Thursday, April 08, 2004

Sticks and Stones

Carrots alone won't work; it's time for the stick

Why give fathers paternity leave? They'll just sit around and waste it

of the three instances of unfilial behaviour, not having descendants is the worst

Right, these things make me want to go out there and get pregnant. What it makes me want to do is to take a stick, rouse an angry rabble of women and head over to Parliament House and break the little legs of all these sexist, stuck in the 19th century chauvinists that run our country.

Who? Who in their right mind would have kids out of intimidation? Get real? C'mon!

All this makes me angry. It makes me feel like, to spite the damn government, my mother, my mother in law and my sisters in law for putting pressure on me, I shall have dogs and cats instead. That's my instinctive response to orders. To contravene them with utmost defiance and defiance is something I am good at. I was born with a "guai lan*" face and I know how to show it at its best.

If I don't listen to my mother, whom I have some reverence and respect for,why would I listen to a bunch of men who want to scare me into having kids? What next, throw me in prison for not having kids? Bring it on. This debate was fine to have when it made sense, but when such draconian measures are threatened, it gets a tad ridiculous.

Isn't it also indicative of how things are done in this country? You give us so little choice and when we choose to exercise it, you beat us down for it? Women in Singapore don't have kids because it's too hard and it's hard beause of the society we live in. Our resentment for that is there but it does not require a maniacal response like this does, plainly because we chose it to be such. We could settle for a lower standard of living, we could be less ambitious in the work place, we could dream less. But we choose not to, because we got to where we are because we are good at what we do and I'll be damned if anyone made me settle for anything less.

My dad said to me last night that I should learn how to be a housewife and I turned around to him and reminded him that when I graduated from uni, he told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to be a housewife because he spent so much money educating me. No shit. And I spent 19 years working to get to where I am now and I'm not becoming a housewife just so that I can have kids. My father means well. The rest of the eggheads who have shit for brains don't. To us, kids aren't a commodity or an asset to prop up a country, kids are kids and if we wanted them, it was a decision made by two people, not the rest of the society or the government. Wake up your ideas!

No balding forty year old man who hasn't changed a diaper in his life is going to beat me into submission and tell me that I'm close to committing a crime against the state because I don't want to have kids. Incidentally, I do want kids, sometime in the future but it'll be our terms, not theirs. If they want to butt in, in the words of the Molly's Mother in
Rabbit Proof Fence " Tell Mr Neville, if he wants half-caste children, he can go make his own"

My sentiments exactly and I'm sure I don't stand alone in blowing a huge raspberry at our ignoramus policy makers and say " SCREW YOU!"


*A Hokkien term used to describe someone who is malicious or an irritant, often someone who manages to stir up trouble over trifling matters as defined by The Coxford Singlish Dictionary

Ondine tossed this thought in at 15:41

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