You're the One Who Chose to Have Kids

“You’re the one who chose to have kids.”

That comment was made over the holiday weekend during a heated discussion about keeping our gathering small because of all the viruses going around our extended family.

And this person, like so many others without kids, sees kids getting sick as the parent’s problem to figure out. 

As if to say, 

• That’s the risk you take when you have kids, or 

• Deal with it, or 

• Why should I have to make sacrifices because you chose to have kids? 

In one sense, she is right. But I couldn’t get over her line of thinking. 

“You’re the one who chose to have kids” is about so much more than just cramping someone’s holiday plans.

That line of thinking is the reason that parents, particularly women, feel more burned out, depressed, joyless, and isolated than, I think, ever before. 

Because that line of thinking puts the responsibility solely on the parent’s shoulders.

If you’re the one who chose to have kids, then you’re the one who must deal with the consequences.

And those “consequences” are what drove women out of the workforce in record numbers during the pandemic.

If it’s an individual responsibility to care for our kids, then when we can’t figure out how to show up for work or get our work done when schools and daycares are closed, when nannies are sick, when our kids are sick, then the alternative is to opt out.

There is no safety net, no back-up, and no help. And clearly, there’s also no understanding.

Overwhelmingly, it’s the mom who stays home. Who calls off. Who scrambles to get work done while also taking care of sick kids, often while being sick herself. 

(And might I add that one of the main reasons our kids are sick in the first place is because parents without options to stay home send their kids to school and daycare when they’re sick. Because what other choice do they have?)

In this country, that individual-responsibility-way-of-thinking is exactly what the patriarchy wants.

You made the choice to have kids.

Therefore you suffer the consequences.

And what makes me sad and frustrated beyond belief, is that women are also buying into this belief. 

Women are telling other women - that’s your problem.

And then we wonder why we don’t see more women at the top. Women in the c-suite. Women in government. Women in leadership. Or fuck, just women living lives that feel good and are joyful.

Because we’re not helping. We raise hands in the air and put the responsibility back on the individual. It was your choice to have kids. All the while not even recognizing the impact of those words.  

The implication that when it’s your responsibility, it’s also your failing. 

I can’t tell you how many times this fall alone, I’ve felt ashamed by how often my kids are sick.

I’ve looked around and thought “what am I doing wrong?” as if I could have prevented it if we’d just washed our hands more, eaten more vegetables, or been more consistent taking our vitamins. 

I’ve thought there must be something wrong with our genes or with our immune systems (or lack thereof).

And what happens when you blame yourself? When you feel ashamed? When you think you’re doing something wrong?

You retreat. You isolate. 

(Ask me how I know.) 

When you isolate, you don’t ask for help. You take on the burden as your own because we live in a world that puts the responsibility on the individual. And more specifically, on the mother.

And then we perpetuate the cycle by reminding parents, mostly mothers, that it was your choice to have kids.

Now, I may not be able to control what another adult thinks or believes, but I can educate. 

I can share my own experience and the experiences of my clients to help the adults in my life, especially the women, know better. 

So that hopefully when they know better, they can choose to do better and to speak better.

I want my daughter to have examples of amazing, strong, powerful women in her life. 

I want her to see all that’s possible regardless of whether or not she has kids. 

Because I don’t want her to make choices based on what she thinks she can and can’t do with kids versus without.  

I want her to choose what she wants. Full stop.

So I’m asking all of us to think about the words we’re saying and the beliefs behind those words. I hope we can find a way to help more, to understand more, and to see this as a collective responsibility instead of an individual one.

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