family pressure pregnancy internalized sexism

anonymous

I’m in my 30s and have been married for two years. Before I got married I was very clear that I did not want children. My partner seemed to say he was fine with that. In the first year of our marriage I learned that he assumed I would change my mind, because “everyone” told him I would. Having been a woman who never wanted children, I have spent a lifetime confronting these people. I know how to be clear. I know to point directly to sexism without constructing an argument around my abilities as a mother, or over-population, or whatever. Men don’t have to justify why they don’t want to have children and neither do I. I find myself frankly shocked that, indeed, everyone has told my husband that I’ll change my mind. His parents. My parents. His women friends, in their 40s, who themselves don’t have children. I am also deeply dismayed and hurt that my husband apparently believed these people over me. He went so far as to say this is the first time he’s felt “not normal,” and has actually hoped that my reproductive organs don’t work so that he no longer has to justify why he isn’t having children. What is most disturbing is that I have been accosted for years – even at times when I didn’t have a partner – about how having children is life fulfilling, and without them I can’t be a complete person. My husband, a man in his mid-40s, is only now having to come to terms with it. No one has ever bothered him about not having children. He’s had 40+ blissful years of never being asked when he was going to get around to it. Wasn’t he worried that he’d run out of time? Well shouldn’t he adopt? And despite all this people still continually tell me I’m going to change my mind. Women internalize these sexist frameworks too. Recently, my sister-in-law, while holding her child, said, “Are you sure you aren’t going to have children? [Husband] and I think you’ll change your mind.” Days later a family friend noticed I wasn’t holding an alcoholic beverage at an evening event and uttered, “I was about to ask you if you’re expecting, but then I remembered…” while he eyed me critically waiting for me to say, “you guessed it!” The list of these experiences is endless.