Is it ‘society’ pressuring people to procreate - or is it other people's projections?

The 'pressure' to get married or have kids is usually about other people's needs and fears - not mine

Me, walking in Devon in Feb. Thought it had been a while since I put a photo of me up, so here you go!

Hello! If you are new here, thank you very much for signing up - and if you’re not new, thank you very much for sticking around! I’m about to go on a retreat (meditation and dancing near Glastonbury) and so next weekend I won’t be writing to you.

As I sit here at my desk in north London, a pink sky is lighting up some lush, white blossom on the tree opposite my flat. I’m alone and enjoying the quiet of my room at dusk. It’s kind of romantic, and also real: I’ve just reported several bags of fly-tipped rubbish on the corner of the street. But the blossom rises above it.

Anyway, on to what I want to say today, which is about why people ‘pressure’ me, you and others to get married or have kids. I’d love to know what you think of this subject (you can comment below).

Here’s my take.

People often talk about how ‘society’ pressures people to get married and/or have kids. But I don’t know whether whatever society is (Other People? Things You Read Online? The Government?) has actually put pressure on me directly to do these things.

My parents never pushed me to get married or procreate, and I don’t have a large family so haven’t had endless cousins’ weddings or christenings or other shindigs to attend where I hear the pressure is possibly most acute. And, as I’m freelance, I haven’t had to endure Bring Your Kids To Work days or Bring Your Spouse To The Christmas Party knees-ups.

(If you’re new here - I always thought I wanted children, but it hasn’t happened. And so I’m exploring the magic of midlife as a childfree/childless woman.)

Instead, I think that it’s mostly projection, not pressure. So, rather than Other People putting any kind of pressure on me to do these – let’s face it, very, very hard things (a: to find the right person to be with and b: to attempt to get pregnant with and then raise a small being with) - they have mainly projected their own shit on to me.

Here are some of the comments, I’ve had about my personal life.

My boss, at drinks to celebrate a colleague’s upcoming wedding years ago (I was in my early thirties): “Lucy, do you think you’ll ever get married?”

My boss was recently remarried, and I wish I’d had the guts to reply: “Yes – and hopefully just the once.”

The vicar who conducted my grandmother’s funeral service in 2016, as we left the church: “You’re a lovely girl, where’s your husband?” Me: “I don’t have one. Know any suitable candidates? Perhaps we could do a deal on the wedding – buy a funeral, get a wedding free?”

Him: Silence.

(Yes, I did actually say this. My grandmother must have been sending me courage and ‘f-you-ness’ from the grave. She never did like that vicar.)

My grandmother’s cleaning lady at my grandmother’s wake: “So, you’re probably more focused on your career than on getting married?” Me: “Not really.” Her: “Oh. You’re too picky, then.” (She was recently divorced.)

A surgeon, before a minor operation a few years ago: “Have you completed your family?” Me: “Well, I haven’t started one.” (To be fair, he probably needed to ask this for medical reasons.)

An acquaintance of my mother’s about two years ago: “What’s your situation?” Me: “I’m a freelance journalist and I live in north London.”

Do all these questions add up to pressure from “society”? I can’t deny that they felt hurtful and annoying at the time. But I wasn’t pissed off because they made me feel a failure, it was more because they amounted to someone else projecting their crappy assumptions on to me, which then required me to deal with them.

At best, I would make a sharp or witty retort to such comments (if I could think of one, or felt brave enough) but at worst, I felt the need to smile through my pain and irritation simply to placate them and not create an uncomfortable situation - for them.

But swallowing my own emotions and not feeling like I could express them was sometimes worse than receiving the comments themselves.

I think people want to be able to ‘place’ others, to put them in boxes, to store them in a part of their brain marked ‘settled and safe.’ If you (well, I) represent an unconventional ‘other,’ somewhere deep inside I think the people who make these remarks are scared.

They are scared because they might have done what was expected of them without properly considering it and maybe deep down they know it but can’t fully admit it.

Maybe they got engaged because years had gone by and people were asking questions and it was ‘about time.’

Perhaps they married because they couldn’t bear the thought of being single, or tried for a baby because their parents wanted grandchildren.

And then with the marriage and the mortgage, they were in too deep to return to what their heart might truly have desired. People push down their longings because to become alive to them might mean opening up to sadness or upending their entire life.

(What do you think? Agree or disagree, I’d love to know.)

And then I come along, an independent woman, who, yes, would like (or would have liked) some of these things, and at the same time is living a pretty good life, actually. Today I went for brunch with my mum, just the two of us. Next to our table were four young children and three adults. That could have been my life, I thought. And I accept that it’s not.

When people make these comments, and I am sure there will be more to come, I’ll try to respond with more truth. “No, it didn’t work out that way,” is a reply I recently heard. I’d love to know if you have good replies to these questions, or better, if you manage to dig into why the questioner has asked…

See you in a couple of weeks.