It didn't surprise me at all that NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was asked in her first media conference about the fact she didn't have children. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, for a woman over a certain age (30 seems about the go now), her motherhood status is still seen as the most important thing about her.
This is the case for women who don't have children and for those who do, and is used as a wedge to divide us. Mothers are portrayed as smug, lazy and sanctimonious, while those who've chosen not to have children are seen as selfish, lazy (notice a pattern here?) and frivolous.
Anytime the conversation comes up, we flock to our respective corners, ready to defend our position and decry how unfair it is that we're being judged. And it absolutely is unfair. But the awful truth is that neither mothers nor non-mothers can escape the judgment. We are still publicly defined by our motherhood status, regardless of whether we have children or not.
For all of my 20s and the first few years of my 30s, I was happily not a mother. I hadn't decided if I wanted to have children, and wasn't sure if I'd be able to due to my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I was happily child-free, with a good job and a pretty excellent life. But still, I got the question repeatedly: are you going to have children? Whether it was by great-aunts at family reunions, or friends who had had children, or men on the internet who felt it was just grounds for criticism, my child-free status was a matter of public conversation.
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Then, my pill failed and, despite my PCOS, I got pregnant. Suddenly, I had to make a decision about motherhood pretty quickly. And late last year, I gave birth to my daughter. I switched corners.
But I have spent most of my life without children and without any specific ideas of having them, and that experience and those memories didn't disappear the moment I gave birth. I remember how awful it was to feel judged for not having children and how I was constantly expected to justify that decision.
But I was shocked to discover it was no better on the other side.
Now, my status as a mother has become the public fodder. People ask if I'm planning to have another child. People tell me what I'm doing right and wrong. While most of my child-free friends have been amazing and supportive, some have made a conscious decision to end our friendships. Men on the internet tell me to get back to my child rather than engaging in political conversation. I struggle to get to events that aren't pram-accessible. And many, many people have told me I talk about motherhood too much.
This is the horrible truth about the motherhood-status question: there is no right answer, and believing the other "side" has it easier pits us against each other. It divides women and dilutes our power.
Perhaps cruelest of all is the impact on those who wish they could have children, but can't. These conversations usually ignore women who want to be mothers but can't. Some women are unable to conceive, some are unable to carry a fetus to term, some have conditions (including mental illnesses) that preclude them having a child, and some can't afford to have children. The assumption that not having children is always a choice ignores the realities faced by many women.
Asking about a woman's status as a mother in a professional context is awful for everyone: for the person who has children, for the one who doesn't by choice, and for the one who doesn't for reasons outside her control. We are not enemies in this fight: we are on the same side. The side that says women should be supported for their choices, and also supported when they don't have a choice.
That means affordable contraception and access to abortion services and affordable childcare and financial support for child-rearing. It means flexibility for women to return to the workplace after having children, and flexibility for women in the workplace who don't have children but have other interests, commitments and responsibilities. If we sort ourselves politically by our motherhood status, we accept the falsehood that it defines us, and we dilute our political power.
Children or not, by choice or by not, we are not merely the sum of our reproductive history. There isn't a right answer to whether or not you have children, because it's the wrong question.