2023-05-14 11:44:00
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, the day we celebrate our moms. However, this celebration raises more and more questions. Does this day maintain the myth of a “traditional” family? Does becoming a mother really allow you to fulfill yourself in life? Are women still under pressure to become mothers? It was one of the debates on the show “It’s not every day on Sunday”.
Between 30 and 40% of young Western women do not want to have children. A non-desire which can be seen in the Belgian birth figures, which have been falling since the 1960s. But why do women want fewer children today? Is there still social pressure in our society?
It was one of the debates on the show “It’s not every day on Sunday” this afternoon. To talk about it, Bettina Zourli, activist and creator of the hashtag “I don’t want a child” and Anne-Sophie Crosetti, sociologist, were the guests of Christophe Deborsu and Audrey Leunens.
Bettina Zourli, 32, created an Instagram account “I don’t want children”. She campaigns for every woman to have the choice to have one or not. “I am not opposed, nor in favor of not having more children, but I am for the fact that everyone has a space for reflection to have real free will and that we distribute the roles better and that that is not a potential source of discrimination for women“, she explains on the set of the show.
Today, there is still this idea of child’s duty
She denounces in particular a social pressure, still well anchored in our society. And if this subject is still taboo, more and more women are expressing themselves thanks to social networks, like Bettina via her dedicated account: “I want to share this word on the networks because there are still many women who feel this pressure and who do not really have the choice to have children because they feel that it is obligatory. Qu whether we have children or not, we all undergo maternal pressure, namely the pressure to have children in a certain context“.
A few months ago, Bettina made a radical decision and decided to have her tubes tied. “It’s a personal desire, I’ve never had the desire to have a child since I was little. And suddenly I no longer wanted to bear the contraceptive load, I wanted to be freed from this possibility. I feel very fulfilled since I had this operation”she admits.
Having children today is a source of potential exacerbation of inequalities
But why do women want fewer children? For Anne-Sophie Crosetti, there are several explanations: “Obviously, there is a feminist reason. Since we have had access to contraception since the 1970s, we can make the choice and have the intentionality or not to have children. There are also political reasons and ecological: we see that we have ecological problems in the world and therefore we have to think about the future of these children”, details the sociologist and researcher at the ULB and the FNRS.
And like Bettina, there are women who do not feel the desire for it: “And then, there are women who don’t want it, so they don’t have to find a reason because they simply didn’t want it. Today, we have the means for these women- there live their non-maternity”.
In France, 30% of women between the ages of 18 and 49 do not want children
For Bettina, “there is no right or wrong choice”, since it is a decision specific to each woman. “What is needed is to continue the diversification of voices so that everyone has access to real freedom of choice because today there is still this idea of child’s duty”, she denounces.
She adds: “Having children today is a source of potential exacerbation of inequalities between men and women in a heterosexual couple. There may be a shelving in the company too with less possibility of promotion for the woman”.
According to a study of 2,000 people by the VUB in 2018, 13% of Belgians aged between 25 and 35 do not want children. Among our French neighbours, 30% of women between the ages of 18 and 49 do not want children, according to a study carried out in 2022 by Ifop.
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