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When someone says they do not want a child, it means they do not want to be the nanny, teacher, parent, cook, doctor, driver, therapist, friend, confidante, and the hundred other roles a parent is expected to play within one day.
I recently wrote a post on instagram about how motherhood is romanticized and I immediately got a bunch of messages from men who were extremely taken aback that I could dismiss motherhood and compare it to materialistic things.
I have two dogs, help my partner co-parent and consider myself a very maternal person (whatever that means… in my dictionary it means I will ask you if you ate lunch). Why do people assume that women who are childfree or advocate childfree values are like the witch from any generic fairytale?
When someone says they do not want a child – what they mean is – I do not want to be the nanny, the teacher, the parent, the cook, the doctor, the driver, the therapist, the friend, the confidante and the hundred other roles a parent is expected to play within one day.
They do not mean that children are ugly, unworthy creatures to walk on this planet and that nobody should be reproducing. How hard is this to understand? Well some people shouldn’t be reproducing but that’s for another day.
Why do men like mothers so much? Or so they say – but we still live in a society where women above a certain age are almost invisible. Men pretend to support older women and mothers only in the inboxes of otherwise young(ish) girls who are trying to be rebellious – in most other times – they genuinely do not give two hoots about any woman who is older than a fetus – they are automatically considered aunties/kezhavis.
The thing is – I have tremendous respect for women who are mothers. It is a lot of hard work and our society is a shit place to be a mother. There are no privileges to living in a way that conforms to the patriarchal society, and I know its not a walk in the park for anyone playing that role- they will worship you for bringing life on this planet and have a party on your behalf while you change diapers.
However, what is this perversion of dismissing any woman who questions motherhood or in general the status quo? What is this expectation that any woman, rebellious or otherwise, will toe the line and not call you out on how you romanticize motherhood just to extract more free labour? Time is up. Women are questioning everything. Motherhood included.
Image source: a still from the short film Ghar ki Murgi
A marketing graduate from the Indian School Of Business, Nandhitha is passionate about writing. She loves to write about the world around her and also enjoys dabbling with fiction/poetry. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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