An Understandable Opinion, but Only That

Caitlin Moran's chapter on "Why You Shouldn't Have Children" makes a strong claim with a good backing but at times overreaches and becomes hypocritical in a sense. Moran speaks from experience in this piece, being a successful working woman and eventually a mother, and crafts a rather vivid picture of how she interpret's society's expectations for women to have children. Most of the support in this piece is anecdotal yet agreeable- Even as a teenage male I can recognize many of the social trends she points out. While that may not serve as hard proof, it can be considered a backbone to her argument as a whole. In essence, the purpose of this chapter is to point out the extreme stigma around women who choose not to have children and why it may be a better choice for many women to abstain from childbearing. Moran explains that many women are pressured to sacrifice their working and creative lives when they should be at their peak in most aspects of life- their health, looks, productivity and energy, etc. In expanding upon this stigma, Moran discusses the fact that many people believe giving birth and raising a child is some sort of rite of passage, a womanly experience that fulfills and completes a person. Quick to denounce this, she claims the same sort of fulfillment can be found through many other means in life and that having a child is not the only way to fill a void in one's sense of self. Where I think Moran slips is in her demeanor towards the act of child rearing. To her credit, she does believe that anyone who wants to have a child is justified and that having a child may in fact be fulfilling and rewarding for many. However, she clearly holds some semblance of a grudge towards either the decisions that led her to have children or her children themselves. She paints what I see as a biased picture of raising a child, one of regret and bitterness and pandas getting shot in the face. Her attitude on this matter quickly becomes condescending (How could anyone want to give up so much for this?) and a little too self-righteous. While I may disagree, I don't actually think this detracts too much from her piece, in fact, I think it may be a fitting view for the rest of her argument. Since this whole chapter is really just based on casual observations of societal trends, I can't nitpick too much for a little bit of cynicism on her end. Still, this section lacks any sort of hard evidence or statistics (which is potentially okay!) and should be treated as a simple opinion piece.