Before Fleetwood Mac released its third album, singer Stevie Nicks became pregnant. But, as she shared in a recently resurfaced interview, she chose to have an abortion. “It would’ve destroyed Fleetwood Mac,” she claimed by way of justifying her decision.
Women in 21st-century America have perhaps more opportunity than any of their ancestors before them, yet the messages about the limits of empowerment from prominent women are less than inspiring.
Like Nicks (who never did have children, by the way), Generation Z and millennial women are afraid they will have to give up their career aspirations if they have children. And while it’s true that life is full of trade-offs, it’s no wonder that they choose to forgo having children when even the rich and famous are suggesting it simply can’t be done.
Kelsea Ballerini must have fallen prey to this messaging. The country star’s latest song, “I Sit In Parks,” is going viral on TikTok for its hauntingly raw admission that she may have missed her chance to be a mother.
“Is it my fault / For chasing things a body clock / Doesn’t wait for?” the 32-year-old asks. “I did the d*** tour / It’s what I wanted, what I got / I spun around and then I stopped / And wonder if I missed the mark.”
But she hasn’t always felt this way. Ballerini told the Call Her Daddy podcast in 2023 that the tipping point in her divorce from her husband of five years was that he wanted to have children immediately — and she wanted to freeze her eggs.
Now, she sings, “They lay on a blanket and goddammit he loves her / I wonder if she wants my freedom like I wanna be a mother.”
Vanity Fair, of course, complained that the song has become “the latest lightning rod for conservative anti-feminists.” But while today’s right-wing “trad wife” movement has swung too hard in the other direction, suggesting that anything besides baking sourdough with a baby on your hip is evidence of wokeism, what liberal feminists don’t account for is that the fact that their celebration of neutral choice (“You do whatever makes you happy!”) strips away one choice — the choice to have children — if women simply assume it will always be there.
It’s easy for right-wing critics to blame someone like Ballerini for ignoring her biological clock and retreating, as she sings, to her “vape” and “Lexapro.” But not all “childless cat ladies” are that way by choice, and this epithet ignores the societal forces influencing their decisions. With celebrities constantly touting abortion as a career launcher, and companies telling their female employees to “lean in” by freezing their eggs, most women are not left with mainstream motherhood role models.
MOTHERHOOD SHOULD MAKE MORE WOMEN REPUBLICANS
Actress Jennifer Lawrence, now 35 and the mother of two children, has emerged as a surprising one, saying that her new film benefited from her experience as a mother. Motherhood “takes any kind of veneer off, because now you’re seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes — somebody who’s so much more important than you are,” she said.
The answer to the question “Can women have it all?” is an obvious no. The question we should be asking in an age of hostility to childbearing is, “Is having children worth it?” The answer to that question, on the other hand, is a resounding yes.
