History of Feminism

Liberal people are not really bigoted against the childfree, but maybe it is true that for people who are great parents it is hard to be able to understand that childfree people can be happy and fulfilled..even my own mom initially thought that way a bit because she and I were close and she loved raising me..she was a great parent. So in the cool people I think it is that they are so happy in their kids that they think it is a shame to miss out on that.

But then it is not feasible for everyone to “have it all”. That is the infinite everything worldview. I would only be able to pull off a job I really liked or a kid with a job I found somewhat meh. One has to be realistic about one’s limitations.

I think it is great when cool people can pull off both a challenging and time consuming job and a kid. Otoh there are also people who “have it all” whose lives I just don’t want…the sort of hyper-competitive, status conscious tiger parenting etc. That looks like no fun at all. Otoh really enjoying having a kid rather than the obligatory kids is cool. Those are cooler people.

My old colleagues were examples of people who seemed like great parents and good at challenging jobs. My mom otoh quit physics to go into banking because she found physics increasingly hard after her masters and so she quit and went into banking which she never liked or bought I suppose. As a former physicist she found economics too soft to be credible I guess*.
So she used to candidly admit to me that her life became all about having a random job and focusing on me. We were close..I miss her every single day..She was no tiger parent.

I still persevere at science because she told me she always regretted leaving science. She said that if she had had a job she loved she wouldn’t have cared whether she had a family or not.


(*: I find the notion of infinite growth whether it is overconsumption or human overpopulation glaringly absurd. Usually it comes at unackowledged costs like ecological crises; horrifying production sources like factory farming or democracy destroying surveillance capitalism packing people into slummier and slummier circumstances. I think the left being silent about human overpopulation is a bad idea since racists and bigots never mind talking about it or signaling about it (and of course in entirely wrong-headed and insane ways it should go without saying, but still best explicitly said). The worlds being built are often just unsustainable..but I have found ways to steward such resources as I have at my disposal as well as I can..it is a work in progress usually).