If you drop a penny, does it fall to the ground? Do you ever expect it might not? Cultural attitudes towards children, relationships, and religion can be described in a similar fashion. Most
people don't even think to think about these beliefs any more than they think
about gravity because
to even question the general flow of the cultural zeitgeist takes an enormous amount of energy,
let alone break free from the gravitational pull.
A few
weeks ago, Time
Magazine had their cover story on people who decide to remain child free.
There are many reasons that people give when they defend this choice, but the
point is, they have to defend it, especially if they are white women, as Jill
Filipovic points out in this post for The Guardian:
Bring up the possibility of educated white women choosing not to have children and you'll be met with intense hostility. The desire to forgo childrearing is a "banal fantasy"; having kids is the only way for adults to avoid "destructive self-absorption". The photo of the child-free couple on the cover of Time Magazine this month showcases "lazy yuppies" whose "matching swimsuits reek of self-satisfied, in-your-face Dinks [double income no kids]." The cover model's smile "is supposed to communicate her disdain for her uterus and her utter satisfaction with her size-4, cellulite-free, vacation-filled life".
That's
a lot of pressure. What kind of energy does it take for someone to decide what
is best for them when the cultural gravitation is pulling in another direction?
Perhaps
part of the same gravitational construct is the idea of monogamy as a cultural
constant. A recent post on the MS blog for MS Magazine asks whether feminists
should be questioning "compulsory monogamy" as many have come to
question the assumption of heternormativity and, I would add, having children.
Filipovic
pointed out the censure that child free women meet but that's actually less
than the cultural condemnation of non-monogamy. A recent Salon post by Angi
Becker Stevens currently has over 600 comments, most of them condemning the
woman who wrote the post for everything from narcissism to child neglect. It
was even worse for Sierra
Black after her Huffington Post article of a year or so ago, with over
1000, mostly censorious comments. Those are just the ones I'm most familiar
with because I read all of the comments. On both. The pull being exerted on
both Black and Stevens can very rightly be seen as the hands of thousands
trying to pull them back to earth. They might say "reality."
There
is something, besides simply tradition, to the powerful indoctrination of
"grow up, get married, have babies" that adds to that cultural
gravity. As Stevens
says in a post on the MS Magazine blog:
Of course one function of compulsory monogamy is that polyamorous relationships are widely condemned, by both liberals and conservatives alike. But it’s important to reflect on the root of that condemnation. Whenever a society prohibits a certain behavior or identity, that prohibition is most likely serving the interests of people in positions of power.
Finally,
the report of a study making the rounds the last few weeks purports to show a
relationship between how "intelligent" a person is and the likelihood
that someone is atheist. Religion is one of the biggest cultural gravity wells
we have in our society. America is one of the most religious countries on
earth. Most people grow up with a religion and even for those who don't,
religious beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions abound. Pull a dollar bill out of
your wallet and take a look. Go to a baseball game and wait for the "God
Bless America" to be whipped out in the seventh inning. Even from a simply
literary point of view, the assumption that a god exists underlies much of
western literature.
Pulling
away from that sort of gravity well takes a lot of effort. Is intelligence one
of the boosters helping people escape it? As posted at PZ
Myers site, the abstract of the report says:
First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs.
Now,
as Myers points out in the link above, there are plenty of issues with the
studies that have been done and none of us atheists can go high-fiving each
other over our smarts. Filipovic thinks that "[t]o see some nebulous,
grainy, other potential for which there are few mainstream models and say,
"I want that," takes courage
and imagination." Stevens says "We all stand to benefit from
supporting relationships that serve as a model for less patriarchal, less
hierarchical ways of intimately relating to one another."
To me,
these three things: living childfree, nonmonogamy, and atheism all question the
dominant paradigms of our culture. As such they are incredibly threatening to
those who either benefit from the current paradigm or call into question
another person's acceptance of that paradigm. It takes a lot of energy to fight
against that gravitational pull.
Maybe
it takes intelligence, however broadly defined, so that someone can be less
likely to "conform" or more "analytic" in order to question
the inherent inconsistencies within the dominant paradigm. Maybe it takes
"courage and imagination" to envision a way of life different from
those around one and then stick to it. Maybe we just like being nonconformist
and maybe shaking the foundations of those in power, even just a little bit.
Maybe
it takes affluence and privilege. The Time article talked mostly in terms of
Western white women, where "an increase of 15 IQ points decreased the odds
of [a girl] becoming a mother by 25%" (p41) and then goes on to point out
that these women are also more likely to have had higher education.
Self-identified polyamorous folks tend to be white, middle class, and
with graduate degrees. As too many news articles to mention point out,
higher ed costs money. There's a safety in money, in being part of the dominant class. There's less need to rely on institutions such as family, marriage, the church. The freedom to make one's own way is a kind of power itself, maybe the greatest power launching towards escape velocity.