The times, they are a changin'

[fpb]

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly agin';
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand,
For the times they are a changin'.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g798CHaazwkE1E0TMQv8AZ60Bj1wD91DKPI00

Like all really inevitable and natural development, this one surprised everybody, including me. Well, what the Hell did we all expect? People like babies. Women particularly like babies. Girls - with a few exceptions in whose personal history it is all too easy to read the emotional reasons - intensely love babies. You cannot introduce a baby among a group of schoolgirls without being practically drowned by cooings and bursts of wonder at the cuteness of them. Nobody should have expected that this natural instinct could be for ever silenced by an artificial image of a brilliant career woman, something which, for nine women out of ten, has no reality at all. Women look at Sex and the City with its childless, unmarried, rich, elegant forty-years-old, as they read Hello magazine: as a kind of fable. I do not understand the appeal myself, but I very much doubt whether it has anything to do with daily or real life. Women read their glossy magazines in ordinary, sometimes drab homes, and do not seem to make much of an effort to imitate them. It all seems to me to live in a special space of the mind dedicated to unreality. If any woman identifies with the Sex and the City characters, it cannot be because of their surroundings or careers; it is more a matter of the common complaint about weak, shiftless, commitment-phobic men - which, whether or not it is true, is at least a commonplace female whine. The idea that millions of schoolgirls go out into the great wide world in the hope of becoming top corporate lawyers, marketing VPs, or even fashion designers or Hollywood actresses, seems to me naive in the extreme. Some of them may dream of such things; most of them know that they never will happen. And the universal cultural pressure on girls to regard babies as obstacles in the way of their careers is increasingly nullified by the fact that, across the advanced world, the vast majority of women know that they will have no careers. The idea of spending one's life moving forwards in a job until one achieves a high and permanent rank is outdated, not only for the majority of women, but of men too. The same people who tried to scare us with the fear of being hobbled to babies for life also informed us, in the same breath, that the notion of jobs for life is an outdated superstition.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide;
The chance won't come again.
And don't speak too soon
For the world's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin';
For the loser now will be later to win,
For the times, they are a changin'.

It is a case study in the power and limit of cultural consensus. They removed the stigma from illegitimacy; these days, most people who call someone a "bastard" (and weirdly enough, it is a popular insult) do not know what is meant to be insulting about the term. But they could not remove the attraction from babies, or the magnetism from sex. Every attempt to make maternity unattractive or dreaded must founder on the reality of human nature. A number of people will no doubt absorb these attitudes: they are the kind who, for one reason or another, deviate from the human average. The majority may well learn to repeat them by rote, but will never internalize them; their emptiness will become manifest - they will vanish like mist in the sun - at the sight of a single real baby. You have made it easier, not harder, for your children to have babies. The result, as I said, should have been expected; it is only the result of our universal attachment to statistics - which are, after all, always yesterday's news - that kept us from seeing the obvious.

I am not saying that there will ever be a fad for having babies as such among sixteen-year-olds. One good (or rather bad) experience of childbirth would knock that sort of nonsense on the head, and at any rate even sixteen-year-olds are not that silly. The point is rather that the coming generation is beginning to instinctively see its future, not in terms of career - they learned at the cradle how difficult and fickle a thing it is - but in terms of children, of family, of heirs. These girls know that in nine times out of ten, what will give their lives continuity and content will not be the ever-changing, mostly frustrating, sometimes dangerous and unwelcoming, reality of work, but their families; that their real life is apt to be at home, with a husband or partner if they are lucky, but with a baby anyway. And like young people across the world, they are impatient to start.

The line, it is drawn.
The curse, it is cast.
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'.
AND THE FIRST ONES NOW WILL LATER BE LAST -
For the times, they are a changin'.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Also, we're coming up on a huge generational shift. The Millennials, who are analogous to the Greatests, are growing to adulthood. And when this crisis is over, they will likely do what the Greatest did when World War II was over ...

... baby boom!

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

I somehow have an urge to watch Jurassic Park again...with that cute scientist with glasses....

What was his quote?

Something about life finding a way....

(hopefully, this will have less blood)

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

In this story, since the girls appear to be from a relatively well-off (or at least middle class) community, the usual pat answer about urban teen pregnancy - they just want the welfare cheques - cannot even awkwardly be seen to apply. Of course, that broad accusation, while it may be true in specific cases, has never rung completely accurate with me. I remember reading a girl saying something along the lines that "working at McDonald's I'm nobody, but with a baby I'm somebody. I'm somebody's Mother."

I know personally a young lady who got pregnant at 18 (yes, technically an adult, but only two years older than these girls) who, when she is honest with herself, admits it was to win her mother's respect. Her mother was furious with her at first, but once the baby was born, her mother had to respect that she was also now a mother - in an important way, she had become her mother's equal.

It's also possible that these girls have considered early child-bearing as an alternative: instead of pushing off family for 20 years and attempting to concieve as they push 40, why not have the babies young (which some studies suggest is more healthy for both mother and child) and still be relatively young and healthy when the kids leave home. You can start a career at 36 and possibly be in the same spot at 50 that would have realistically been in (as a woman) had you started at 22.

women and babies

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

I'm a woman, and I'm not particularly fond of babies.
I mean I have nothing against babies or children as such, I even think I'd like to have kids in a preferably slightly distant future, but I'm not your typical cliché of the girl who starts screaming "so cuuuuuuute!" every times she sees a baby.
I don't think I'm an exception or an error of nature or a victim of some conspiracy to convince women they'd rather have a career than a family.
On the contrary, I have the impression there is still a lot of pressure for women to be mothers or at least aspire to be mothers, as if not wanting children was somehow unnatural.
Also, I want to have a career and perhaps I'm being naive, but I don't think it's impossible. After all my mother did it and she had four kids too, so that can't be completely impossible.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

While I can't even begin to contemplate what drove all these girls to get pregnant - from, by the sounds of things, a number of highly inappropriate men - but I'm pretty sure it wasn't sound reasoning. It sounds like a pretty naive notion of what motherhood will be like. "Oooh, we can have baby showers!" These girls are in for a shock. They have no idea what's in store for them.

I think carreer vs family vs juggling both is a personal choice, and you can't say that one or the other is more "natural". Every woman - and man - needs to decide what is important to him/her, and follow whatever that is. Unfortunately, we are constantly bombarded by often conflicting pressures and expectations, which can make it hard to figure out who we truly are.

Not every woman is born to be a mother. Just as not every woman is born to smash the glass ceiling with her stiletto heels. And the two aren't always mutually exclusive, either! I may turn into a pile of goo when I see a newborn baby, but I have no intention of ending my carreer the moment I get pregnant. At the same time, I'm realistic enough to know that I will never be a top-ranking surgeon or anything similar, because I would like to have a family.

But I don't think any woman who feels differently is weird, unnatural or somehow messed up. Some people just don't want babies. Fair enough. You can create a whole lot of problems by trying to convince such people otherwise. I know several older women who say that if they had their time again, they wouldn't have children. And I know a couple who say they'd have more children if only they still could. It comes down to the individual. There is no rule to define all women.

Re: women and babies

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You ARE an exception, beginning with the fact that you are working towards an academic career. I have long since made up my mind that, as a historian, I am an exception, and that my interests are not the interests of mankind at large (although they are quick enough to ask questions about points of interest, they would never make the sacrifices and efforts involved in finding the answers for themselves). More power to you; I certainly would hate a society in which the likes of Ann Douglas or Mary Beard, to mention only two, were forced to stay at home and have babies. If I ever met Ann Douglas, to mention one, I would bow before her genius and immense learning. To make such a woman do anything except the thing she has done would be a colossal waste. More: it would be a crime against the human spirit. The work of an Ann Douglas is the work of one irreplaceable human mind, and had it not been done by her, we could not have an exact replacement, and the whole world would be the poorer. But bear in mind that the vast majority of "careers" available to anyone were never the spiritually validating and emotionally fulfilling ones that research and learning afford. What is more, the academic career structure is one of the few that has not been devastated by globalization and Thatcherism. Talk to the women at the tills where you buy your food, talk to those who stack the shelves in the storage areas, talk to those who work in call centres or factories. Ask them whether that is what they want from life. Ask them if their career means anything more to them than getting a cheque to pay their bills. And bear in mind that this is the experience of work for the vast majority of women in the world.

Second, beware of projection. If you feel that there is so great a pressure on women to have babies, is that because everyone in the world is telling you to have them - or because you are trying not to hear? There is no noise, as they saying goes, so loud as the one you are trying not to hear. And I am not saying that to make you feel guilty or to undermine you. In order to pursue a calling to which you are eminently suited and which is worth following in itself - which would be worth following even if you never made a penny out of it, and had to subsidize it by stacking shelves - you have to make choices, and choices mean sacrifices. But be careful you do not project the difficulty of a choice on to the outside world; that you do misplace the will that drives this choice - which is your will - on to an anthropomorphized "society" which is trying to hold you back. That is both nonsense and spiritually dangerous: it means developing the paranoid belief that all the problems that legitimately face any scholar, or any person with a sense of mission and calling, are the result of hostile wills. They are not. They are the result of life as it is, and all scholars have to overcome them. There is a reason why Chaucer made his Oxford scholar lean and a bit shabby.

EDITED IN: I had to correct this because I mentioned both "Ann Douglas" and "Mary Douglas". They are both women of genius; Ann Douglas is the author of the two finest books of American culture history I ever read - The Feminization of American Culture and Terrible Honesty - and the late Mary Douglas was one of the greatest anthropologists in history. To make matters more complicated yet, Mary Beard is one of the greatest Classicists alive. I have read with great admiration and immense debt the works of all three.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't sound reasoning. It sounds like a pretty naive notion of what motherhood will be like. "Oooh, we can have baby showers!" These girls are in for a shock. They have no idea what's in store for them.


Patronizing, much?

As for the rest, please read my response to elskuligr, above.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

Patronizing, much?

Nope. Realistic. Childbirth is awful, and raising children is hard, hard, hard. A sixteen-year-old is not well-equipped, socially or mentally or emotionally. I'm not saying that a sixteen year old girl can't raise a child, but it really isn't a great situation. Even older women usually don't have much of a clue about what it's really like - they have an idealised view of childbirth and motherhood. I'm not exempt. I've seen many of the horrors that childbirth has to offer, and seen many of the difficulties experienced by friends who have children. Yet still I have this little belief that when it's my turn, everything will be okay, and I'll have perfect, healthy babies who'll sleep at night and not get sick, and not hate me when they're teenagers. But I'm old enough not to base any life-changing decisions on such fantasies.

Patronizing

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, considering that my mother did it, and that the child was me (and that the childbirth was, by her account, the worst imaginable), I still tell you that you are being patronizing. And sixteen is the time for life-changing decisions. When did you make the decision to be a doctor?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

What is more, you do not seem to realize that you are arguing against yourself. Raising a baby is indeed extraordinarily hard work. At the age of 43, having to look after my sister's child for a few hours, it was borne in on me that I would never be able to make any kind of decent father again. I was simply too old to give the creature the energy it demanded. And I realized that mother nature knew what she was doing when she made women most fertile between 16 and 24: it is probably the only time in life when a person can really afford the terrible expenditure of energy that looking after even one baby, let alone more, requires. Anyone who puts off having a child till they are 35/40 are expecting to be rich enough to afford a (young) nanny or other expensive forms of part-time care. When you are my age, you will understand that the notion of having a baby at 40 without being rich enough to employ someone to do most of the work is much more destructive than that of having it when you are young, strong and bursting with energy.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I find this article horrifying. I have to agree with privatemaladict below that these girls made a stupid decision. They're reducing 'creating life' to a schoolyard pact. Personally, I hope they keep the kids and end up realizing what a stupid decision they made.

The same people who tried to scare us with the fear of being hobbled to babies for life also informed us, in the same breath, that the notion of jobs for life is an outdated superstition

Well, I for one do believe in the former (in relation to myself anyway) but I'd love a job for life. It's why I'm aiming for the public service. I have more of a chance of staying at a job for life in there than the private sector.

Girls - with a few exceptions in whose personal history it is all too easy to read the emotional reasons - intensely love babies.

I do know women who had perfectly happy childhoods who don't want babies. They're not intensely ambitious either. They just honestly don't like babies much.

These girls know that in nine times out of ten, what will give their lives continuity and content will not be the ever-changing, mostly frustrating, sometimes dangerous and unwelcoming, reality of work, but their families; that their real life is apt to be at home, with a husband or partner if they are lucky, but with a baby anyway. And like young people across the world, they are impatient to start.

Children do not necessarily create contentment in your life any more than work necessarily creates contentment. It all depends on the individual person. It would be interesting to do a study on this though. It would be interesting to interview twenty year olds to see what they believe would make them content in life, and then interview them twenty years later to see if it's changed.

Although, personally, contentment is not a goal I'm aiming for. I want to live an interesting life. Contentment sounds a bit bland to me.

And personally, I do believe that children should have a parent (or somebody, at least, if you're rich enough to afford a good nanny, then kudos) at home taking care of them full-time for at least the first five years. But I also believe this parent should be the person who earns less money, and/or is more equipped to take care of the child. I do not believe that this is necessarily the woman, especially in circumstances where the woman would make a lot more money and be able to provide for the family better. There have been studies done saying that children do better later in life if university educated parents look after them. And this belief only adds to my desire to not have children. I'm not ready to make that sacrifice should I be the one who earns less money.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

While, I'd agree that having babies earlier is better for health and energy reasons, I do remember reading articles that women who become mothers before the age of 17 are at more risk (health-wise) than women in their early twenties. I think it was something like this (http://www.infoforhealth.org/pr/j41/j41chap2_3.shtml) article, but I'm not sure whether it's a reputable source. I'm a bit wary of the random Indian reference in there.

Re: Patronizing

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

(I hope if nobody minds if I butt in here...)

People might make the decision of what to study between the ages of 16-18, but how many people change their mind? How many people end up switching degrees? How many people switch majors? How many people end up in a job that they never wanted or expected to be in?

That kind of life-changing decision isn't permanent. Generally, a baby is permanent, especially if you plan on actually looking after it! You couldn't just decide a year down the track that you really didn't want it after all. There's always adoption, I guess, but still, I think my point still stands.

Most sixteen year olds aren't mature enough to make that kind of decision. They don't have a clear idea of the consequences. The fact it might have turned out well for you doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of sixteen year olds who got pregnant and ended up giving it away or being irresponsible parents because they just couldn't deal with it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are too honest for your own good. Your reply is so full of the words "personally" and "for my part" and "I know women who", that it becomes clear that you are not really able to contradict my statement as to the NORMAL behaviour of human beings. All of us deviate in different ways, and I think you are probably grateful that you come much closer to the human average than I do in the matter of anger. But your own experience is not an answer to anything, and, as such, has no more universal validity than that of any other girl - or sixteen.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I know I can't generalize about the normal behavior of humans. I don't want to. Generalizations make me really uncomfortable.

However, I would say that you really couldn't make the generalization as to the 'normal' behavior of human beings either. Not unless you can come up with studies to back it up or something.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are too honest for your own good. As for health, I would be curious to hear how my mother (who had me at 16, my sister at 17, and my brother at 21) fits in - she looks a good ten years younger than her 62, and I don't remember her being seriously ill in the last ten or fifteen years at least. (But then, she comes from a very long-lived family, in which centenarians aren't uncommon.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Heck no. I will make one generalization: sociological studies always prove what they want to prove. My view of human normality is based on what has been normal for humans down the centuries - and I think that we would agree that if it had been normal for humans to suffer from anger such as mine, the human race would have been extinct for a while now.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I'm just in a rather analytical mood. I blame my thesis. Most of the time, I really do choose my words carefully and try not to make generalizations and try to be critical (even of articles I'm using to try to back up my point!) But hey, get me angry, and I can be as irrational and dishonest as the next person! :p

Well I think that article really implied that 16 year olds were more likely to have health problems. But if your mother was a healthy 16 year old who had enough red meat and no real health problems and had mostly passed puberty, and had good doctors, then she would have been fine. Same as a 40 year old who ate correctly, was healthy, fit, etc, would probably be fine having a kid as well. Most of those statistics go on the 'normal' person, and yeah, the normal 20 year old would be far better equipped energy and health wise to deal with a baby. However, I would weigh that up against the fact 20 year olds are rather irresponsible (generally, obviously there are many exceptions!) and while having a baby may make them more mature, I would honestly prefer they wait five years and grow up first. I've seen too many 20 year olds leave their keys, wallets, laptops lying around randomly, or abandon friends when they're bored. I'd really not want to see how they deal with a baby when they realise that it's not all fun, smiles and baby showers.

Re: Patronizing

[fpb.livejournal.com]

How many people switch degrees? Only the people to whom the choice of degree - or even the choice to study in college - had not been a life-changing choice. Not all life-changing choices concern degrees. Nor do all people make such choices. But those who do, mostly make them at sixteen. (Mostly, not necessarily always. But definitely mostly.) I knew by sixteen where I was going in terms of studies and interests; including the painful choice not to go back to music. And as long as I have known Natalie, she has always known she wanted to be a doctor, and has made many efforts and sacrifices towards that goal. Those, to us, were life-changing decisions.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And how many irresponsible 16-years-old are more responsible at 20 or at 40? I do not think people change that much, and, alas, I have met any amount of selfish, careless, me-first old folks. Those included, even-more-alas, a number of parents.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Well that's one theory. :p

I think it's difficult not to end up there if you start with a hypothesis. But if you start trying to do an exploratory study, and you're intensely aware of your own biases (as in you state them at the beginning of your report) and you're also an objective person... then it can reasonably objective! (I'm actually doing an essay on whether sociology can ever be as accurate and precise as the natural sciences! I do believe it is possible, but not probable in the near future)

Hmm. I think your anger issues have gotten better recently. Your writing seems slightly... different to how it was before. I can't quite put my finger on it though. And honestly, I think a lot of people suffer from that kind of anger. It's anger management that's important. :p

Oh and to answer the point, how do you know what's normal for humans down the centuries? These ideas would have to be based on *something* whether it's from personal experience, novels, historical accounts, or 'biased' sociological studies.

Re: Patronizing

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

What kind of degree would be a life-changing decision? I don't really see that big a difference between studying med and studying, say, astrophysics. Sacrifices? I might not have been paying attention, but I don't think I've noticed anything on her journal ... Not any more than the average uni student anyway. Of course, if I'm wrong, then this is a bit embarrassing. *hides*

I've known since the age of twelve exactly what degree I wanted and exactly what job I wanted. I ended up in the degree and am working towards the job. However, the reasons I want the job have changed slightly.

My ideas at the age of sixteen weren't as well thought-out as mine now. I didn't have enough life experience, for one!

I just don't believe the average sixteen year old is any more or less mature than I was at that age. And I wouldn't want the rest of my life affected by one decision I made back then.

Re: Patronizing

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You don't understand me. It's not the kind of degree, but the kind of commitment. A man or woman may drift into a job because his family has always been in that area, or because it's easy, or socially rewarding, or fashionable. (Thanks to certain TV shows, British universities today are bulging at the seams with students in forensic medicine or forensic chemistry.) On the other hand, a certain number of us knows from early on that we are made for a certain kind of work. This is called a vocation, that is, a calling. You and I have it, but plenty of our college colleagues did not, and I am sure you can think of some. Or maybe someone's real calling is to be a wife or husband and to raise children together, in which case work is always going to be secondary and mostly important only to pay the bills.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping at least some of them! I would agree that some people wouldn't change, but I do think that 'some' (that's such a vague term, but I obviously can't put a percentage on it!) of them will change. I mean, it's called 'growing up' for a reason. At the age of sixteen, hormones tend to rule us a bit more than at the age of 25. Even if we know what's right and wrong, we don't necessarily follow it.

Those included, even-more-alas, a number of parents.

Mmm. Imo, parents should be made to pass some sort of parenting class. This would be difficult to implement though. But a good theoretical idea. Some parents don't know the first thing about looking after a baby. And not all of them will read a book to get the information. Society seems to believe we're inbuilt with some sort of parenting radar.

I really don't think there's anything wrong with being selfish as long as you don't bring another life in the world. If you're just looking out for yourself in the world, that's fine. You'll probably end up with no friends, but it's your choice. But if you have a baby (which is one of the few decisions that is completely free and open to us without any restrictions!) then you're bringing a helpless dependent in the world, who should be considered first in your life because they are entirely dependent on you.

Re: Patronizing

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry! I get you now. :)

I still don't believe that the women in the article made that kind of commitment though. The article made it sound like they just drifted into it due to peer pressure. I mean, if a sixteen year old thought it out and was financially and emotionally capable of looking after a child, then I wouldn't say anything. But making a pact with your friends? It doesn't sound like they thought it out at all.

(Thanks to certain TV shows, British universities today are bulging at the seams with students in forensic medicine or forensic chemistry.)

Yeah, same with our universities. I love watching shows like NCIS and CSI but I know that it's no more realistic than Robert Ludlum is at portraying the spy business!

ANU has so many students who want to end up in DFAT. Every second Arts/Law student wants to go and be a diplomat. Even if they wouldn't be suited.

I'm sane enough to realise that I'd be a horrible diplomat. I'm too fond of being honest. Too bad, because it does sound like a cool job!