Postpartum or Prosperity?

By Audrey Hwang

Society thinks… Society believes…

The opinions of others have always played a consistent role in how people decide what to do with their lives. Children become doctors to please their parents, politicians change view points to please voters, and girls change all of their actions to what is socially acceptable.

While in some aspects, women have recently lost their rights to choice, in other aspects, the power of their choice has grown.

Women in the newer generation don’t base their lives off of what society thinks is best for them, they do what they know is best for them. This power to choose has been especially prevalent in the choices women make regarding marriage and motherhood.

The national fertility rate is on a continuous decline, falling 3% from 2022-2023. 

45% of young women (age 18 to 34) without children say they still want to have kids at some point in the future.

In 2021, the U.S. marriage rate was 14.9 marriages in the last year per 1,000 women, down from 16.3 a decade earlier.

What's the reasoning behind the decline in statistics? Is it the increasing number of women in the workplace? Is it the higher education these women are earning? Is it the women finally realizing that their life isn't defined by a marriage?

Since the very beginning of time, women have always been viewed as submissive, living in the shadows of their father when they are younger and later on their partner during womanhood. As the newer generations see a rise in activists arguing for women's rights or simply striving for independence, the number of women who rely on marriages decrease as a side effect.

As women discover independence that they never had, they begin prioritizing themselves over the familial wants that society forces on them.

But the change in expected values doesn't come easily, traditional thinkers still believe that a woman's work place is the house and her job is to have children and live for her husband.

If she doesn't want children and wants to focus on her career, she's selfish. If a man doesn't want children and wants to focus on his career, he's successful.

Her job isn't to be a mother. She's not a machine to incubate babies. Her choice to start a family is completely up to her.

Society shames women who go out of the norm and want to be leaders rather than traditional wives.

Why should it be normalized for women to stay at home and clean after her husband rather than achieve her dreams? Her worth to society isn’t dependent on her marriage or the amount of children she has at the age of 30. 

No one remembers Cleopatra for her children, they remember her for her success.

But even for successful women who do have children, society finds a way to shame them as well.

Margot Robbie, one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood and the owner of the production company behind the highest-grossing movie by a female director, is one case of this that has come into the spotlight recently.

In July of last year, Margot Robbie was first spotted with her baby bump. During a trip to Italy with her partner, photos taken by the paparazzi made its way onto social media. Rather than being supported and congratulated online, fans flooded social media with disgusting comments on her body.

“How does it look so bad”

“Body ruined”

“Shes ruined”

“Ruined my day”

“I hate that child”

“Shes swollen all over”

So, when a woman places her career over a family she’s villainized but when she does choose to start a family she’s body shamed?

It seems like modern day society is shaping up to find flaws in any decision that a woman makes about her body. She’s expected to be perfect, but when her body changes from having children, none of her prior worth matters. 

‘Mom bods’ are looked down on in society and women post-partum are told to get back into shape quickly, go to the gym every week and go onto a calorie deficit, whereas ‘dad bods’ are praised in society.

Double standards for men and women are never acceptable. You can not blame a woman for gaining weight when her body has gone through massive physical changes while raising an eight to ten pound child in her.

If anything, a woman should be praise for even having the ability to create human life from inside of her. Society cant seem to make up its mind on what it wants a woman to be. She can’t be too independent but she also can’t let pregnancy ruin her body.

What choice is left for her then?

Anything she does is frowned upon.

The only way we can take a step into the correct direction is learning how to respect a woman. If she chooses to focus on her career, that is an admirable trait that not everyone possesses. She is hard working, dedicated, and intelligent. If she chooses to have a family, she is strong, loving, and still as beautiful as she was before her body grew life inside of her. 

There is no reason for society to criticize every choice a woman makes. It’s time women start receiving the praise they should have never lost in the first place.