Let's take a closer look at that bile. Is there bile at all?It was a beautiful piece. Honest and non-judgmental toward any other choice. Why the intensity of this bile? https://t.co/mB22zDYLoH
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) May 9, 2021
I would like to thank this headline/byline combo for helping me set a record for the quickest "gross, pass" I've ever uttered in my life.
Bile is anger. "Gross, pass" is disgust. One might perhaps base an entire career on examining the anger/disgust distinction, but I think the key distinction is the direction of the negative emotion. Anger urges you to take aggression at the source of your outrage. Disgust sends you away. You shun. It's the difference between wanting to attack what you hate and wanting to make sure you don't get any of that on you. Marcotte experiences disgust — "gross" — and immediately shuns — "pass." Her measure of the intensity of disgust is the shortness of the space between the emotion and the reaction. She's open and proud of the absence of rational thought. It's a feeling and a decision all at once — "gross, pass."
Having decided not to expose herself to the text of the article, Marcotte is free to enjoy herself: "The funniest part" — funniest part of the headline — "is framing 25 like it's some daringly young age. The average age of first childbirth is 26." Is that really funny? I haven't read the op-ed yet myself. I saw it, did a quick skim, and decided it wasn't bloggable, but I didn't think — like Marcotte — that my rejection of it was bloggable (i.e., tweetable). I'm going to read it in a minute, but I want to say that Marcotte comes off as privileged. I'm guessing that if the average age is 26, that includes a lot of very young women who are not spending their late teens and early 20s acquiring higher education and beginning career, that is, are not the sort of women who are reading NYT op-eds about timing their reproductive life.
The Marcotte tweet cannot be clicked to get to the op-ed, so let me give you the link: "I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait" by Elizabeth Bruenig. Starting to read it, I see what made me reject it before. It's written at privileged NYT readers who care about the upper-middle class setting of child rearing. The writer finds herself, at age 27, "among a cordial flock of Tory Burch bedecked mothers in their late 30s and early 40s." Sorry, I don't know the brand, but I understand the nudge. "Tory Burch" is telling me these people are upper-middle class. The average age of pregnancy among "Tory Burch bedecked" women is not — I'm quite sure — 26.
When my husband and I compared notes after the [birthday party], he recounted a sly line of questioning spun by a curious partygoer that he thought was aimed at determining how, given our ages, we could afford the ritzy preschool that our daughter attended with theirs.
Speaking of sly... you've let us know your kid goes to a ritzy preschool. Okay. Well, women who plan their reproduction think about the economics. There's going to need to be some info about how you can have your children young and still give them the benefits of an upper-middle class lifestyle. In Bruenig's case, this preschool was free to those living inside Washington, D.C.
Bruenig is clearly talking about highly educated women — women who aspire to affluence:
A 2012 Pew survey found that while 62 percent of women with a high school diploma had given birth by the age of 25, only 18 percent of women with master’s degrees or higher had done the same. In fact, a solid 20 percent of master’s degree holders celebrated their first babies at 35 or older. Unsurprisingly, these numbers track with household income. As of 2018, more than half of women living on less than $25,000 per year between the ages of 40 and 45 report having given birth by the age of 25; among women banking $100,000 or more, the share was a touch over 30 percent....
Highly educated professionals living in major urban centers — in other words, people like me, a lily-white full-time writer with a master’s degree living within rail distance of New York City — tend to postpone childbirth until their late 20s and early 30s....
Yes, she called herself "lily-white." She's talking to white women. But you're not supposed to worry that she's afraid of the so-called "replacement" because she's made it clear — in material I've elided — that she loathes right-wingers.
While my husband and I were never in abject poverty, we understood what it meant to be precariously employed and at the start of our careers.... Reasonable concern about having children before establishing oneself could theoretically be remedied with a generous policy approach....
But what of having children — or getting married, for that matter — before establishing oneself?... When I got pregnant, my husband was a fledgling lawyer and I was a greenhorn journalist....
Once you're pregnant and decided to go through with it, all these economic matters will dissolve into a kaleidoscope of love:
When you have a baby, you do turn toward your child — that “relieved and joyful desertion” may eventually affect your friends, but it first affects yourself. What I didn’t understand — couldn’t have, at the time — was that deserting yourself for another person really is a relief.... My days began to unfold according to her schedule, that weird rhythm of newborns, and the worries I entertained were better than the ones that came before: more concrete, more vital, less tethered to the claustrophobic confines of my own skull.
For this member of a generation famously beset by anxiety, it was a welcome liberation....
You catch glimpses of yourself in time, when life shines through your inner world like a prism, illuminating all the sundry colors you contain. It isn’t possible to disentangle the light from the color, the discovery of change from the change itself.... But she peered up at me from the shadow of my shoulder, and I could see the umber of my own eyes taking shape in hers. There I am, I thought, there I am.
Ha ha. Too bad Marcotte didn't read through to all that. I'll bet she'd find the "sundry colors" and "umber of my own eyes" even funnier than the notion that 26 is a daringly young age to have your first baby.
All these women who are thinking so hard about where on the timeline of life to place their unleashing of reproductive power? Don't think, let it happen, behold your miracle, and exult in your liberation from "the claustrophobic confines of my own skull."
Ironically, that reminds me of Marcotte. As I said above: She's open and proud of the absence of rational thought.
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10 comments:
Terry writes:
I will argue that the ‘engagement’ that signals anger is Marcotte’s tweet itself, along with the comment about the ‘funny part’, which is the part which is obviously true to any professional. She wants to show that there is something wrong with Breunig, and she knows that she has an audience for that among her twitter followers.
Chanie writes: "Isn't the bile this example of very public expression of disgust? It's one thing to be personally disgusted by something or someone. It's another to go tell everyone that you are. And when you do, you cross the line into anger and hate."
Wild Swan writes: "I liked the Tory Burch clothes but, all the same, the patterns looked like designs for hard-wearing rugs and beach-cottage curtains. Studying the site (which is populated with thin, beautiful, young women wearing, as I say, cleverly designed rug and curtain patterns and walking-while-thin or exercising-while-thin or vacationing,still-thin in bland up-scale background patterns) I felt the whole scene just missed being a CGI rendering rather than photography and that this was intentional. So then it seemed as though this Mom was trying to fit self-with-baby into that self-with-thin patterning. And, as Amanda Marcotte saw at once, it can't be done. "Toward human" can't fit into "toward CGI-RPI." "Gross, pass." I agree that Amanda is expressing beachy disgust, not bile; but Sullivan responds with bile to everything so disgust = bile for him."
Tom writes:
"All these women who are thinking so hard about where on the timeline of life to place their unleashing of reproductive power? Don't think, let it happen, behold your miracle, and exult in your liberation from "the claustrophobic confines of my own skull."
Normally I'm open to mocking and or deploring those who are " open and proud of the absence of rational thought." But when it comes to kids rational thought is an impediment. Whether you are a Christian ("be fruitful and multiply") or an atheistic Darwinian, having kids is why we exist as a species. After all, Darwin isn't talking about survival of the most fit individual, but survival of the ones best able to pass on their genes. And whether ordained by God or the impersonal forces of evolution, we did not arrive at our reason for existence by rational means.
People who plan out their childbearing to the 'best' possible time are treating children as a commodity (and one hopes that after the actual arrival of their bundle of joy they realize how wrong that thought is). It makes sense to plot out major purchases like a house or car based on the economics and any affect the purchase may have on your ability to meet other personal goals. But children are different and I think you should have kids and work the rest out as best you can.
Plus, getting the kids out of the house while your still in your prime is golden And looking back, 40's are the prime of life.
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"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read" -Groucho Marx
Temujin writes:
I recognized Amanda Marcotte's comments as bile. Disgust. She's disgusted at the very topic of having babies, let alone while in your 20's. And hers is the attitude that is prevalent among our young, especially the women who have been trained to defer baby making for that try at a VP slot in their firm. Every wonder why men die younger? It's because we've always had to strive for those VP slots, or something like it. The stress has a lifelong effect. It beats up the body, the mind, the heart. We'll see it in this generation of women. You are already seeing it in many of them leaving their key positions early on, tired of the fight, the stress of it all. I predict you will see it in the skyrocketing cases of heart attacks in women.
But back to babies. My mom had her first of three children at age 19, and that was not uncommon for her generation. And generations earlier had children earlier. We also died earlier then than we do now. And our expanded time of life has allowed us to stretch out those key baby making years to allow for our corporate pursuits. However, biology has not changed much over time, and women's ability to create eggs, slows over time, until it ceases- as it always has. So there is a clock ticking for all women in that respect.
I'm sure Amanda Marcotte could care less about the fact that, as a nation and as a culture (Western Civilization) we are not producing enough to sustain who we are. We are falling short of replacement rate all over the Western world, as well as Japan. And though the info has been around for the past few years, it (finally) made the mass media only a week or two ago. It's clearly either not on Amanda Marcotte's radar, or she just does not give hoot. Which is fine. She's allowed her choice. As is the author of the article.
But personally, I find the author brave and what she had to say, important. I've never found Ms. Marcotte to be either.
Birches writes:
Hi, I just wanted to relate my experience in a more middle class setting. I had my first child at 24 which was perfectly normal in my religious setting. It wasn't until I put my oldest in kindergarten that I realized how much younger I was than most of the mom's. One of my daughter's friend's parents were young like us, but many were in their forties. I continued to have kids and when a new one went to kindergarten, I was able to compare myself to the other moms. There were more moms closer to my age with the one I had at 26 and often these mom's had a second child that matched up well with the child I had at 29. But there were more first time moms in that third child's cohort who were utterly shocked I had two older kids at our school. By the time I had #4 at 32, most of the older women gravitated toward me at kindergarten orientation and treated me like a peer until I mentioned I had older kids. The younger mom's definitely started looking super young. There's a wide divide in ages, probably depending on what neighborhood you live in. Now I will be taking my last child (so far) to kindergarten this fall. I had her at 34. I wonder what that crowd will look like. I will be surprised if there are many women older than me.
Kate writes:
I am not an E Bruenig fan. Let me state that up front.
Like Marcotte, I also think that crowing about a pregnancy at 25 as early is not daring. However, what's worse -- the "gross, pass" -- is the gooey love stuff. As you mention, "umber of my own eyes"? Ugh. Pregnancy is sold poorly by this. Women become warriors through childbirth. This is the test of our mettle, the forging. Look at the women joining protest movements. We want to fight, we want to grind. We want tempering. We've just lost the knowledge that childbirth is our war. It's physically brutal (especially if a woman forgoes drugs), and mentally breaks us down to our foundation. This is why women avoid it. It's HARD. To try to persuade women it's worthwhile by tossing a carrot -- you'll feel such lurve for the baby -- is not working. No one's fooled. Challenge women. Let the Marcottes of the world know that only the strongest women come out alive. Embrace the suck. Cowboy up. Take that "sundry colors" pabulum and peddle it elsewhere.
Heh.
- Kate
Nancy writes:
"Ann, I don’t remember which post it was where you commented that you didn’t know who “the Bruenigs” were. I think it was in conjunction with an article about Sullivan and Greenwald. The knives are out for all of them, at least for Liz, not sure about husband Matt.
In Marcottes thread she categorizes Bruenig’s sexism as Shalfly-esque and that her take isn’t smart and is “nakedly pandering to the fantasies of pathetic men”. I’d say she is angry."
Thanks for remembering that. Here's that old post.
By the way, the husband Bruenig is a lawyer, so the wife's acting as though she was taking a big leap having a baby before she'd worked out the economics is kind of annoying. He was a lawyer and she was a new journalist, so it was actually fine. She got tuition free preschool because they lived in Washington -- in a 2-bedroom condo that they owned. They didn't qualify for "welfare," though she calls the free tuition welfare.
Washington Blogger writes: "I had my politically formative years going to a liberal school in the Seattle area in the early 80's. I bought pretty fully into the religion of selfishness and avoiding over-population. So much so that we did not have our first child until I was 38. Nothing daring for us, that is fur sure. We wanted our freedom and loved our (though modest for our area) DINK status. Even when we did have our first child, she was adopted. We still weren't going to be contributors to the population bomb. So I understand where the author is coming from. 6 children later I see things so much more differently. I don't see the umber of my own eyes taking shape in thiers. They are all racially different than me. But it is lines like that one that suggest to me that she has still overcome the selfishness that seems to pervade her culture. Career first, children are a planned acquisition (eloquently put by Tom), children are copies of yourself . It gets me wondering how treating children like a car or a house will affect your long term relationship. Children seem to have a good grasp of their value in their parent's eyes. There was an organisation I received a small grant from on my 6th adoption called "Chose and dearly loved." That sums up what I think is really what children should be about. I adore my children, but never spoiled them. The 4 adults I have are still very close, which I attribute to them knowing where they stood in our priorities."
Tom sends a link to "Shame: This Woman Gave Life To A Beautiful Child, Completely Missing Out On Soul-Crushing Corporate Career."
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