Successful Childless Women

[JenniferJuniper]

You are reading stuff into my posts that simply isn't there. Nowhere did I suggest I buy into any notion childless women have anything to prove

It may be the way you are wording your comments. Saying "Childless women are capable of not being selfish" is not the same thing as saying "Being childless does not mean a woman is selfish". Your statements imply you believe childless females are selfish, although they can be redeemed by selfless acts.

Being a victim of paternalistic thinking doesn't make one immune from societal brainwashing.

[gezykah]

It may be the way you are wording your comments. Saying "Childless women are capable of not being selfish" is not the same thing as saying "Being childless does not mean a woman is selfish". Your statements imply you believe childless females are selfish, although they can be redeemed by selfless acts.

Being a victim of paternalistic thinking doesn't make one immune from societal brainwashing.

You took that out of context and read stuff into my posts that is not there. Below are my first two posts in their entirety. Both of which address criticism of childless women. There was no implication that I personally believe childless women are by nature selfish and can be redeemed by selfless acts.

As so many of the women people have already listed prove you can be childless and successful not just in the way many fundies imagine where they're self absorbed and only care about superficial things like money but childless women can still devote much of their lives to helping people and making this world a better place.

I did not state or implying any sort of obligation but merely pointed out childless women are capable of not being selfish. I'm 33, don't have kids, and don't know if I ever will. Some of the biggest criticisms I hear are that being childless I am self absorbed and never know true love.

[August]

Cabinet Secretaries:

Condoleeza Rice, Patricia Roberts Harris, Elizabeth Dole, Janet Napolitano, Janet Reno, Gale Norton, Ann Veneman, Barbara Franklin, Ann McLaughlin Korologos, Donna Shalala, Mary Cino...

And that's just the ones on the list that I looked up to verify if they do/did or not. Seems more women who have served in a cabinet do not have children than do. Not sure that is a good thing as it implies that women have a harder time advancing if they do have children which shouldn't be the case.

Politics is a 24/7 job. You can't be slinking off at 5pm to watch a band concert, male or female. It's a shitty life for any staffer's child.

[SPHASH]

Amelia Earhart

[snarkyjan]

Jane Austen

George Eliot

Dorothy Parker

Joan of Arc

Queen Elizabeth I

[RachelB]

Jane Addams. Closer to home, my favorite aunt. (She's not famous, but she taught school for over 30 years and was very good at it.)

[Lillybee]

I don't think happiness plays into fundie thinking about family size. They see each child as an increased chance to see heaven and as a visible reminder to the rest of us that they love and trust God more than they think we do.

The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who teach in my K-12 parochial school are/were successful women. Everyone who comes from the mostly lower middle class/poor, rural community I was raised in owes the SNDdeNs a huge debt.

You just took me on a walk down memory lane, those were the nuns who taught me in grammar school.

[alba]

To these people I'd say balderdash! If you have ever owned a dog you know true love (much more so then a kid) :wink-kitty: :wink-kitty:

I've never had a dog, but my maternal instinct kicks in for kittens but not babies. Kittens don't hurt my eardrums ;) And they're so cute :D

I do feel like as a Childfree-by-choice woman I have to justify this choice and prove that I'm not selfish, and I shouldn't have to. There's this assumption, and not just among fundies, that everyone has children and you have to have a good reason NOT to, when I really think it's the other way around. I don't mean that people who want kids should have to justify it to anyone, but it should be an active choice. Having children is a huge responsibility and those children deserve better than to be born to someone who is having children because society or God wants you to.

[August]

those children deserve better than to be born to someone who is having children because society or God wants you to.

QFT

Also, kittens don't slobber and come trained. What's not to love?

[salex]

Again, every woman on this list would also appear on the list of women people like Pat Robertson and others who would fall in the group encouraging "(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." –Pat Robertson

These women would be defined as failures by the people we often snark on specifically because they were successful in their fields but FAILED to have children, marriages, obey a headship well enough, etc. These are the people they blame for the downfall of society (which of course, makes the assumption society is falling)

[GolightlyGrrl]

Let's see...who else...

Coco Chanel

Louisa May Alcott

Ginger Rogers

Rosa Parks

Mary Pickford

Amy Tan

Kathryn Bigelow

Margaret Mitchell

Mary Chapin Carpenter

Shirley Manson

Queen Elizabeth I

Edith Wharton

Georgia O'Keefe

Frida Kahlo

Helen Keller

Zora Neale Hurston

Debbie Harry

Lillian Hellman

Mary Cassatt

Margaret Bourke-White

[Joan of Snarc]

Simone de Beauvoir

Tallulah Bankhead

Dorothy Parker

[lilwriter85]

Bernadette Peters