In the second to last episode of HBO’s Love & Death, Candy Montgomery—on trial for killing a church friend but allowed to spend evenings at home—is having a quiet moment on the porch with her husband after a conversation about how she should behave in court the next day if she hopes to gain the jury’s sympathy.
She’s staring out into the silent darkness when she says, “There was a time when I thought that this was it, you know? Everything. Just to be able to stand underneath the stars. A home. A family.” Quietly, she goes on. “And people go looking for something. I don’t know what it is, they just … want. And they go looking. The end of some rainbow, maybe.” (SIE6)
She has all the stuff we’re told will make our lives complete: spouse, house, children. Still, she went looking for something. She still wanted.
Imagine the disappointment of so many women, and men, who learn only after it’s too late that marriage-and-kids isn’t the pot of fulfillment gold it’s made out to be. Entire lives dictated and irreparably damaged by propaganda.
Welcome back to Scare Tactics & Lies! Part II explores pronatalism’s appeal to three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, beginning with the highest: self actualization.
The lie | “You won’t be fulfilled / find meaning in life without children.”
Fulfillment is a little bit like a luxury, something no one has time to think about until the rest of the needs (food, safety, love, self-esteem) have been secured. Once we have those things, however, and we’re free to think about what we want instead of what we need, personal fulfillment becomes pretty important.
If we’re to believe the messaging, producing offspring provides that fulfillment we (women, of course) all crave.
Having [procreative sex] is a woman’s greatest achievement, we’re told—if not in those words, then in headlines to articles like this that prioritize a woman’s parental status above any other contributions she’s made.
Because achievement is one of the ways people commonly find fulfillment, “achievement” and “fulfillment” are, when it comes to women, used interchangeably.
“Children are a woman’s greatest achievement/fulfillment.”
However -
The truth | Parenthood doesn’t automatically lead to fulfillment.
Physician Lawrence Rifkin argues that while a biological being’s biological “purpose” may be to reproduce itself so that it can continue its epic genetic evolutionary journey, we are, shockingly, more than genes who aren’t necessarily fulfilled by passing down our share of DNA:
“Fundamentally, as humans, the problem with identifying the meaning of life with having children is this — to link meaningfulness only with child production seems an affront to human dignity, individual differences, and personal choice. … The meaning of life for childless adults — roughly 20% of the population in the U.S. and U.K. — has everything to do with what makes life meaningful for everyone: experiencing pleasure, personal relationships, and engagement in positive activities and accomplishments.
If we exist only because previous humans existed in order to ensure that we would exist to create other humans whose purpose of existence will be to create future existences, why would we bother doing anything more in our daily lives than working, eating, and fornicating in order to replicate?
Because we know on an innate level that meaning and fulfillment are found in different places. Results from a 2017 Pew survey reveal the top five areas in which (American) people find meaning and fulfillment:
family (69%)
career (34%)
money (23%)
spirituality and faith (20%)
friends (19%)
“Family” has the highest percentage, but it’s important to point out that “family” doesn’t necessarily mean “children.” Of the 69 percent who say family “is the most important source” or “provides a great deal” of meaning and fulfillment, children or grandchildren account for just 34 percent. Spouses or partners account for 20 percent.
Also important to note is that about 84 percent of American women (age 40-49) and 76.5 percent of American men (same age group) have ever had a child, and that’s a significantly higher number than the percentage of respondents (34%) who say they get meaning and fulfillment from their children or grandchildren.
“When it comes down to it, we need to look inside ourselves for fulfillment. Expecting other people to provide this fulfillment for us will only lead to disappointment.” - Kristen Winiarski, writer and parent, in Baby Chick
Two levels down from self actualization/fulfillment on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is “love and belonging,” a need to have connections with others (whether romantically or with family and friends). As one of the “lower,” or more critical, needs in the hierarchy, it presents a fantastic opportunity for emotional manipulation.
The lie | “You won’t know real love without children.”
It’s not enough that many of us are already afraid of never finding romantic love, a fear made worse by ubiquitous threatening messages about being single as women. For example:
“Women who have never been married made 92% of what never-married men did in 2022, and have 29% less wealth, according to [a Wells Fargo] report,” Essence reported in March of this year.
What the Essence article didn’t include (but which showed up like a little aside, just a tiny bit of unessential information, in another article covering the exact same Wells Fargo report):
Women who stay single and don’t have kids…have more wealth than all other never-married groups.
Even in that publication, however, the quoted part isn’t the headline. This is:
The Pay Gap for Single Women Is Getting Worse
What we see if we’re headline scrolling: Be afraid, single women. And get married.
We could stop scrolling and read the full piece, obviously, but a headline like that could still do the intended damage.
“In the case of the factual articles, a misleading headline hurt a reader’s ability to recall the article’s details. That is, the parts that [are] in line with the headline [are] easier to remember than the opposing, non-headlined trend,” psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Ullrich Ecker found.
Fear of not finding love hardly needs help to thrive. A Viceland UK survey found that the top fear among young respondents age 18-34 is “never finding (romantic) love” and, as a result, being lonely.
Considering that age group is in what we refer to as "the childbearing years,” the 18-34’s vulnerability to the threat of a life of lovelessness makes them the perfect target even after they’ve found that romantic love they crave. After all, romantic love is tenuous and unreliable. Even worse, it’s conditional. But the love of a child…
Never mind that “love” in Maslow’s hierarchy doesn’t elevate one kind of love (family) over another (friendship), or that single people “typically have stronger social ties, which researchers consistently name as the bedrock of happiness.”
We are made to believe that a child’s love is the one love we must experience in order to know real love.
The truth | All forms of love are unique and not comparable
Unless you have a pet! As it turns out, the love you feel for your dog (or cat, I’ll add) is similar to the love a parent feels for a child, a PLOS ONE study found.
But that doesn’t mean it’s superior to romantic or friendship love. It’s just different. The affection a person has toward a dependent is compounded by the feelings of responsibility and protectiveness that come with being a nurturer and caretaker, adding an additional layer of attachment you would ideally not feel toward the person you have a romantic or other peer-to-peer relationship with.
In any case, being a parent doesn’t guarantee an experience of that “real love” we’re all supposed to crave. Multiple parents posting on reddit wonder why they don’t feel that “explosive” “bursting” love for their children that everyone talks about, whether they’re terrible people for not wanting to cry from the force of it.
Others don’t love their kids, period, or aren’t sure whether they do.
I don’t love my kids. They are 14 and 17. I don't hate them. I just have no love for them, and I never have. I feel like I'm just tolerating them, just getting along because there's no other choice, like roommates that I can't get rid of. —RWeals
I've had two beautiful kids, but I don't love them as their mother.—Kookoothrow
I have two kids, 3 and 6, and everyday I wonder if I love them.—pantycake123
Other parents think they love their children, but don’t, and impressing upon people (women, mostly) that this love is a guarantee is bad for both parent and child. Writes Robert Firestone, PhD, in 8 Reasons Parents Fail to Love Their Children.
The assumption that parents, especially mothers, have a “natural” love for their child is a fundamental part of our belief system—and the core of family life and society. Very often this myth has an adverse effect, though, in that it leads to a failure to challenge negative behaviors within family life. It also intensifies parents’ guilt. These guilt feelings further contaminate the situation for those individuals who may be unable, because of their own upbringing, to provide their children with the necessary love and care they need.
And, finally, the appeal to the lowest (most important) level in the hierarchy: physiological needs—food, shelter, safety.
The lie | “You need children so they’ll take care of you when you’re old.”
The implication: You’re going to fall down the stairs at some point and break your hip, and if you don’t have kids who’ll find you and take care of you, you’re going to starve to death, writhing in agony, right there on the floor.
The less dramatic implication: You’ll need help when you get old, and your kids will be the ones to provide that help.
The truth | Half of older (American) parents aren’t getting the care they need.
It’s easy to romanticize caring for older parents—they’ll move into the in-law suites we all have, and everything will pretty much take care of itself from there, yes?—but that’s not the reality.
More than half of older parents aren’t receiving the daily assistance they need for many reasons, including family dynamics, finances, the level of care required, and how close to their parents adult children live. Even if children are helping, they can’t do it all.
“I don’t assume and neither should anyone else [that] family and friends will come to our rescue. We’ll have to get used to idea of revolving door of people coming into and out of our lives. We will be lucky if the same people in our lives today will be there tomorrow. It isn’t a guarantee.” - Joy Loverde, author of WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF ME WHEN I’M OLD?, in an interview published in MarketWatch
(I highly recommend reading that interview with Joy Loverde.)
Have I missed any scare tactics/lies? Let me know if there are any you’d like to see addressed! There may be a need for a part III.
Also, thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post or the subject matter I cover, you might enjoy my novel The Age of the Child.
“This book manages to avoid the sanctimonious or pedantic lecturing that a lot of fiction dealing with sensitive social topics can fall into, achieved by Tsetsi's deft balancing of sincerity and humor. Definitely worth a second, if not third, read.”—Amazon Review
“Scathing social commentary.” — Goodreads Review
“The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, to name a couple, have opened the dystopian genre to questions about reproduction; however, The Age of the Child is one of the first I’ve read to really consider the issue of reproductive rights and attitudes so deeply.” — Rebecca Maye Holiday, author of The Beaches