Why You Shouldn't Have Children

            In chapter thirteen of Caitlin Moran’s memoir “How To Be a Woman”, she discusses the constant pressure society puts on women to reproduce. One of the most common questions all women get asked is  “When are you going to have kids?”, and as a reporter, who has interviewed several celebrities, she knows first hand how often this question is being asked. I believe Moran’s main argument is that women shouldn’t have children just because they are feeling the pressure from everyone around them and their ticking biological clocks. With women reminded of their ticking clocks constantly Moran believes that some women have babies “just in case” and later ponder if they would even “have kids at all”. Moran states that before she had children she used to recycle, donate to charity, and call her mother often, and after she had children all of that went to a halt. To me she doesn’t necessarily regret having her children, but wonders if knowing how much of an impact it would make on her everyday life if she would have still had them.

Moran wants women to know that it is not ‘vital’ for them to reproduce. She wants women to know that it is their choice, and if they happen to decide not to have children it is not ‘selfish’ of them as society would say.  Moran mentions that society often views women who are ‘childless’ as ‘rangy lone wolves’ and that they are ‘as dangerous as teenage boys’, and I would have to say that before reading this I didn’t understand why some women chose not to have children. Moran definitely backed up her claims, and has changed my outlook on women who chose not to have children.