Breaking the Taboo on Motherhood Regret

Nov. 11

While those of us without children are frequently warned of the possibility of regretting their absence, a story we don’t often hear is of the parents who regret having children. In this episode with Israeli sociologist Dr. Orna Donath, we unpack her groundbreaking work on this highly stigmatized topic of motherhood regret. Orna helps us understand the distinctions between ambivalence and regret, as well as non-natalism and anti-natalism.

We also discuss her thoughts on the stringent control that society has over our emotions and actions, specifically as they relate to procreative decisions. From voluntary childlessness to the influence of neoliberalism on feminist thought, we end with reflection on how pronatalism is inherently oppressive and a cause for much confusion and suffering for parents and non-parents alike, while also being ecologically destructive.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Orna Donath 0:00
Talking about regretting motherhood cause us to rethink, once again, this axiom according to which each and every woman wants to be a mother, and each and every woman experience joy in motherhood that worth everything for her. And even if it doesn't happen at the first year, the early years, it will surely happen. Regretting motherhood disturbs the linear story of a happy ending. There is no catharsis of a happy ending. And this gets society crazy.

Alan Ware 0:34
Those insightful words are from Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist, lecturer, writer, and feminist activist, whose work focuses on reproduction, motherhood, and non-motherhood. We'll explore these and other topics with Orna Donath in this episode of the Overpopulation Podcast

Nandita Bajaj 1:00
Welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast where we tirelessly make overshoot and overpopulation common knowledge. That's the first step in right sizing the scale of our human footprint so that it is in balance with life on Earth, enabling all species to thrive. I'm Nandita Bajaj, co-host and Executive Director of Population Balance.

Alan Ware 1:21
I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance, a nonprofit organization that works hard to educate and raise awareness about the impacts of human overpopulation and overconsumption on the planet, people, and animals.

Nandita Bajaj 1:37
And we're proud to be the first and only organization globally that is drawing the connections between pronatalism, anthropocentrism, and overpopulation, as well as their combined devastating impacts on social, reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.

Alan Ware 1:55
And before we move on to today's guest, we've got some listener feedback from Juliana in Colombia. She says, "I'm the director of a nonprofit that works for animal rights. I'm a vegan, childfree, minimalist, zero-waste, bicycle user, non-flying person, etc. I truly believe that personal change is important and that it drives bigger changes in society. I love the podcast, and I thank you all for creating this space where we can learn and discuss the overpopulation issue. It's nice to know people that are not afraid to speak about such a delicate and urgent subject with respect and dedication."

Nandita Bajaj 2:31
Well, thank you so much for those kind words, Juliana, it's so nice to receive this feedback. And we're also thrilled that our podcast is reaching people in so many different parts of the world. And congratulations on your personal commitment to minimizing your environmental impact, and also recognizing the critical role that population plays for both humans and animals alike. If you have feedback or guest recommendations for us, you can email us at podcast@populationbalance.org. And thanks to our wonderful listeners, we now rank in the top 2% of all of the podcasts globally. In addition to this podcast, we run educational programs around ecological overshoot, pronatalism, and animal protection. We go into schools and conferences and talk to young people with a goal of empowering them to make liberated and responsible reproductive and consumptive choices. And we do all of this with a really small staff and a tiny budget, and we count on you to keep doing this important work. Just a small donation can go a long way to keep our podcast on the air and keep us expanding our outreach programs. Please support our work by clicking on the donate button in our show notes and to learn about the different ways you can give, which include one time or monthly donations as well as legacy gifts.

Alan Ware 3:54
Yes, legacy gifts are a really great way to support us. You can give to Population Balance through your will or trust or by naming Population Balance as a beneficiary of your life insurance policy, retirement plan, or royalties. You can learn more on our website, populationbalance.org. And now on to today's guest, Orna Donath. Orna Donath is a Doctor of Sociology. She has studied and teaches the fields of non-motherhood, motherhood, time, and emotions from sociological and feminist perspectives. She's a social activist and the writer of the book Regretting Motherhood, which was translated into sixteen languages. In addition to her academic research, she has served as the chairwoman of the governing board of one of the rape crisis centers in Israel. She has been volunteering in the centers since 2004. And now on to our interview.

Nandita Bajaj 4:48
Hello Orna, and welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast

Orna Donath 4:52
Nandita, it's good to be here. Thank you very much for your invitation.

Nandita Bajaj 4:56
And Orna, we are so delighted to have this opportunity to chat with you today. Our listeners might remember that we interviewed you very briefly last year for our Pronatalism and Overpopulation Panel about your groundbreaking research on motherhood regret. And your findings resonated with so many of our listeners that we've had multiple requests to have you back on.

Orna Donath 5:17
Such an honor, thank you.

Nandita Bajaj 5:19
You've been studying the issue of pronatalism for a long time, at least seventeen years, starting with your master's thesis on voluntary childlessness in a very pronatal Israeli society. And then since then, you have been researching the topic of regretting motherhood. And it was the first research of its kind conducted in the world. And these aren't the common, run of the mill kind of topics to research in any society, but especially in a society where motherhood is considered destiny. Please tell us what got you started on this really unique research path.

Orna Donath 5:57
So I started in 2003. So it's already nineteen years. I'm trying to uncover blind spots in our society and to look at things from a different angle. And my road started back then in 2003 when I began my MA thesis. It was, as I said, about people here in Israel, Jewish Israeli women and men who do not want to become parents. And I wanted to study that topic. Because me myself, I don't want to be a mother. And I knew it since I was sixteen. And I never heard anyone around me that is talking about not wanting to be a parent, or who are not parents. And I grew up feeling and believing that I'm the only one in Israel who don't want to be a mother. Of course, it was not the case. Of course, I was not the only one here in Israel, I didn't invent anything. And along the history, there are women who were not mothers, of course, but that was the feeling - it says a lot about my feeling and about social reality that I was living in. So I conducted this study, and I heard over and over again, the certain promise to people who don't want to be parents, and especially to women who don't want to be mothers, "You will surely regret it." And as a sociologist, I looked at it from the angle of political usage of emotions, that society uses emotions in order to align us into the right path. And I asked myself, "How come we are always being promised that we will surely regret it but we never ever hear about the possibility that women might regret becoming mothers?"

Nandita Bajaj 7:51
Right.

Orna Donath 7:51
So when I began my PhD studies, I wanted to explore this triangle of regret: not being parents, being parents, and society - the connections. Of course, when I began this study, it was quite wide aspirations I had, I wanted to go to different directions. And at the end, it was only about women who regret becoming mothers. So I was really intrigued by this different use of emotions. And it's almost like a binaric distinction that we are being promised all the time about regret, and never hearing a word about the possibility of regret. And you know, when people want to push women into motherhood, we are being told, "It will change your life forever." And-

Nandita Bajaj 8:43
Yeah.

Orna Donath 8:43
I hear this promise. And I say, "Yes, how come? Do we always think that it will change for the best?" There are questions that are in need to be open once again.

Nandita Bajaj 8:56
Yeah. And to your point, the position of regret is always taken with not choosing to parent. And we hear that so many times, that within the societal context, just the power of suggestion can convince us that by not choosing to take a certain path, we might actually regret it. What you're presenting as the water within which we're all swimming, and all of the messages that we're taking in from that water, and we cannot separate our individual autonomy from the messages that we are being fed.

Orna Donath 9:34
Exactly. And I had the privilege of saying we are in water, we need to notice the water and not take it for granted that these messages are the right way to live for each and every one of us. Of course, there are women that, for them, motherhood is the best way to live their lives. I'm not going against it. I'm not trying to say suggest that motherhood is a wrong path for each and everyone. If I would have suggested this thing, if I was like here like in a kind of propaganda against motherhood, then I will not be any different than patriarchal, pronatal, and heteronormative society. I will do exactly the same, just the opposite. And this is not my intention. This is not my message here.

Nandita Bajaj 10:26
Yeah, I really appreciate what you're saying there. And I just want to connect one more point. I know you're familiar with the work of Leta Hollingworth. She wrote a paper back in 1916, one hundred years ago, about the social forces impelling women to bear and rear children. And one of the things she mentioned is that if we really could be free of societal pressures around parenthood, and we weren't constantly being told that there's a universal biological drive to procreate, then we'd actually be able to see a real authentic emergence of variable desires. She didn't have quantifiable, measurable research because we still live in a very pronatalist patriarchal society. But she said if we could, the instinct to want to become parents could fall into a kind of a normal distribution curve where, you know, on the left side of the curve, you'd have people who have absolutely no desire to become parents, and on the right side, you'd have people with really strong desire to procreate and to become parents. And you'd have everything in between in the middle where people could go either way. I appreciate the point you're making about challenging pronatalism is not challenging parenthood, it's just trying to bring out to the surface the pressures that everyone is experiencing to only follow one path, which can cause, as you have researched, a lot of suffering for parents and children alike.

Orna Donath 12:04
Exactly. This is exactly my point. Who am I to tell women that motherhood is a lie? It's an absolute total lie. Who am I? As a feminist, I want to listen to what different women are saying. And when different women are saying, "For me, it was the right thing to do," who am I to say something different? I'm just saying that just because we have the same biological origins that society defines as being female doesn't mean that we share the same dreams, yearnings, feelings, abilities, disabilities - we are different from one another. And as you said, there is a diversity, a curve, and we need to hear different voices of women in order that more and more women from different social groups will be able to get closer to themselves and decide for themselves.

Alan Ware 13:01
So your research was adapted into two books, Not My Thing: The Choice to Live Without Children in Israel in 2011, and Regretting Motherhood in 2015. So why don't we start with the first book, Not My Thing, in which you challenged a cherished myth of Israeli society that having children is a matter of destiny and not choice. So you provide a good historical overview of human procreation, how it's controlled and directed by those in power. Could you briefly share that historical overview with us?

Orna Donath 13:34
I leaned, in a really meaningful way, on a really good book that I read - I don't know if you know of Viviana Zelizer, it is called Pricing the Priceless Child, okay. She's she's talking about the historical reality within which in the previous centuries, children in Western societies, children were working hands. People didn't have a lot of choice whether to bring them into the world or not, because contraception was not as we know it today. And people needed the hands of and the strength of children in order to sustain their family and their houses, economic-wise. And at the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth century, something has changed because the rates of deaths of children went down, it decreased. And many laws were brought out to protect the rights of children, seeing them as helpless and in need of being given a different protection from the population. And they were no longer able to be like an object of economic use. So at that point, there was a shift from relating to them from a materialistic point of view to emotional, and they were given emotional meanings. Not economic meanings, but emotional meanings. If today, children cannot help to provide to the family as they were before-

Nandita Bajaj 15:19
Right.

Orna Donath 15:20
And they cost a lot.

Nandita Bajaj 15:22
Yes.

Orna Donath 15:22
They cost a lot of money, yeah? It's not rational to bring them into the world, they need lots of money. So there was a shift. Now we are putting on them a lot of sentimental and emotional meanings. What I mean is that before, children were not talked about with the rhetoric of happiness and joy, and that they give us the meaning in life. These days, we live in a kind of a water that, for us, it's taking for granted that if we want to be happy, we need to have children.

Nandita Bajaj 15:57
Yes.

Orna Donath 15:58
It was not like that in previous centuries. People did not talk about children with regard of happiness. Children were looked at sometimes as little demons, as evil. You know, in religious writings, they are being considered as evil, as little creatures that need to be educated in order to be good. That if they will not be educated, they can burn your house and will do really, really evil things. Today, we see children as little angels, as so precious, so naive, and it was not like that before. I'm not saying that they are not angels, in particular, like each children on its own. But I'm looking from social perspectives of course, I'm not talking on some listeners nephew or daughter, okay, they are probably angels. But I'm talking from a social perspective, of course. So what I'm trying to say that at the end, as Viviana Zelizer points out, at the end of the nineteenth century, people needed other motivations for having children, rather than economic ones. And this is the time where the emotional meanings came into the world in the way we know them.

Nandita Bajaj 17:16
Right.

Alan Ware 17:17
So that's quite recent in the long scope of human history to put that much weight and emotional freight on something like having children to supply so much life satisfaction and happiness. It's not that old.

Orna Donath 17:31
Yeah. And also, the rhetoric about happiness is not that old. In philosophy, of course, there is a lot of writings about suffering, and how to avoid suffering. But it was something theoretical, or something that human beings may not reach in their lifetime. But only in the, I think, two hundred years, we are talking about happiness like in a concrete way. And of course, capitalism is involved as well. So it's really fascinating to look at these changes.

Nandita Bajaj 18:05
Definitely, yes. We have a whole question on capitalism. I know you've done a lot of work on neoliberalism as well, which we'd love to dive into. But in this particular book, you also discuss how in Israel, the decision not to have children are still highly stigmatized. How does this stigma show up in Israeli culture?

Orna Donath 18:27
I think that the stigmatization might be quite similar in different countries. That women, especially women who don't want to be mothers, are being treated as selfish, self-centered, crazy, insane, spoiled, immature, so many ways. But the difference here in Israel is that we are being told about it many times upfront. In many other countries, people might think that something is wrong with you if you are not a mother, and that in the hierarchy, it's better to be a mother than non-mother. But here in Israel, in many times, it's being said upfront. In working places, in families, even in like riding a taxi - the taxi driver can ask you questions about why you are not a mother and that it's not natural and that normal women want to be mothers and things like that.

Nandita Bajaj 19:27
Yes.

Orna Donath 19:28
Because when you are in taxi, there is kind of an intimate situation. So the talking begins, and then you are being asked, "You are a mother? You are you married?" And here we go. And I heard women, sometimes they invent things. "Yeah, I have four children. Yeah, they are great." Just not to get involved in this kind of discussion about their womb and about their decision not to become mothers.

Nandita Bajaj 19:56
It's kind of startling to just reflect on this really pervasive question. Having children is one of the most personal and consequential decisions a person makes in their life for themselves and for their children and for the planet, and that people feel that they have the right to probe in the very first meeting, and to give you advice and to challenge you on your decision and, you know, through kind of paternalistic mindsets that they know something about you, having only met you for five minutes, than you know about yourself. It's kind of shocking.

Orna Donath 20:34
I want to just to say that when people are getting involved in such a rude way in your decision and in your life, you are being reduced into a biological organ. Because I feel like a whole person, I'm a full and round figure and many things. But when I go into a taxi, and the driver looks in the mirror and identify me as a female, and as a woman, I'm being reduced. I'm not whole anymore, I'm not this whole figure anymore. I'm only female, I'm only woman.

Nandita Bajaj 21:11
Yes.

Orna Donath 21:11
I only have one path in life. And if I'm not on this path, something probably is wrong with me and crazy and insane about me. So it's a kind of reduction, it's a very problematic reduction. It suffocates. We don't have enough air to breathe in this kind of climate.

Alan Ware 21:33
So you've also made clear in your writing that choosing not to have children, or challenging. pronatalism does not equate to a position of antinatalism. And Laura Purdy came up with a term for that in which we identify with at PB called anti-pronatalism. Can you speak to that distinction for our listeners?

Orna Donath 21:53
Yeah, in my first book, I made a differentiation between antinatalism and non-natalism, okay? Because antinatalism, and there is like a global movement that refuses for the growth of population because of the prices that are the climate and nature, and there is a price to giving birth, the high birth rates around the globe, and they are totally against giving birth and the growth of population. This is, as I understand it, antinatalism. The people that I interviewed are not involved in this movement. They are not against childbirth, they just don't want to be parents on their own for their reasons. And it's not a political movement, they don't know each other, they are not involved in this movement. And many of them do not have reasons that concerns the environment.

Nandita Bajaj 22:53
Yes.

Orna Donath 22:54
So it's their own decision. Sometimes they can say, "It's my decision. And of course, if it helps the environment even better, but it's not the first reason for not to procreate." So in my book, I call it non-natalism.

Nandita Bajaj 23:11
Yeah, and the reason we like that distinction, going back to your earlier point, is because it keeps the choice intact. It allows people to let the authentic desires for whatever they want to do, whatever path they want to take in their lives to emerge, and to make decisions based on information and education and through responsible thought. Whether you're making decision to have fewer children, no children, you know, for personal reasons or environmental reasons, we believe that everybody should have the right to have choice and responsible thought in making this decision - both responsibility towards the future child and obligations to the planet. And it's such a nuance to bring in that challenging pronatalism is not antinatalist, because as you said earlier, from a feminist perspective, that is similar to taking another propagandist path and limiting choice, which has been done for centuries. Our choice has been limited, and in this case, it's been limited towards the path of motherhood. If we truly were to come from a place of liberation, then all choices must be available without such kind of pressure that we experience in society.

Orna Donath 24:35
Yeah, and I will say that we will talk later on about neoliberalism, as you said. But women from different social groups must have this autonomy and not having this autonomy is a political thing. We need to look at it from a political point of view because it's political. So I'm talking about autonomy, but I want to talk about autonomy especially on the ways that society takes it from us.

Nandita Bajaj 24:35
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that in the current political-societal climate anywhere in the world, reproductive autonomy is not present. Whether it's in coercive ways in which personal and reproductive autonomy is absolutely absent, and children are being forced into marriages and having children, versus more subtle ways in which autonomy is not present. And that could be through the, you know, ideas floating around in culture and media and the stigmatization we may experience. So actually accomplishing reproductive autonomy would be a wicked goal. A good place for us to start before we suggest any other kinds of paths. Let's go to your second book, Regretting Motherhood, which came out in 2016 and has been translated into sixteen languages and published in many countries. So you know, as if challenging pronatalism as it relates to the childfree choice in Israel wasn't taboo enough, you decided to go further into the belly of the beast to examine an even more stigmatized topic, which is motherhood regret. In fact, you became the first researcher to bring this topic into the world. And Orna, in this book, you've collected the stories of twenty-three women talking about motherhood from a very personal place, and about their regret about becoming mothers, even though they love and feel responsible for their children. We'd love to hear about some of the themes that emerged from these stories. But first, a simpler question. You start out the book by establishing regret as distinctive from other conflictual and ambivalent maternal emotions. Can you help us understand that distinction?

Orna Donath 26:52
Of course, and thank you for asking me this question. Because I saw so many times that the discussions about the book around the world went from talking about regretting motherhood, that was the topic of the book, to maternal ambivalence. I thought that it was easier to talk about ambivalence rather than talking about regret. I think most mothers experience some kind of ambivalent emotions, like they miss the children, but they want to get away for a few days. They love them, but they hate being there, they agonize, but they are experiencing such a joy from being mothers - so many conflicting emotions. And I think so many mothers experience this kind of conflict, sometimes maybe on a daily basis. And regretting motherhood is a different thing. It's not saying I experienced a lot of hardships in my motherhood, but the smile of the child's worth everything to me, and I would have done it once again if I could. It's not the same. There is no such an equation. When women regret, they're saying, "I experience hardships period. For me, it was not worthwhile. For me, it was not worthwhile. The smile of the child, as a generic saying, the smile of the child is beautiful. And it was not worth it. It still was not worth it for me." And I thought that these discussions went to talk about ambivalency and complex emotions, etc. in order to avoid talking about regretting motherhood. Talking about regretting motherhood cause us to rethink, once again, this axiom according to which each and every woman wants to be a mother, and each and every woman experience joy in motherhood, that worth everything for her. And even if it doesn't happen at the first years, the early years, it will surely happen. Regretting motherhood disturbs the linear story of a happy ending. There is no catharsis at the end. Because I interviewed twenty-three women, five of them are already grandmothers, they're thirty, forty, fifty years - already mothers - they look back and say, "For me, it was a mistake to become a mother. It was not for me." And they don't supply society the catharsis of a happy ending. And this gets society crazy. The linear story is being disturbed and I thought, as I said before, that of course, of course it's important to talk about ambivalency, of course. But there is a continuum of emotions within motherhood and regret is not the same as ambivalent. And if people want to talk about the book, then we should talk about regretting motherhood. And of course, it could go from there also, and that was my wish that it will give more women the possibility to talk about more hard emotions that they experience. But I just want to say that it's not the same. And I want to make sure that we notice that we are not escaping, once again, from looking in the eyes of regretting motherhood.

Nandita Bajaj 30:19
Yeah, that's very powerful. And it's a great distinction. Again, it brings me back to that normal distribution curve. The people on the left who never wanted to become mothers or parents, who through a lot of different forces, entered into that decision and experience all of the suffering. And its lifetime suffering, right? You cannot escape that decision. And the ambivalence that you're speaking about is different from a state of permanent regret. And as you've beautifully captured in your book, parenthood is exempt from that. For parents to regret their decision openly, it's still highly vilified, and we do not see examples of that. If we do see examples of that, they are villains, abusive, neglectful parents, rather than good parents who can have deep regret.

Alan Ware 31:13
And you've gone deep on a socio-political analysis of regretting motherhood. Can you share some of the themes that emerged in the analysis of the women you interviewed?

Orna Donath 31:23
Yeah, first, I will say that when I described my study as socio-political, I meant my book is not invitation to look on this women as if we are looking out on them from the window far away like an emotional freak show. Let's look at these women who regret becoming mothers. I relate to the study, as when you gaze on a window for several hours, different hours of the day, it becomes a mirror, and we can see our reflection. So my book is a reflection to society look on itself. The women are just helping us to look on ourselves, on our norms, on this water, this transparent water that we, most of the time don't even acknowledge that we live in. And to look on ourselves - it's not only about regretting motherhood, it's about our perceptions on motherhood. The rigid expectations, nonhuman expectations from women and mothers that creates really, really deep suffering in many lives. Not only for women who regret. So many women who are out there trying to be not only a good mother, but the perfect mother, the best mother - it's not human. I really don't know how can it be that not so many women go crazy. I'm telling you the truth, it's really cruel the way society treats mothers. It is really cruel. I see myself like a kind of an ally to mothers. I'm not a mother and I don't want to be, but I'm kind of an ally because we share the same social forces that we are being pushed under. All of us. Mothers and non-mothers, just the same.

Orna Donath 31:24
That's part of what you've called the feeling rules - that there are certain states of emotion that society says we should feel about something. So looking out that the window, as you mentioned, at some times a day it gives you a reflection. And as you're reading about these mothers talking about regretting, that window is reflecting back to you all the feeling rules you think should be true about motherhood, and then how society teaches us to feel about being a good mother. Being a good woman.

Orna Donath 33:46
Exactly. I borrowed this term from Arlie Russell Hochschild, she's a sociologist. Feeling rules is not my term, it's hers. She talks about it from a general perspective on the way there are rigid imperatives regarding also our inner worlds and our emotions. In different societies and along the history, there are feeling rules. There is a socialization for emotions as well. We are being taught from a really young age how we should feel, how we should express our feelings, in which words we need to express our feelings, and people who don't feel as they should feel also in general, they might be considered as deviant, as outlaws. And I will call it kind of emotional criminals, if we talk about laws, that should be judged in the court of emotions that society created. It's general, not only to motherhood, but of course, all of us but also mothers are living under these emotional feeling rules. And as you said, they're being judged if they don't feel the right emotion. Think about it. How feeling rules has changed along the history, because, I don't know fifty years ago, women couldn't write what they write today about motherhood. Today, more and more women can express boredom or postpartum depression. It was not like that before. So the feeling rules have changed a little bit, but they're still very rigid. Because even if we look at postpartum depression, there is an expectation there that you will overcome it.

Nandita Bajaj 35:24
Yes.

Orna Donath 35:25
Regarding the linear story. You can have a break for one year, two years, three years, but women are still expected to overcome their depression and to present the catharsis that now everything is okay. Now we love the children. Now we love being mothers. Everything is okay. If it is not going away, you're an emotional criminal that should be judged, and there are sanctions. And I think that one element of the feeling rules is that today, more and more mothers are allowed to talk about their hardships, but there is still a limit there. And I think another example for feeling rules is that guilt is not being included as natural to motherhood. Like motherhood equate guilt. If you're a good mother, you must feel guilty. If you don't feel guilty, you probably not a good mother. This is what we are being told, this is the new feeling rules.

Nandita Bajaj 36:24
Yeah. It almost sounds like the burden of feeling rules, and maybe the lack of clarity around it and just how layered they are, that they might actually be a lot more negatively impactful on a person's psyche and our development than actual laws and policies that are really more clear cut. And we know, you know, which lines we can and cannot cross. Whereas with the feeling rules, we're not being allowed to not only express, but experience - figure out, you know, what is the true experience of my emotions separate from the societal context within which I exist? And if my experience of that emotion does not agree with what I'm being told should be my experience, then at some point, I will just convince myself that there is something wrong with me and I will repress that and continue to take a path that is more acceptable according to these feeling rules. I'm just thinking about the emotional toll that must take on your own ability to get in touch with your deepest self, and figure out who you really are. It seems like more and more, you're just constantly course correcting and trying to line up your life path and your emotional path with that of society's path, and in that journey, losing more and more of yourself.

Orna Donath 37:56
Exactly. And I, you know, I'm not sure that we will ever be able to get closer to a pure subjective experience, because we live within a society.

Nandita Bajaj 38:07
Yes.

Orna Donath 38:08
But my aim is to be aware of the power of society, and to be aware of the crossroads and the meeting points between me and society. This gives me more clarity and being close to myself, even though I cannot get really and totally and purely in touch with my subjective experience. Because it's really hard. We are not in a lab, we cannot control, we cannot take it out of the equation in a really, really absolute way. So I would like to be aware of the meeting points. And at least be aware that there is a meeting point here and to try to figure out who am I within this meeting point as a subject.

Nandita Bajaj 38:57
And you've kind of spoken to this already. But I'd like to read a statement from one of your pieces where you said, "Motherhood may be a resource for transformation and liberation and a way to dislodge heteronormative notions of kinship and challenge the political order. Nevertheless, motherhood may simultaneously be a realm of distress, helplessness, frustration, hostility, and disappointment, as well as an arena of oppression and subordination." I think you've kind of spoken to that. But can you elaborate on the first part especially, of how it can be a source for transformation and liberation?

Orna Donath 39:39
First, I would say that here too I'm like, I collected things that so many great feminists wrote before me. And especially, I think Adrienne Rich. She wrote so beautifully already in the eighties of motherhood from different angles, and she experienced a lot of hardships. She has a really beautiful quote about her ambivalency. I really admire her work. Also, Patricia Hill Collins, like black feminist writers, who wrote about motherhood from black women perspective. And they talked about the way motherhood is an arena of strength to them, they can feel meaning to their life, they feel a lot of power being mothers, taking care of their children, protecting the children as much as they can. And many of them, of course, you know, black women is not one group, but I'm talking about her writings and she's not talking about motherhood as suppressive arena for many black women. You know, the book, The Feminine Mystique of Betty Friedan, in the sixties. She wrote about the depression of many American women, but she wrote about the experience of white middle-class women, and black women might have different experience regarding motherhood. And I see it also here in Israel, you know, there is a differentiation here between Ashkenazi women and Mizrahi women. It's like a different ethnicities. And because of your location in society, motherhood might have a different meaning to you. And for many women, it might be an arena of power, of feeling important, of feeling meaningful in ways that society did not allow you to feel as a woman.

Nandita Bajaj 41:32
Yeah, we've interviewed Dr. Kimya Nuru Dennis, who speaks about her personal experience. And she's done a deep dive into researching the childfree choice among the African diaspora. And, you know, similar to what you are saying, she spoke very powerfully about that there's extra layers of pronatalism for cultures that have experienced any kind of marginalization. And so yeah, these are difficult questions. And that's why we love bringing people from within their cultural context to speak to these things, because the experience of choosing the childfree choice is not homogenous. The layers of guilt, shame, letting down family, letting down your tradition, etc., can be multi layered. And that can make it even more difficult for certain people in certain cultural contexts to choose this pathway.

Alan Ware 42:31
So Israel not only has the highest fertility rate in the developed world, but it also has the greatest subsidized provision and use of assisted reproductive technologies. Usually, with countries with high fertility rates, they don't tend to have a lot of state sponsored subsidies for assisted reproduction. Why do you think Israel has such high subsidization of assisted reproduction?

Orna Donath 42:55
I guess, this is not the only reason, but I guess that our history of the Holocaust and ongoing situation of wars and the conflict, how people describe it, is the conflict between Jews and Palestinians here in the area, create a collective consciousness of being afraid of being erased from the Earth. And giving birth to children, it's like a symbol, you know, not only symbol, but concrete, creating lives, defeating this fear, this anxiety, of death and being erased. I think there is a collective notion here. It's something unconscious, like back here that we as Jews here in Israel, it's like an air that we breathe, that there is a possibility of not being here. That is really real to us, from a collective perspective, not individual, for each and every one of us. And I think that giving birth and having higher birth rates, it's the kind of the answer that we can give to this fear regarding our specific history and the ongoing situation here for so many decades. I'm not talking about it as if it is right or wrong or stupid or wise. I'm just saying that this is the kind of collective consciousness that we live in.

Alan Ware 44:33
It's unfortunate in the face of the environmental, ecological overshoot situation, Israel's one of the densest populations and a very dry climate. So you've got many problems with water, and I'm sure soil and wildlife has been decimated in a lot of Israel, right?

Orna Donath 44:51
Yeah.

Alan Ware 44:52
But I suppose that happens slowly enough and the possibility of not having your group be populated enough feels more urgent than a slow motion environmental crisis?

Orna Donath 45:05
Yeah, exactly. And there is Professor Alon Tal. I think he is a Democrat here in Israel. And he, I think it was four years ago. And he was interviewed here in Israel. And he talked about the urgency of having no more than two children here, because the average here is 3.1. So he talked about if we want forty years from now, fifty years from now, to still have Israel, and still being able to give social rights and have good conditions to live here, people must have only two children the most.

Nandita Bajaj 45:42
Right.

Orna Donath 45:43
And he got such harsh reactions to his saying. It was really like viral for several weeks, they were talking about seems here like a really almost anti-semitism suggestion. And he is Jewish Israeli. He lives here. Yeah, it was really interesting to look at it and to see how people don't hear.

Nandita Bajaj 46:06
Right.

Orna Donath 46:07
And this is how I experience it. Or maybe they hear but they don't listen.

Nandita Bajaj 46:11
Right.

Orna Donath 46:12
Because he said things about, "Well will be about your grandchildren or the children of your grandchildren. Think about them." You know, it's not from an agenda against childbirth.

Nandita Bajaj 46:24
Yeah.

Orna Donath 46:24
It's about survival and your family's survival. No, people didn't want to hear about it. Was too much.

Nandita Bajaj 46:31
I guess it comes down to there's so many different layers of our identity. And if the layer that's closest to us is feeling threatened, then we're unable to see that the planet that is our home-

Orna Donath 46:44
That's a huge threat.

Nandita Bajaj 46:45
Yeah.

Orna Donath 46:46
But it goes slowly, it seems far away. So we don't have to think about it. I don't know what we'll be, telling you the truth. And I don't know if we will be here to see already the implications of what we are doing now.

Nandita Bajaj 47:02
Right. And the situation is, of course, not unique to Israel. This is happening all around the world.

Orna Donath 47:08
We relate to ourselves as the house owners.

Nandita Bajaj 47:12
Yes.

Orna Donath 47:12
And not living together with more people on this planet - not only people, animals, plants, etc. We see ourselves as the owners of the house, and it's so paternalistic to look at it like that, but this is for another conversation.

Nandita Bajaj 47:30
Yes. Talking about paternalism, I think our next question ties in really well. You've discussed the prevalence of pronatalism even in neoliberal rhetoric, where humans are seen as masters of their fate, and they write their own biographies. In this context, you've noted that while this narrative celebrates autonomy, in creating our own life paths, and women are gaining increasing control over their lives, motherhood still remains a central pillar of imagined life paths. It's a fascinating distinction. Can you expand on this concept of neoliberal feminism?

Orna Donath 48:12
I think it's a really important challenge to talk about autonomy of our private decisions, while not cave into the neoliberal rhetoric, and also neoliberal feminism. The privatization of our suffering, as if it's our own responsibility and we created this situation on our own and we need to get out of it on our own - it's really dangerous. I'm scared of not seeing the social power, the political power, the way that we are being manipulated by societies, by being neglected by societies, in the means of neoliberal rhetoric and neoliberal conception. So women might be told, "It's a free country, baby, you became a mother because you chose to be a mother, it's your problem. What do you want from us? We can't help you. Solve it by yourself." And I'm saying, "No, no, no, she didn't become a mother solely on her own decision. We are being pushed into motherhood, the possibility of not being mothers and staying not mothers is not really open to all of us. And society has its own responsibility about the situation." When I talked in my book about regret and the social perspectives about regret, I talked also about this saying, "Don't cry over spilled milk," and I tried in my book to ask two questions. First, why can't we cry? As we talked before about feeling rules, why can't we cry? It's human to cry when something is wrong for you. And the second question is whose hands spilled this milk? Neoliberal rhetoric will say, "The singular women, it was her responsibility. She spilled the milk, she wanted to become a mother. She did it. It's her fault. She need to solve it." And I'm saying, "No, the hands of societies are in it as well. And as long as we are being pushed, it is not okay to neglect us. When we suffer, when we are not being taken care of by society, you know, women are treated as the only caregivers and patriarchy is a really bad father, we are not being taken care of as well."

Alan Ware 50:49
Yeah, that is the neoliberal choice, everything's a choice, your lifestyles a choice, you made the choice, live with it because you've got a choice of twelve different chocolate bars and so many different cars and so many different lifestyle choices. And they're all just choices, and you made it. And yeah, so the market throws up choices and then you don't see how constrained those are, either in the market of goods or social market of lifestyle decisions. Life decisions-

Nandita Bajaj 51:17
Yes.

Alan Ware 51:18
Get constrained in a way that greatly limits that choice. And doesn't, as you say, make it - it's not all your doing. These feeling rules and everything working under the surface that you've imbibed from the cultural messages have sent you down one path, and then told you that yeah, it's your choice, live with it, you bought it.

Orna Donath 51:36
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Alan Ware 51:39
That isn't fair.

Orna Donath 51:40
Yeah.

Nandita Bajaj 51:40
And the experiences of the consequences of spilled milk, you know, to use your quote, are felt differently across society too, you know, because part of neoliberalism is there is inherent classism in there. Those who are living in poverty and not the same level of wealth and privilege that a minority of people are living in are then subjected to the same expectations of this neoliberal rhetoric that, "You deal with it. If you're poor, why did you have children?" Meanwhile, if you have wealth and privilege and can afford to hire people or nannies to take care of them, you are okay to have children. So, even within that realm, there are layers of privilege and power and oppression that are further oppressing those that already are marginalized. And the choice is further being undermined.

Orna Donath 52:40
Exactly. Well, at the same time, they are not giving so many women the opportunity or the access to abortions, for example.

Nandita Bajaj 52:49
Exactly.

Orna Donath 52:50
Or information about planning your family. So what do you want from these women? And exactly, neoliberal rhetoric will go to their personality, or being not responsible, but what about society's responsibility towards them? And towards all of us? And laws against abortion - does it give women the opportunity to have the autonomy that then later on, we are being spurned about not using it? So it's so messy, and not logic. We should take a good look about what is going on here and about this way we are being manipulated.

Nandita Bajaj 53:27
Yeah.

Orna Donath 53:27
And not seeing what's going on here.

Nandita Bajaj 53:29
Totally agree with you. Yes. You know, especially in light of the abortion criminalization and bans in the US, you look at the data and you look at well, who is paying the highest cost for those bans? It's the people who are already living in the margins of society. It's black people, Indigenous women, people of color, people who are living in poverty.

Orna Donath 53:54
I think that many black women or poor women in the United States do have autonomy, and they do use it, but they are being slandered also for that.

Nandita Bajaj 54:04
Yes.

Orna Donath 54:04
As you said, there are black women who don't want to be mothers, there are black women who want to have many children. But I'm saying that when some of them, of course, do use their autonomy, they are being slandered for that as well.

Nandita Bajaj 54:18
That's right.

Orna Donath 54:19
Yeah.

Alan Ware 54:20
What's on the horizon for you in terms of professional research now?

Orna Donath 54:24
It goes different ways. First of all, from an academic perspective, I'm teaching a lot of courses about this topic of social perspectives of non-motherhood and motherhood since 2015, I'm also moderating groups for women who are uncertain whether they want to be mothers or not. Each year, I'm moderating a new group of women who don't know if they want to be mothers or not and we are talking about it for ten weeks, because there is no room to discuss the uncertainty here in Israel. Now, I guess in more countries. So I'm doing it for the last seven years. And now I'm trying to write my third book about the study I started two and a half years ago about elderly women here in Israel who are not mothers, women between the ages of sixty and eighty-six. I already interviewed twenty-four women who could have become mothers, and they didn't. I'm not relating to it as chose not to be mothers. It's more complex than that. But I'm saying so for now, I am relating to it that they could be mothers, but they didn't become. So if someday I will have time, I will try to write this third book.

Alan Ware 55:46
So the group that you're heading with women who are uncertain, is that Israeli women, is that through the university? Or is it global, or?

Orna Donath 55:55
No, it's Israeli women. It's not for university. I had an interview here about it here in Israel in one of the newspapers, so I'm getting being approached by women who want to participate in it. And in November, I'm starting the group for this year, 2022. And it's upside University and twelve women each time.

Alan Ware 56:17
So you're getting a lot of finely grained information through seven years of doing that about everything women think of as they become mothers, or decide whether to become mothers.

Orna Donath 56:27
Yeah. Because, you know, I studied that option of not being a mother and the option of regretting motherhood. And then I thought to myself, what else is missing? About what we didn't talk already? And it was about the uncertainty.

Alan Ware 56:42
Yeah.

Nandita Bajaj 56:43
Wow.

Alan Ware 56:43
That's very useful.

Nandita Bajaj 56:45
I just want to say how absolutely wonderful it was to discuss your very rich, unique, and groundbreaking work. Your work along with, you know, many others in the field who are trying to dismantle this extremely confused and confusing path is helping a lot of people get closer to liberation and self-determination. So thank you for your incredible efforts.

Orna Donath 57:12
Thank you very much. Was really my pleasure to talk to you. And listening to your questions and perceptions was enlightening for me as well. You really accurated many of the things I wanted to say. So thank you very, very much. It was really my honor as well.

Nandita Bajaj 57:29
Amazing.

Alan Ware 57:29
Thank you. Well, that's it for this edition of the Overpopulation Podcast. Visit populationbalance.org to learn more. To share feedback or guest recommendations write to us using the contact form on our site or by emailing us at podcast@populationbalance.org. If you feel inspired by our work, please consider supporting us using the donate button. Also to help expand our listenership. Please consider rating us on whichever podcast platform you use.

Nandita Bajaj 57:59
And until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj. Thank you for your interest in our work and for all your efforts in helping us all shrink toward abundance.