Pronatalism in fiction

Recently I got thinking about pronatalism in fiction, and how the childless are portrayed. Loribeth covers it as part of her NOMO bookclub reads.  My husband and I have been fans of Outlander, the TV series, after reading most of the books years earlier. The first book by Diana Gabaldon, which I read as Cross Stitch (as published in the UK/Australia/NZ etc) was both historical fiction, fantasy, and bodice ripper, though these days, they’re much more focused on the historical fiction side of things. Last year we finished the latest episodes, and I went back to watch the first season. Of course, I got hooked, binge-watching the entire seven seasons, and staying up far too late doing it!

The main character is Clare, a feisty, independent woman. They make a lot of this, showing her bridling against the strictures of society’s views of women, both in the 18th century and in the mid-late 20th century. I’ve liked that part of her character, even though I’ve rolled my eyes at her ignorance of the place in society she was at the time expected to accept.

So on a second rewatch, you wouldn’t think I should have been so surprised with the concentration of pronatalism in the story – that the only way to have a legacy is to have children, that to have children together is the ultimate expression of a relationship, that a strong woman still needs to be seen as a mother, et cetera. Of course, it is set largely in the 18th century or in the 1950s through to the 1970s, and so antiquated views of women were still frequently plot points. The easiest to watch were in the 50s-70s, because I know that some views have changed, and I could see that they were trying to make a feminist point. The hardest scenes to watch were when it was accepted as so normal that the writers and filmmakers weren’t actually making a feminist point or setting out historical beliefs. The pronatalism just blared through, expressions of the main characters’ beliefs as if these were still universally normal in the 21st century.

And so I found it a bit isolating to watch. My fault, because I was binge-watching, that I had the onslaught of pronatalism all at once. But still, it was frustrating to feel so judged and at the same time so ignored at the same time.

 

No Kidding Healing Project: A revisit

Almost five years ago I began writing a series of posts under my Healing Project title. It was early 2020, and I didn’t realise the irony of the title, just when healing was about to become so difficult as the pandemic took hold across the world. We still haven’t healed from the changes that were wrought – societal, biological, political – during that pandemic, and covid still takes lives.

I tried to look back, see what had helped me heal, and move through each concept methodically. Yes, I have it marked here in a separate page on this blog. But frankly, if you read this on a mobile device, you won’t see the links easily, and any new readers might be completely unaware of the project. So here is a summary post, with links to each original post:

Day 1 - Show Up. Showing up is halfway there. Acknowledging that there is healing to be done, and that you are ready to be open to the idea that you can, in fact, heal from the grief of childlessness, is a major step.

Day 2 - Feel. There’s no healing without feeling. What you resist persists. Feel what you feel – that honesty is valuable.

Day 3 - Delight. Delight and joy show that life is always worth living, and they are signs that we will be okay. Let it find you. Let yourself feel it.

Day 4 - Surrender. Surrender. It so often is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of resolve, a sign of hope, and a new beginning.

Day 5 - Love. Love yourself. It brings compassion, empathy and comfort. To yourself, and then to others.

Day 6 - Forgive. Forgive yourself, your body (or your partner’s body), your emotions and decisions (and your partner’s emotions and decisions) and limits. It’s a gift to yourself, and brings new opportunities.

Day 7 - Honour. Honour yourself, honour your partner (if you have one), and honour those you have lost. Honour them all by living well. Honour. It’s so much more productive than guilt.

Day 8 - Write. Writing saved me. At the very first, it simply released me from having to remember, allowing me to sleep. Then gradually became the way I figured out what I thought, how I felt, and how I could move forward.

Day 9 - Appreciate. Learning gratitude is one of the first steps in healing. Appreciating the tiny joys in life, and then eventually seeing the benefits of a No kidding life, help us appreciate the life we have, rather than the one we lost.

Day 10 - Balance. Balance and perspective are what help us know we will be okay.

Day 11 - Dare. The beginning of acceptance is being brave. Shrugging off what hasn’t worked for us. Daring to be positive about our lives. Beginning to hope for something new.

Day 12 - Accept. We need to accept what has happened to us, accept our reality. That brings us to the second step – taking acceptance, and making it part of us. Because when we can do that – without self-recriminations, without judgement, without cringing – we can put an end to the battle. Sure, we carry everything we’ve been through with us, but with acceptance, we carry the lessons, rather than interminable pain.

Day 13 - Connect. You are not alone. Connections – whether in real life or online – help us feel normal, teach us wisdom, encourage us as we develop, walk beside us, and hold us when we fall.

Day 14 - Enquire. Asking questions, challenging assumptions and stereotypes, can silence those negative voices in our heads, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. But we can also challenge the assumptions of those people around us, their thoughts of the childless, as well as challenging our own thoughts about others. It’s my favourite technique of all, I think.

Day 15 - Admit. Admitting the truth to ourselves, the realities of our situations, our thoughts, our expectations, all help us to navigate our lives.

Day 16 - Experience. Living each of our lives is a unique experience. When one choice is taken away, maybe we don’t know what to anticipate. But perhaps we don’t need to. Experiencing life, day by day, can bring great joy.

Day 17 - Speak. I try to choose my moments. I speak here, and I speak up from time to time around family and friends and acquaintances who sometimes resort to false stereotypes or assumptions, and I speak more publicly when I can. Most importantly, I speak these truths first to myself. Maybe that's all some of us might need. I refuse to feel invisible, or diminished, and that prompted me to speak, and feel more truly myself.

Day 18 - Remember. Remembering is not dangerous. It helped me learn from everything I went through. Most importantly, it reminded me of the love I set out with. My memory has to be focused on the love – for my losses, for my husband, for myself. The pain has diminished, and now I can simply remember and feel the love.

Day 19 - Liberate. Liberate yourself from your own expectations, from society’s limitations, from stereotypes and judgemental voices, from guilt and pain, so that you can embrace yourself and your life. Liberation. It’s both the result of, and the penultimate step to healing, living and enjoying our No Kidding lives.

Day 20 - Celebrate. Celebrate your survival, your wisdom, the connections made, your new life and its unexpected joys.

Being part of the extended family

Today is the provincial public holiday for the province where I grew up, celebrating its founding day, as well as the nation’s. It’s the province where my family put down roots, when they came across the world from Ireland and the UK. A predominantly farming province, it is flanked on the west by high, snowy mountains (higher than anything in the UK or Ireland), ranges of foothills, and then green plains that run down to the Pacific Ocean. It has been terraformed to look a lot (I imagine, I haven’t been yet) like Ireland and England – green pastures, hedges, dotted with crops, sheep and cattle. But it wouldn’t have been like that when my ancestors arrived. It would have been blanketed with native bush, and now only a few reserves remain. The birdsong would have been loud and vibrant and totally foreign to the arrivals. It’s hard to imagine how they would have felt.

My great great grandfather came out to South Canterbury from Ireland, shortly after the Irish Potato Famine. He left from a little farm near Tralee, in an area called Ballymacelligott. I only recently learned this. I’m hoping to learn a lot more. Loribeth’s webinar with Michael Hughes for World Childless Week has inspired me. We don’t need to have kids to think about our families, their history, OR their future. We don’t need to have kids to be interested in everyone’s past and future. We just need to be human, and curious. I think that's easier for us to understand than those who focus so heavily on their children and their immediate families.

So often I find that childless women (especially women) are the ones who keep their families together, in touch with each other, or who research the family history for the benefit of the future generations. There are a lot of reasons why we do it. But I wonder how often it is appreciated by other family members, or whether they understand the tiny degree of pain we might feel when we know we’re contributing to a family that might soon forget us. What does being part of a family really mean to them?