- Good evening. This is Lorna Grins assistant Dean of Women. Welcome to A Feminist Perspective. This weekly radio broadcast is sponsored by The Women's Resource and Career Planning Center. A program in information service of the Dean of Women's office in 220, Strong Hall. A Feminist Perspective provides a forum for discussion of issues that concern women. Some very significant changes which affect the lives of both women and men are occurring and deserve our very special attention. The Women's Resource and Career Planning Center contains a large amount of information, news clippings, government documents, magazine articles, research studies, and books pertaining to the many aspects of the women's movement. We invite you to come and browse or take advantage of the materials that can be borrowed. That's in 220 Strong Hall at the University of Kansas. Tonight's broadcast is entitled Motherhood - A decision. This evening we would like to discuss the common assumption that is often made that all women shall be, shall bear children or be mothers. That they want to, that they're equipped to, that they're able to and that in fact if they don't there's probably something wrong. This assumption may very well have resulted from previous inabilities to effectively prevent pregnancies. But our contraceptive techniques now do provide us with very effective means for controlling pregnancy. And by this do allow us a choice and a decision. Tonight we'd like to consider some special social forces that may limit the consideration of this choice. What kinds of things should be taken into account before a woman decides to have a child or a couple decides to have a child. And if she decides not to have children or a couple decides not to have children, how she might respond to others who may question this decision. I'd like to make it very clear at the beginning here that we're not suggesting that motherhood is for no one. We really are only meaning to emphasize that it perhaps is not for everyone. That there is a choice involved and a decision to be made. We want it to be presented here as a real option. With me here are Diane Barnhill, who has a master's degree in social welfare and is on the staff at the mental health clinic at the University of Kansas, Ellen Hansen, assistant to the Dean of Men and a student in the guidance and counseling program, graduate student and Kenneth Kammeyer, professor of sociology at KU. I guess we may as well begin by discussing a little bit about what it is that propels a woman toward motherhood. What kinds of social forces or learning she experiences. - Well I think if we take the largest possible perspective to begin with, it's helpful. Because what I think we have to see at the outset is that societies throughout history have had to cope with a very serious problem. And that problem is that mortality was extremely high and especially infant mortality has always up until very recent times, been extremely high and remains high in many countries today. And of course, in addition to infant mortality the hazards of life were so great that many people did not live through their adult years. And of course from the point of view of women one of the most hazardous experiences was the bearing of children. So many women did not survive that event. The result of all of that has been or was an extremely high mortality level. And when the societies faced that problem of extremely high death rates at the infant and other age levels, they must, they had to necessarily develop a set of institutions and a corresponding set of cultural values that insured almost literally coerced every possible person who could have babies to have them and to have as many as they could have. So we live in a society as everyone does in all societies that emerged under a condition of high mortality and therefore necessarily had to produce great many babies. And it's only been of course in relatively recent years we can almost just go back 30, 40 or maybe 50 years when mortality has dropped precipitously in many countries and certainly in the under, so called underdeveloped countries for mortality has only recently dropped. And it's pretty obvious under these circumstances that institutions and values that have emerged over millennia are not going to be turned over overnight despite the perhaps overwhelming evidence that there isn't any longer that terrific need for high fertility. So whenever we start thinking about motherhood and the decision to become a mother I think we have to recognize this in a context of institutions and values that have grown up for thousands of years and the result is for individuals that these values are so pervasive that up until very recently, let's say within the last 10 years or so, people simply did not question and would not question the properness, the rightness of parenthood. It didn't, it wasn't an issue. There was a pervasive force toward parenthood. And as a result of that in American society, the fertility studies have shown quite clearly that parenthood was a matter of, was something that people drifted into. The drift into parenthood was, it has been very real and it still exists I think. - I think so too. - Without conscious thought or decision for the matter. - Well, when you say the last 10 years I think this relates also very strongly to the fact that now we do have really effective contraceptive devices and abortion is an option. And this is a totally different scene than has ever happened before. - Okay, very true. - So and it does take a while as you well noted for people to catch up with that kind of thing. - So I think it's a gradual process. I think we've been working the last few years towards people feeling comfortable with accepting the idea of a working mother. And now you know, there's nothing besides a working mother. There's just a working woman without motherhood even playing a part. And I think it does take a while for people, it kind of goes in stages you know for people to be comfortable with first you are a mother then you can be a working mother now perhaps you won't be a mother at all. - For a large segment of the population for a woman to work was only justifiable on the grounds that it was supportive of the economic wellbeing of the family. - Right. - It was not for her own personal development. It was only justified if she could claim that she was contributing to the needed economic considerations of the family. - Right, out of necessity. - Yes, yes. - Well growing up in the fifties that very much was true. And in fact, I attended a girl's school that was very much oriented towards women's education. And this was considered a very specialized kind of thing in that, not only did you have the regular kinds of course material that everybody had but you had courses in personal appearance, that you had courses in how to take care of children and how to sew, how to do all kinds of useful things. The kinds of professions that people were geared toward were you could major in airline hostessing for heaven sakes. And the assumption was that this was what you know young ladies did and further that. But yet the other thing that was emphasized very strongly was teaching you to get into community service. This was the kind of thing that you could do. This was where you could express yourself. And so you were supposed to learn how to be on the PTA, how to- - Yeah the non-economic. - Yes, maybe to run for the school board or volunteer for the hospital board or this kind of thing. But this was what you could do. And this was considered a very progressive kind of thing. - And those things still were all to fit around the childbearing time and to feel the time before and the time after the children were at home and needing a tremendous amount of care. - So the options really at that time for women were that you were supposed to go to school, you were supposed to get this education in case you needed it in case your husband happened to die or disappear in some form. Or you found yourself having to take over in some particular kind of way. But it's as you well noted not from the point of view, personal satisfaction in any case. And, and either women gave up that option or if they chose to work they felt that they had to be all kinds of other criteria almost perfectly first. In other words, if they were a perfect housekeeper and a perfect mother and met all of their husband's possible needs then they could have a job. But only if they met all that first. - Yes. - And which puts a tremendous strain on anybody. It's obviously impossible so. - Well I'm sure that that's what, what contributes to some of the ambivalence in trying to have all of these areas in perfection. It's a very, it ends up being very dehumanizing and very, very frustrating and not too meaningful I'm sure in many areas then. - I'd like to spend just a minute thinking into, thinking about the subtle ways in which people are taught all of these kinds of roles styles. It always really amuses me to watch the ads relating to the perfect housekeeper you know, the woman with her perfect hair doing in her snappy pants outfit and doing her dusting or making, polishing her floor or whatever it is. And I think particularly now children are doing a lot of television watching and these are some of the ways in which they get an image of what it is that their role should be. - I'm sure it wouldn't make to take much analysis of the toy ads that are now emerging before the Christmas season. - Right. - To document that fairly clearly. Yes. - Like I think I just heard one this morning or yesterday morning where they were pushing a cooking outfit for a little girl. A stove that actually cooks, bakes cookies or whatever. And I thought, oh they're telling her that that's what she's supposed to be doing. - Yes she better learn young. - And even you know, even in schools I remember when I went to grade school which has been awhile but I it's basically the same since I've been back. There was a boys playground and a girl's playground. And there's the boys corner you know, where there's all you know, the guns, the blocks, all those kinds of things. And the girls corner with the toy stoves and the dolls. And I think that the pressure, I mean the peer pressure even at that age you know, it is so ingrained from everything. Every media you know, everything that the girls naturally congregate towards the girls corner. And I have a friend whose little girl attends kindergarten and she wanted to play football with the boys last week and came home just you know in tears because she could not play football from the boys. And her mother said, well why don't you ask the girls to play? Well they don't wanna play football you know. That, and that child is going through you know a real pull you know from a different direction than most of the kids are. Even now when I think things you know in some ways are improved. I think we have a lot more people working in those systems that maybe are aware. More men working in those systems which makes a difference. - What a lot of that leads to of course and certainly has in the past and I believe it's probably still true today is that for a man to achieve adulthood he takes a job. For a woman to achieve adulthood she first marries and then the ultimate of course achievement is when she produces a baby. That was the way to adulthood for a great many people because everything had said when you are an adult this is what you will have. - Right. - And so what better way to move into that desired status of adulthood than to quickly have a baby. Or maybe it wasn't that, I don't mean to imply. I don't think we should imply that it was that conscious a decision. It was just, why not have a baby? It has all the advantages of giving one adult status and so resulted in a lot of . - This was the expectation. This is what your friends were doing. That too of course. - Well and then, then of course that also reinforced the man's role. When there was a, when there was a wife and a child then he had to do bigger and better things in his job to apply, to be able to face the economic realities. And at the same time then I think the emphasis this evening is on the effects of motherhood for women, I think that there are very drastic effects for men too. And it may be as big a trap for them if they've not chosen it, if they've not considered it and made it a decision as it is for a woman. Because their flexibility is definitely limited also. - Yes. - Are there any things that you think of in our culture that might lead a young child or an adolescent to view her role differently? Can you think right off of anything that, that might restrain her from this- - Well just the- - The momentum of becoming a wife. - A simple empirical fact is that we have very few studies and certainly of voluntarily childless couples. For one reason, there haven't been a whole lot of them. But there is a sociologist named Gene Beavers who's at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. And she's done some work with a sample of voluntarily childless couples. And one thing that seems to show up rather clearly is that women who are the oldest of relatively large families and have had to, apparently have had to care for younger siblings have, have shown up in this sample of voluntarily childless somewhat more frequently than one was well, than randomly. Which of course indicates that a certain amount of reality training and child rearing at least not bearing may be a very important deterrent to having children. In other words it calls into question the rightness, the perfectness, the idealness of having children. Simply reality training. - Yeah it also might reflect having taken on that kind of responsibility before one could reasonably be expected to want to do it. I think for one of the things that perhaps it is one of the options not only not having children but deferring having children until people have done other things that are important to them. Until they feel fully adult and fully ready to take on this responsibility which perhaps isn't what we're addressing ourselves to as much but- - Yes. - That's a very important point because, - I think it is. - it seems to me that even today for the great majority of people, one must have babies. And the, so the zero child family is often unacceptable to many people. Now it's becoming slightly more acceptable. The one child family is also unacceptable. In fact, I would guess that right now it's acceptable to a smaller percentage of the population. - I would think so too. - Than the zero child family. So that means that almost everybody gets into at least the two child family. Now we are starting to see some pressures come from the other side as well. People who have, who say for example, they want five, six, seven in the sort of gushing way that people said that in the fifties let's say, all we want is many children as we can have. We want six. That isn't viewed quite as favorably as it was a decade or so ago. What's happening there then is you do get a kind of compression into the two to three range for practically everyone. But the one place that we do have some flexibility is in spacing. They're spacing between marriage and the first child first of all. But there is pressure there as I think most would agree that this pressure starts to come on after the third year or so. But then the spacing between first child and second there aren't strong norms about that. People can space and space and space. And I guess, I think it'd be interesting to talk about the process of becoming voluntarily childless. Because I think the evidence, again drawing from Beaver's work has suggested it is a process. People, now some people about a third of her sample as I remember the figures, entered marriage with a kind of contractual arrangement between the husband and wife. We're not going to have children. But the other 2/3 if I had the percentage correct came to that in a rather more indirect and processual way. At first they thought, what we're going to have babies but we're not going to have them so soon. We're not gonna have them right away we want to do some things. And then they get the pressures from well all sorts of, one often thinks in terms of grandparents and their potential grandparents in-laws and so on. But then I believe they do get to a point when perhaps that pressure lessens. So I think perhaps one of the things that might be said is that couples who might be moving toward the voluntarily childless category might be very aware of when those pressures peak and when they might be expected to abate somewhat because it becomes a very real kind of thing and they have to take it into account in their own decision making. I think it's maybe around three or four years when the pressures get high. - Yeah I think speaking from my own personal experience. When I got married which was about three and a half years ago, we had a general assumption that you know, someday we would have children. We hadn't set any target dates but you know the normal things people do. You know when it's the nice name or you know, wouldn't it be nice if people he was a football player or whatever. But I think somewhere, somewhere along the line and maybe that's because we did get married when we were young. We got married when we were 22. We grew to this point together. And I couldn't pick out a certain time when it really jelled but somewhere along the line it really jelled. And I think we've been feeling the pressure from especially our parents. Since we've been married about two years. And I think that comes from all different motivations on their part. I'm not real sure where it starts. Part of it's just, I imagine you know, wanting the fun of being a grandparent. I know that, that my parents in particularly questioned why was there something in your childhood you know that turned you against this whole thing. And I don't feel that's true at all. I you know, I just feel that this is, we don't really feel an obligation. We do not feel an obligation to have children and we do not want children and we feel very comfortable with that. - That's interesting manifestation incidentally of you're not normal if - - There are, that's really true. - You don't want children. - And the other thing- - You got the message I'm sure. - Right. And the other thing we've been getting lately is you are going to be so lonely. You know, you're going to be so unfulfilled when you're 45 or 50. And we don't, we don't look at it that way. We feel that maybe we have some things and some opportunities and some interests that our parents didn't have that will take over. But they're very definitely, it's not so much a pressure, peer pressure because most of the people that maybe we associate with either feel the same way or are very acceptive you know acceptable about this. But I think the parent pressure's what we have really felt and other kind of relatives. - Well I think what you're saying there is that women and men both are seeing other ways that perhaps they can be creative which is you know a very basic thing for all of us. What can we produce that we leave behind us? It's our only real form of immortality. And for many people, children have been the only thing and that there possibly is some of the pressure that your, your parents are feeling you know. To kind of a continuation of what they began. But I think people are seeing other options. Other ways that they can express this, this very basic human need and that this isn't the only thing that they have. - Right. - Something else that we hear too is we both really enjoy children. My husband's a coach and a teacher and he does a lot of volunteer work with children and that's one of my interests too. And people say, oh you like you know, you like children and you do well with them. Why don't you wanna have children of your own? And we see that as two very different, you know different ways of relating to children. - I'd like to speak to something that Dr Kammeyer mentioned earlier. That there seems to be a decrease in the pressure. And I wonder if that doesn't relate also to the fact that, that if you decide to delay having children then you do get into things and you see that you have other options and they are viable and people you know, more about what your talents and abilities are and your reinforcements are and that takes the pressure off or makes the decision real. That you, that you can be a fulfilled person if you don't have children. It's, it does provide more option. I think very often women may consider motherhood because they frankly don't know what else to do. And if there is that time delay then maybe they get some other very productive and satisfying things to do. - Greater spacing has almost always led to smaller numbers. And that may seem pretty obvious but I think what you're saying is, is the reason that works. - Yes. - And as soon as you see people start to space between marriage and the first birth, that probably means their ultimate family size will be smaller. And anytime there's greater spacing it's, I think one of the things that should be emphasized the possibility of spacing it. Then of course the big spacing is between zero and one. Because then of course that mechanism you just described comes into play. Probably also people just plain get vested interest. I mean, there are - Yes. - once you get into an occupation, you get a position and you're moving and you have to get, you know you're gonna have to give it up. And that becomes more and more difficult as time goes by. - Well I think your economic style gets fairly well-established too. And then you realize the kinds of, the kinds of material things that you would have to change in the event that you had children at least in any number. - But the big thing you give up is time. - Yes and part of your relationship - Yes. - with each other. I think - That shows up in very, almost invariably I mean the same thing inaggravate. That the relationship changes when the child comes in. - I think it's really important to mention that sometimes children are considered to be a healing, to have a healing effect on a relationship that may not be going, going as well as, as you would hope. And I don't think there's any evidence that that's true. - Oh I think the evidence is quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. - Another effect perhaps of this delayed kind of, a kind of beginning besides people finding things that they can do individually to be creative. But they do, they do find what they can be to each other. You it's, it's almost a stereotype but you see this happening all the time that people who've had children when they were quite young the children grow, they leave the home and they're, they are the couple standing looking at each other. Who are we? - Oh definitely. - Who are you? - Do we like each other? And there are lots and lots of divorces at that, at that stage. - I think that people are again more free to divorce at that age than they were. Sometimes I think they sort of clung together because it was expected of them. And now there's more freedom to separate. - But with the spacing and time before beginning this family, there is a chance to find out if that is a viable marriage and a family is appropriate- - Now that's true. Because I think in this day and age when you don't, you see a good number of maybe marriages that don't last beyond one, two and three years. I know that that's something that we always, we had great confidence that you know, we were gonna survive but it certainly does complicate things if you do have a family. And I think that it, it is a thing to consider. - I think the average, the average length is seven years. - Really? - It's, there's there are of course a lot of divorces after many, many years. But there's a very high rate on the, the early marriages which brings the average down to seven. Which is not very long at all. - No it's not. - It certainly isn't long enough to rear a child. - Well I think maybe what we're saying in part is at least my feeling is that having a child and rearing a child is a very, is a very important kind of thing. And it requires a serious kind of looking at and not just having it be an accidental kind of happening. Because even for people who want a child very much the 20 years or so that you're responsible for that child requires an awful lot out of you. And there are times even when you love that child very deeply and maybe have desired him a great deal but again, be very difficult. I have a son I've enjoyed immensely but there have been times that I could have cheerfully killed him. And if you don't, if you didn't really want to end to that thing, that makes quite a different. - Or if it happened to you as an automatic response instead of a conscious decision, I think you could have some very ambivalent feelings toward the child and about yourself and perhaps towards your partner or your mate also. - And then you get into a whole guilt bag. - The problem is of course that the societies don't provide alternative statuses so often that are commensurate with the status of parent. The honor that's given to, to that kind of status. And it's just that. And especially for women - I hope you have enjoyed listening to our conversation this evening regarding motherhood as a decision. We do have some written materials in the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center in 220 Strong Hall. I'd be very happy to hear from you regarding your response to our conversation. Whether you enjoyed it or if you think we should have expanded certain areas or if you weren't in agreement. Please do let us know and be listening next Monday night for our next Feminist Perspective.