are racist or homophobic? It is OK, because there are others who feel the same?
A stereotype being makes it no less bigoted.

As a result, it is these single-track careerists who are increasingly likely to be vilified, refused jobs and denied promotion because many employers believe them to lack what the study calls ‘an essential humanity’. And I know exactly what they mean.

I’m sure you do – it is already pretty clear that you can’t look beyond your own choices and lifestyle to allow that others may also be valid.

And if that touch of ‘essential humanity’ - or its absence - colours such notably tough professions, it’s hardly surprising that employers are starting to notice that the same applies across the spectrum of workplaces.

*Blinks* wait a minute – where exactly have you proven anything about lack of ‘essential humanity’? Did you drop a whole paragraph? The only mention you made was an idea held by some employers, and now you are trying to pretend that it is an established fact. You are trying to sneak in an unproven claim (a lack of humanity in those who don’t want kids) as a given fact.  If you suggest that people who don’t have (or want) kids are less human you had better have something to support such an outrageous and offensive statement. How dare you.

Of course, we need not be silly about it.
Nobody wishes to see a female soldier in combat with a six-week-old infant in one arm and a rifle in the other.

Assuming that she even WANTS the kid.

....But most jobs aren’t like that - and most children don’t stay babies for long.

So what? Those who REALLY want to have kids will find a way to make it work, except for those hardest jobs. Therefore, those who don’t may NOT really want kids at all. Why is this such a shocking concept? Aside from the fact that YOU really like being a mother, and wanted to do it and were attracted to kids! Not everyone is the same as you. That does not make them wrong, damaged or faulty in some way. You are not the default for all women, and your personality is not the be all and end all for all women..

[the mothers] They’re not there to compete for the attentions of the male executives;

And women who don’t have kids are? Going after men is connected to whether or not you are in a committed sexual relationship, not whether you have children. You are conflating SINGLE and childless – these are not the same.

...and they’re there because they have mouths to feed other than their own and shoes to buy for someone else’s feet.

So, I am not going to work hard because I am only paying my own rent, buying my own food and clothes and medications? If I don’t have kids, I can just live on air? Or does it just matter less if *I* eat and have a place to live?

Two-thirds of working mothers, a recent survey found, could not provide for the children they love in the manner they would wish if they lost their jobs. So there’s incentive for you.

And if I lost my job, I couldn’t eat either – is that somehow less important? And I would have LESS access to public help, so I would be in WORSE shape. There is much less of a safety net for people without kids.

...
The prioritising that may baffle other people is a cinch for a woman who has spent years juggling a household. Negotiating skills? A request for 10 per cent off an overdue invoice is nothing to a woman who has had to broker a deal on Britain’s Got Talent versus bedtime.

Because if you don’t have children, you don’t have a household? Are you seriously suggesting that a deal that could affect people’s job security is LESS important than one kid’s bedtime?????

When it comes to emergencies, if you have run all the way to a clinic with a terrified toddler vomiting down your neck then, trust me, a package delayed in transit is a piece of cake.

And again, emergencies only count (or exist) if they are baby related?

And if those are the tangibles, the intangibles - the ‘essential humanity’ - are more important still.

So? Are you saying that those without children don’t have ‘essential humanity’? Are you only allowed to get to be human after having kids? And does this mean that you don’t think your kids are really fully human yet?

You cannot be a mother without knowing something about selflessness, compassion, generosity, commitment, fierce loyalty and plain hard work.

Actually, you CAN very well be a mother and learn none of those things. Not a GOOD mother, but not all mothers ARE.
Note the unspoken implication that the women who don’t have kids do NOT have those things. This implies that the ONLY way to knowing something about “selflessness, compassion, generosity, commitment, fierce loyalty and plain hard work” is to have kids. I would love to see you back this up! Why do you have to have kids for any of the above? Yes, you can develop in those areas through kids, but there are countless other ways, not any less important or valid. People are either originally essentially decent in those areas, or they are not. If they are, they do not need to have kids to develop as a person.

You cannot - surely - be a boss and not value assets such as those in your staff.

But apparently only in those members of your staff who have a similar personal life to yourself? Or does the ‘good’ boss assume that only the people who have a similar personal life to her could have those good qualities? Funny, that sounds more like a BIGOTED boss to me. Do you have the same views of people who don’t have the same sexual orientation or religion as you?

...But, more than all the things we want, we actually need our children; they complete us as women, they are our light and our love and our legacy.

And so all other women need to feel the same? Who made YOU the judge of the entire gender? There is something wrong with me because I am complete as a person myself? Do you tell the lesbians that they are wrong because they don’t need a man to complete them? I have different lights, different lives and different legacies than you. You are not the basis for measuring the lives and interests of other people – you are not the default woman, and you have no basis for telling me what should complete me.

We feel desperately sorry for those who yearn for children they cannot have; the unwilling barren, if you will. But when we meet a woman who chooses her childlessness in the belief that there is something out there worth more, we smile politely even while - once again - our guts whisper: ‘Lady, you’re weird.’

Why? What have you proved here? Every single argument you make is flawed and based on unspoken assumptions and leaps in logic. First you say that you feel that someone who does not want the same as you is weird, just because they are not like you and you can’t understand it. Now here you present it as some sort of objective observation. You feel that they are weird because they are not you, and because of that they are weird.

So three cheers for the employers who are catching on, the ones who don’t want to people their workforces with the cold, the calculating, the sad and the mad. The only question is: what took you so long?

And here you take it even further – now you feel free to insult me openly. How dare you impose your life on mine?
Each of the things you say here has not been even remotely openly or honestly addressed, yet alone proven. You have not once clearly discussed women who don’t want kids –instead you talk about mothers and their supposed characteristics. Apparently, that was supposed to imply that women who don’t want kids don’t have any of those characteristics. I guess by implying in a sneaky way you didn’t think that you have to support what you say. Mothers are ‘caring’ and ‘hard working’? Well apparently that is supposed to mean that non-mothers are not? Why? How did you make this point, let alone support it?
Cold?  Where did you get this from? Why is not wanting what you want cold? You have never supported this in anyway. The same for calculating. Again no proof.  Sad? According to whom? So now I have to be sad if I don’t have what you do, regardless if I want it or not? And MAD???? Here we really see your bigotry, and crazed narcissism straight out. You honestly think that if someone is not like you and doesn’t want to be like and live your life they must be crazy. If you ask me, THAT is the truly insane point of view.