Abortion, Child-free, and the Cost of Motherhood
Far-right figures whipped up anti-migrant hate to help themselves win seats in the recent local elections, but it’s not just migrants they hate. Here Jess Dalton highlights their anti-choice, anti-feminist rhetoric which they are increasingly emboldened to spew.
Fresh from being elected, Megamind-looking Cllr. Tom O’Donnell had some advice for us ladies: "Our women are only breeding 1.5 or 1.6 children. That's shocking for an Irish woman. We've great women and we want them breeding".
One fears Cllr. O’Donnell’s swollen head may explode when he learns that more and more women simply do not want to have children (1). In fact, his utterances themselves, dear reader, is enough to make one consider being child-free!
A similar tone was adopted by Aontú leader Péadar Tóibín who took to Twitter to lament reports of smaller class sizes, and attempted to link it to the expansion of abortion rights and access.
What is the truth behind all this?
The Rise of Child-Free
Rest assured, Ireland still has the 3rd highest fertility rate across Europe. But it is true; an increasing number of people are choosing to remain child-free, and many couples are choosing to have fewer children.
Increased fertility issues, the cost-of-living crisis, lack of childcare and additional needs support, environmental factors, and anti-child societal norms are all real issues on the rise and facing us, with little to no outrage from the “protect our women” brigade. For them, abortion, the ultimate insult to the patriarchy, is to blame!
For me, as a woman in her mid 20’s, the idea of having a child does not just scare me as much as it fills me with sheer panic. Patriarchal demands set aside, the majority of my friends and I seem to be in a never-ending rat-race. This, paired with an epidemic of loneliness, crises of health, housing and cost of living, I truly cannot imagine adding the pressures of having a child into this already unsavoury capitalist hellscape. Even if I did want to have a child at my age, the current state of societal deprivation would make it impossible to feel supported in doing so.
Rather than sprinting up the corporate ladder to avoid the motherhood penalty (2), an increasing number of people have decided that rearing children is just not for them. This can be due to a litany of reasons such as the cost of motherhood, the pay gap associated with climbing the corporate ladder and being punished for it later once you fall pregnant, others however, feel that parenthood is just simply not for them. Birth rates have been declining since the 1960s thanks to access to contraception and sex education, and with this education came an understanding for some that they felt freer in themselves being child-free (3).
The Cost of Motherhood
Something that is also conveniently left out of the topic of conversation when it comes to increasing the population and child-rearing, is the impact that motherhood has on those who give birth. Not only is it unfair to suggest that those who wish to remain child-free are ‘selfish’, but it also completely ignores the lack of support available to those who want to start a family, as well as the cost of motherhood. Starting a family of course impacts both the relationship, with the average childcare costs now estimated at an eye-watering 9,340 euros a year (4), however, starting a family has always (and under the patriarchy) will always adversely affect women more.
Women are forced to not only worry about the financial costs of motherhood, but they must also worry about the emotional and societal costs of child-rearing. When studying heterosexual relationships, it was revealed that women can be expected to carry out a double shift of both paid and unpaid work. The unpaid work, you might wonder, stipulates expected unpaid emotional labour, which finds that women still perform the majority of housework and childcare duties in the home (5). Despite some couple's best efforts to create an equitable division of labour, the nature of our socio-economic climate means that women are forced to uphold traditional gender roles, by performing hidden emotional labour.
But of course, like anything put forward by the far-right, tackling Ireland’s declining birth rates has little to do with enhancing the lives of parents and children. It represents another push towards a patriarchal authoritarian regime removing the autonomy of women to choose what to do with their bodies and their lives, and confining them to whatever utility they are considered to have by conservative men.
The far-right has been a disaster when it comes to women’s rights. The liberation of women has been demonstrated to be an issue that the far-right is most strongly opposed to. If we wish to advance women’s rights, then we will have to continue to push back against the far-right's efforts to revoke the rights that feminists have fought for years to progress. To craft a better society not just for women but for everyone in our communities, then we must realise that we are stronger together, and socialist feminists must build organisations with socialist feminist values, politics and voices at the fore.
Notes
Why are birth rates falling in Ireland, RTÉ Brainstorm
Why women have to sprint into leadership positions, BBC News
Just some of the reasons women are choosing to be child-free, RTÉ Brainstorm
How childcare costs stack up across Ireland, and Europe, RTÉ Brainstorm
The hidden load: How 'thinking of everything' holds mums back, BBC News