So one day I'm over at her house in the afternoon when kids are getting back from school, and she sees her neighbor across the street pulling his mini-van into his garage, and his kids (4 or 5, in their Catholic school uniforms) tumbling out, kinda skipping and jostling and buzzing hither and thither, like kids do.
"Gosh that makes me mad," she remarked to me.
"What?"
"Just evey day, it makes me angry to see them."
"What? (Blink.) I mean, why?"
"Because it's so selfish. It's so selfish and irresponsible for them to have that many kids!"
"What? (I'm thinking adjectives: abundant? plentiful? generous? Are those sysnonyms for selfish?)
And then cautiously: "Why do you say... selfish?"
"Because they're taking more than their share. They'll need more of everything. They'll compete. It's unfair for them to compete like that against my Kenneth."
Well, that floored me. I don't think I said anything after that. But it stuck with me for (sigh) probably almost 40 yeats. Competing against her Kenneth? Competing for what? Schools? Her Kenneth wasn't going to a Catholic school. Money? They had none of hers. Marriage partners? One of those girls could end up being his bride (Heaven Forfend!) Jobs? But don't "people" also represent customers, clients, producers, developers, suppliers, colleagues, employers, vendors, --- every other category of people who comprise an "economy" once you pry yourself away from that one irksome concept, "job competition"?
What she was angry about was "human society" --- that little slice of human society she could see out of her front wondow. A.K.A. "other people".
Back to the thread. I haven't read it, and ain't gonna because...
Yes, what we're seeing is baby-hatred and it's sex-hatred (disgust for sex which is normally functional, which makes a bond and takes root and is fruitful and multiplies)and particular contempt for the female procreative role. I've seen FReepers use the phrase "popping out" babies (that makes me see red.) I've even seen "farting out" babies (that makes me see red with bolts of lightning).
Yes, it's misogyny, and it's misanthropy actually. "Bah, people. Walking on my earth. Breathing my air."
People like Kenneth’s mother are a mystery to me. I would never want to know first hand what makes them the way they are, but I still can’t help but wonder. To me, they are an unsolvable mystery.
Thank you for sharing that (really ;-). Sometimes I think I’m nuts, that I’m the only one who senses a deep and personal hatred for ME, as a woman, as a woman who has babies ... as if having babies were not the natural outcome of what used to be natural human life. Everything is modern life starts from the “default setting” that sterility is the norm, and that divergences from this norm had better be carefully planned and thoroughly justified to everybody “out there.”
Even writing that’s supposed to be positive about motherhood still treats every child as if the mother had chosen to order him or her from a catalog, rather than simply was feeling a little positively about her spouse. “You decided to have this child for X,Y, Z motive, so now you have to ... blahblablah stick a metaphorical knife through this book and have a few drinks.” No, actually I had the few drinks and thought, “You know, I remember why I liked this guy!”
(rant off ... the byos are shredding to get my attention)
(((( HUGE GIANT HUGS!!!! ))))
The welfare state only increases the number of people who think like the woman in your story, Mrs. Don-o. I don't recall hearing many complaints about large families growing up. I do now.
I understand people are upset by single moms whose children have multiple fathers, and the mother and children are supported on welfare. But not when the parents are married, the children have the same father and the family is self sufficient. It's too bad people immediately assume they must be getting government assistance.