Impossible to Grow Up?

It is deeply unfashionable to suggest that we have a nature that might define or limit us in any way. Such views are seen as profoundly primitive and lacking the modern sophistication that suggests we are at liberty to fashion ourselves as whatever we choose to be, as if we are something we can make on a 3D printer. Equally unfashionable is the suggestion made by the Canadian Psychologist, Jordan Peterson, to his female students, that the majority of those of them that choose not to have children will seriously regret it. It is only because he has created his own zone of influence through his Youtube success that he is able to say this. Outside of that zone it would be very hazardous to voice such an opinion.

The idea that a female human's nature will mean, by definition, that she will want to bear and raise children is at war with modern feminist directives. These say that women must be equivalent to men, achieve the same things as men and even behave like men in order to have value (of a very male type) and not be defined or limited by such old-fashioned ideas relating to their nature. Women must be seen to box and play rugby in a curious emulation of what is deemed to give men, not women, value and status as that, apparently, is the only route to acceptance. This seems to run counter to the idea that women have their own female-defined value and to be strangely and ironically accepting of 'patriarchal' calibrations of value as the only ones available. Of course, it should be said that childbirth is not the only thing a woman will or can do but the likes of Peterson suggest that doing it at some point will be vital for most women for their fulfilment and happiness.

The inability to resolve the conundrum set out above is voiced in the debate as to whether women can have it all. From the viewpoint of an adolescent female, who will have the momentous likelihoods of childbirth and motherhood on her mind together with the enjoinders to satisfy the exigencies of modern feminist decrees this resolution may seem impossible. This may even lead them to feeling ashamed of and wishing to disown the instincts they feel inside themselves. Such a conflict is certainly enough to explain a desire to shrink from the imminent adulthood which is inexorably approaching. At this point forms of self-harm and forms of attempts at arresting development may have an appeal. What better way to rebel against a nature that is becoming more and more obviously designed for child-bearing than to seek to prevent such development?

Given this predicament, which will doubtlessly afflict a lot of intelligent girls aware of ideological demands on them, another aspect of the modern ethos comes into play. We are now a society where child-centredness is the norm. Parents tremulously worship at the shrine of the sacred child and observe it for every sign of the least distress or discomfort. What better way, therefore, for a female teenager to exploit this than by distracting everyone's attention from her inability to cope with looming womanhood by self harming or becoming anorexic? Such actions, particularly distressing for a child-obsessed parent, are a way of guaranteeing control over their attention and manipulating the agenda. With the panicky, narrow focus now on her physical wounds or weight loss the young girl replaces a sense of helplessness with a sense of power. Everyone dances to her tune and she continues to avoid the challenge of growing up and choosing what she wants to be in the teeth of many things telling her what she has to be.

As I said at the outset, at the heart of a lot of this is a certain high-minded liberalism which believes hubristically that, through the power of human reason and science it can re-engineer nature to be more or less anything it wants to be. This liberalism sneers at our given nature and deems simple acceptance of it as primitive and lacking in sophistication. Women are now ashamed to embrace their womanhood and men are encouraged to be ashamed of any sign that, in spite of their muscles, body hair and the testosterone coursing round those bodies, they are, perish the thought, 'masculine' in any way. These facts bar the way to happiness for many because of the dangerous idea that happiness is being in harmony with and enjoying one's nature. If what I say is true this constitutes a fundamental attack on what we are and a profound example of self-loathing and self-destruction at the most basic level. It  is a true catastrophe and can't end well.