{"id":617,"date":"2019-02-28T05:51:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/?p=617"},"modified":"2019-02-28T05:51:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:51:53","slug":"the-expectation-of-motherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/2019\/02\/28\/the-expectation-of-motherhood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Expectation of Motherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The expectation of motherhood is a\nheavy burden that weighs on the hearts of many women in their fertile years.\nTerms like \u201cbiological clock\u201d are flung around so carelessly that women are\nmore taken with the pressure to reproduce than they are about their own virtue.\nWomen who decide they don\u2019t want to have children of their own are considered\nto be selfish or immature, and women that cannot<\/em>\nhave children are seen as broken or unstable. This immense pressure to enter\ninto motherhood is a blatant contributor to the state of gender inequality in\nour current time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expectation of motherhood is\nnot merely the act of raising a child. It is also fed by the expectation that a\nwoman put her life and career on hold for an indefinite amount of time. It demands\nthat a woman risk her physical and mental health both during and after a\npregnancy, even a healthy pregnancy can take a insurmountable toll on the life\nof a woman. Motherhood may also require that a woman relinquish her life\nsavings to support her young, and renounce the opportunity to pursue a life of\ntravel, leisure, or success. Much is at stake when choosing to have a baby, but\nwomen are not alone in its potential consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s best route to the top 1% is via marriage to a rich male. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 with or without a growing family tree. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The expectation of motherhood is a heavy burden that weighs on the hearts of many women in their fertile years. Terms like \u201cbiological clock\u201d are flung around so carelessly that women are more taken with the pressure to reproduce than … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wollstonecraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":619,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions\/619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}