The expectation of motherhood is a heavy burden that weighs on the hearts of many women in their fertile years. Terms like “biological clock” are flung around so carelessly that women are more taken with the pressure to reproduce than they are about their own virtue. Women who decide they don’t want to have children of their own are considered to be selfish or immature, and women that cannot have children are seen as broken or unstable. This immense pressure to enter into motherhood is a blatant contributor to the state of gender inequality in our current time.
The expectation of motherhood is not merely the act of raising a child. It is also fed by the expectation that a woman put her life and career on hold for an indefinite amount of time. It demands that a woman risk her physical and mental health both during and after a pregnancy, even a healthy pregnancy can take a insurmountable toll on the life of a woman. Motherhood may also require that a woman relinquish her life savings to support her young, and renounce the opportunity to pursue a life of travel, leisure, or success. Much is at stake when choosing to have a baby, but women are not alone in its potential consequences.
The nuanced societal expectation for women to reproduce does not lend that men are excluded from the equation. If there is pressure on women to become mothers, there is subsequent pressure on men to succeed and provide for his family. Whereas without a child, both men and women have the freedom to pursue opportunity equally, while bringing a child into the world tips the scales in favor of male success and domination within society. Biologically, women will always require more leniency and consideration from an employer both during and after a pregnancy, so until men can give birth, there will be fixed, immovable inequality on that front. However, this follows the assumption that a woman desires to reproduce at all, thus leading to the present inequality where a woman’s best route to the top 1% is via marriage to a rich male.
If a woman did not experience the societal pressure to reproduce, higher rates of women would finish high school, college, and progress into not only stable, but successful careers that could balance the scales of inequality. The key for women is not to see children as the end of the race, but a journey that has many different paths and alternate finish lines – with or without a growing family tree.