Love comes in so many forms and can be directed at so many things.
October 8, 2015 6:35 AM   Subscribe

"There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question." In "The Mother of All Questions", Rebecca Solnit writes for Harper's about being asked to justify her own (and Virginia Woolf's) childlessness, and more broadly about how to define happiness and a meaningful life.
posted by Stacey (39 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
Very thought-provoking read, thank you for sharing this.
posted by spinturtle at 6:56 AM on October 8, 2015


Seconded.
posted by Beardman at 6:58 AM on October 8, 2015


This is behind a paywall for me. It looks interesting, though.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:06 AM on October 8, 2015


try googling for "The Mother of All Questions" and then following the link from google. your paywall may disappear.
posted by andrewcooke at 7:09 AM on October 8, 2015


In the world of today, does the question indeed need to be more multifaceted than "Do I want to have children?" There is an entire world of already existing people (and animals) to take into consideration, in addition to one's own needs.
posted by ackptui at 7:11 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


"The interviewer’s question was indecent, because it presumed that women should have children, and that a woman’s reproductive activities were naturally public business. More fundamentally, the question assumed that there was only one proper way for a woman to live."

Good. Stuff.

It is in some way related to the NYT's question to Nicki Minaj about whether Minaj thrives off the male discord around her. Her response? ‘‘Why would a grown-ass woman thrive off drama?’’:
She simply thought the suggestion that she thrived off of it was a condescending one, one that fed into the tropes of a woman sowing discord in men or cleaning up their messes, and one that implied that her whole personality was silly, fake, a Hollywood caricature. “You know that’s not just a stupid question,” Minaj told Grigoriadis. “That’s a premeditated thing you just did.’’
How to refuse the question? Call out indecent, sexist assumptions, cut short the interview (Solnit: "...at some point I said, “Fuck this shit,” which carried the same general message and moved everyone on from the discussion"), write your own story.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:22 AM on October 8, 2015 [24 favorites]


I read this book not too long ago, which proved to be an interesting and inadvertent conversation starter when people--particularly other women--saw me with it.

I would love to read the rest of Solnit's essay, but alas, doing as andrewcooke suggested as not yet found me paywall-less text.
posted by Kitteh at 7:31 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


'One of my goals in life is to become truly rabbinical, to be able to answer closed questions with open questions, to have the internal authority to be a good gatekeeper when intruders approach, and to at least remember to ask, “Why are you asking that?”'

I should print this on my wall.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:49 AM on October 8, 2015 [12 favorites]


But there are so many things to love besides one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.


I had to break down a little and just sit with this sentence because I needed it. Yes. Yes.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:49 AM on October 8, 2015 [23 favorites]


Excellent article. I would also say, referencing the last sentence, that not everything needs to be questioned.
posted by h00py at 7:50 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why not, though?
posted by clockzero at 7:52 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Addressing our own suffering, while learning not to inflict it on others, is part of the work we’re all here to do. So is love, which comes in so many forms and can be directed at so many things is the bit that's going on my wall.

I'm sorry about the paywall troubles, guys. I had checked in with the mods about the link as it seemed to me like people could access it as part of the "X free articles a month" thing Harper's does but maybe that's US-specific or otherwise limited in some way? If I can find a non-paywalled link I'll ask the mods to update it.
posted by Stacey at 7:53 AM on October 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


Why not, though?

Ah, but why do you feel the need to ask? (this could go on forever)
posted by h00py at 7:56 AM on October 8, 2015


Yes! I was gonna do an FPP about that Minaj interview today because it's just so incredible.
People lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children are the best way to fulfill your capacity to love, even though the list of monstrous, ice-hearted mothers is extensive. But there are so many things to love besides one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.
YUUUUUUUUUP. Whenever someone feels the need to condescendingly explain to me that I will forever lack the ability to truly love anyone other than myself because I don't/won't have children -- because, as they're always quick to point out, they didn't know what love was until they had a child -- I always want to ask them what it feels like to have been a sociopath prior to becoming a parent. I've had incredibly rich and profound experiences with all kinds of love, and can honestly say that the immense adoration I feel for basically every sentient being on earth is almost physically painful to let through full-throttle, but literally none of it has had anything to do with anyone I'm related to by blood. It's just never been necessary for me.

Why would anyone want someone who doesn't want children to have them anyway? I'd be literally incapable of providing any kind of maternal nurturing to any child -- do they think people like me would just be able to figure it out once a brand-new, utterly helpless dependent was put into the mix? What if we didn't? What if it only got worse? The biological imperative can only take up so much slack; some of us are not just unwilling, but utterly unable to do the job. Still, the people who understand as much about themselves are vastly outnumbered by the people who refuse to acknowledge that they're simply unfit to serve, which is why there are so damn many unloved children in the world. It's very clear that nearly everyone on earth still equates motherhood and femininity with womanhood itself, but hanging onto antiquated stereotypes isn't doing any of us any favors.

I'm still working on tamping down the kneejerk defensiveness that arises whenever I'm asked to explain why I don't want to have children. Until then, I'm stealing nicodine's wonderful script.
posted by divined by radio at 8:01 AM on October 8, 2015 [34 favorites]


Ah, but why do you feel the need to ask? (this could go on forever)

What are those things which don't need to be questioned, exactly, and why is that category populated in the way it is? I think saying that not every question needs an answer is a bit different than saying not everything needs to be questioned.
posted by clockzero at 8:02 AM on October 8, 2015


Thanks to MonkeyToes who sent me the essay to read (the formatting was fine!).

This is a great essay, but this in particular struck me:

We are constantly given one-size-fits-all recipes, but those recipes fail, often and hard. Nevertheless, we are given them again. And again and again. They become prisons and punishments; the prison of the imagination traps many in the prison of a life that is correctly aligned with the recipes and yet is entirely miserable.

I am extremely fortunate in that my mother never tried to give us that recipe, but I think the strongest reason she wouldn't do it is because those recipes failed her and she didn't want them to fail us as well. So she gave us her own.
posted by Kitteh at 8:03 AM on October 8, 2015 [5 favorites]


A good rule of life to live by: If something that comes out of your mouth would be an HR violation if said in a workplace, probably best to keep it to yourself in other situations as well unless you are intimate with the other party. And since harassing a woman about when she is planning to settle down and have kids is essentially asking, "So, when are you going to get fucked without protection", I think this qualifies.

I'm very happy in my role as a father, but I have childless friends who don't exactly seem to spend all of their free time mourning how empty their lives are.
posted by The Gooch at 8:06 AM on October 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


What are those things which don't need to be questioned, exactly, and why is that category populated in the way it is? I think saying that not every question needs an answer is a bit different than saying not everything needs to be questioned.


Personal life choices don't belong in the public domain unless someone has specifically said 'let us discuss these choices I have made'. Sorry, I thought we were riffing on questions. To me it seems blatantly obvious that not everything a person does in their life is fodder for debate.
posted by h00py at 8:14 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Specifically, having children, not having children, pursuing romantic relationships or, again, not, etc. What she was referencing in the article, basically.
posted by h00py at 8:18 AM on October 8, 2015


While I agree with many of the sentiments in the article the author seems, in many cases, to have merely replaced the socially expected "love for my children" with an almost equally acceptable "love for humanity". One might go even further and ask why "love" at all.

But there are so many things to love besides one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.

Why this insistence on "love" at all though? Isn't a nihilistic response equally valid? Can one not simply see no real point in procreation at all?
posted by mary8nne at 8:40 AM on October 8, 2015 [8 favorites]


Ah, I see what you mean, h00py. Good point.
posted by clockzero at 8:48 AM on October 8, 2015


I think mary8nne has a good point. Whatever you may think about love in general, as an answer to questions posed by random people, "There are so many other ways to love" seems a little like saying "Oh yes I accept everything about your premise; I'm just going about it in a different way." It still seems to accept the idea of being maternal and nourishing on some level-- at least if said by a women. Do we have to accept this?
posted by BibiRose at 8:48 AM on October 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


Can one not simply see no real point in procreation at all?

Right! Or, you know, just not want to. That question has always seemed so odd to me. I don't want to! That's the reason!
posted by something something at 8:50 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm kind of on the flip side of this, as my mom has never once asked when I'm getting married or having kids. She often told my sister and I while growing up "don't get married, don't have kids" (which sounds sorta bleak, I know, but it's fine). I used to worry that there was something wrong with me for not having that kind of presence in my life,* but as I've gotten older I've realized that I've dodged a massive bullet, especially as I see other unmarried, childless women my age interact with their families. Not having that external pressure is extremely freeing. Like Kitteh said earlier, I am extremely fortunate that my mother never tried to give my sister and I that recipe.

*I saw her this weekend, and we talked about the fact that she doesn't ask those questions. She said "I just trust that you'll do what's right for you," which, awwww mom.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:54 AM on October 8, 2015 [14 favorites]


Children... just say no.


Actually the author's attack on social emphasis on "happiness", can immediately be turned on her own totalising notion of "love".
posted by mary8nne at 8:57 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Does a dog have Buddha nature?
posted by poe at 8:58 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Does a dog have Buddha nature?

Not my dogs. They're in constant pursuit of treats. It's like someone took dukkha and gave it canine form.
posted by magstheaxe at 9:02 AM on October 8, 2015 [12 favorites]


"There are so many other ways to love" seems a little like saying "Oh yes I accept everything about your premise; I'm just going about it in a different way." It still seems to accept the idea of being maternal and nourishing on some level-- at least if said by a women. Do we have to accept this?

To me, it reads as a direct reaction to the fact that women who do not intend to become mothers are often accused of being not just selfish but wholly loveless, bereft, cold, harsh, even inhumane. Nihilism isn't just seen as a failure to meet the standards of modern "femininity," it's seen as downright unwomanly, a shameless abrogation of the basic duty of women qua women. So when you're faced with that accusation repeatedly, on an individual and a cultural level, "hey, I still have some love in me!" is probably going to drift into your repertoire of defenses against attacks related to your failure at being a woman.

I feel like that's an understandable impulse, setting aside the fact that taking an individualist tack will always fail to speak to the class requirement that women must be kind, open-hearted, and gentle in some discernible way while men can skate off scot-free without suffering any kind of consequences -- and indeed often being lauded -- for their coolness.
posted by divined by radio at 9:31 AM on October 8, 2015 [12 favorites]


I totally get that, divined by radio, and indeed I do it! I've been known to tell people my maternal instincts are satisfied by my pets, my students, and so on. And for me, that feels true. I do think I have maternal instincts. But the reason I don't have kids is that it didn't come together for me on a number of levels, so people's assumption that that energy needs somewhere to go happens to be somewhat correct. But it just happens to be correct, you know? I still think it's an offensive assumption.
posted by BibiRose at 10:04 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why this insistence on "love" at all though? Isn't a nihilistic response equally valid? Can one not simply see no real point in procreation at all?

Hear, hear, mary8nne. If you truly love your children, as you claim, then how did you come to inflict the world on them? How do you sleep at night, knowing the suffering you've created?
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:25 AM on October 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


the single-minded insistence that all women ought to be mothers may also be detrimental to those women whose inner calling is motherhood. What would society be like if only those women and men who deeply desire to be parents actually had children? What if those people were celebrated in the same way that we celebrate excellence in other fields?
Jody Gentian Bower - Jane Eyre’s Sisters, pg 217
I read this last month and so much of it spoke to me, and there are a lot of echoes in this article. Even how Stolnit in this article describes her mother's rage at being forced into the traditional feminine role gets a place in Jane Eyre's Sisters as Bower uses the myth of a goddess forced to live in the darkness of a cave (I can't remember her name, something like Eniskugel?) and because of the damage done to her she inflicts damage on others. The fury of the trapped and powerless.
posted by Fence at 11:23 AM on October 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


Ugh yes this piece is so good. I wanted to fist-bump it after reading it in Harper's. This quote in particular really lodged in my mind, as a bulwark against what feels like a sometimes-oppressive necessity to reassure others that you're "happy":

What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person — honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope.
posted by threeants at 12:15 PM on October 8, 2015 [7 favorites]


Solnit makes, and then effectively confesses, an Occam's razor failure.

Is it more likely that a professional interviewer is going to ask a woman why she hasn't had children because that interviewer has a doctrinaire conviction that all women should have children, or because that interviewer knows that the answer that question is consistently interesting and providing of useful insight about the author's life and view to her work?

Her confession is that, in discussing why someone would be offended at the question, or refuse to answer it whether or not offended, Solnit goes on to answer it at length and in a manner which supplies abundant insight into her life and work. Because as (in a sense) a self-interviewer for this piece, she knows that the reader will be interested and gives the reader what they want.
posted by MattD at 3:05 PM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Look, if your don't procreate, how will strangers be able to be judgmental about your parenting choices?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 4:10 PM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


There is a paradox at the heart of the happiness question. Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University, reported a few years ago on studies that concluded that people who think being happy is important are more likely to become depressed: “Organizing your life around trying to become happier, making happiness the primary objective of life, gets in the way of actually becoming happy.”

I love this. I have become deeply suspicious of the emphasis on being happy to the exclusion of other things, including awareness and ethics. I'm also deeply suspicious of the idea that we can or should be happy all the time. I am happier now than I have been in a very long time, but that doesn't mean I don't have "weeping days" when I'm overwhelmed with anxiety and frustration and express it with all the enthusiasm I'm natively given too. I want space like that for women in particular, for us to be accepted and loved having a messy, emotional life and that being not only ok but desirable.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:37 PM on October 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


@MattD - that's true, in a limited context, but ignores the wider context that you get asked these questions a lot when you don't have kids. and i am pretty sure most people who ask me are not doing so because they are experienced interviewers who know how to get a good story. the implication is nearly always: why are you odd? it's tiring. when you have experienced it, you can identify with this article.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:48 PM on October 8, 2015


If you truly love your children, as you claim, then how did you come to inflict the world on them? How do you sleep at night, knowing the suffering you've created?

I understand this sentiment, and have felt it at times, but I don't like it, and I don't believe in it. There's horror and wonder and lots in between, and maybe the new people will have luck on their side and figure out how to tip things towards wonder.

Motherhood was never an idea I attached to myself, or found at all interesting. I'm only thinking about it now, at the tail end of my fertility. And really, I only sort of talked myself into this very qualified position after taking a course in human development (i.e. neural tubes what; those early syntactic errors would be fascinating to watch in action, also hilarious), and seeing my friend's kids (who've so far confirmed my idea that they're mostly hilarious, as a class). Wanting to be entertained is probably a bad reason to have kids, I admit. It would be something to have a hand in being someone's steward, though, teaching them the bits I know, crossing my fingers they'd do better. I don't know - it's true that it's a small contribution; it's not a bad one, intrinsically.

None of this is compelling enough for me to force circumstances in that direction, freeze my eggs, etc. I still have some of my own life ahead, and it's got to make sense. I'll be ok however it pans out.
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:55 PM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why this insistence on "love" at all though? Isn't a nihilistic response equally valid?

It's valid, but it's usually less hedonic than love (connection, creation, etc.). We're bred for sociability, and we like making things.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:06 PM on October 8, 2015


This is so good. Thank you.
posted by davidjmcgee at 9:11 AM on November 5, 2015


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