Stigmas, stereotypes, and conflicting messages abound for women living in today's world. For women caught in these seemingly impossible conflicts, it takes on the feel of being trapped in a damned if you do, damned if you don't world. Kathleen Hall Jamieson aptly describes this phenomenon in her 1995 book, Beyond the Double Bind, by opening with a reference to the witch trials of the 1600s. She writes, "In 1631, in Cautio Criminalis, Julius Friedrich Spee identified one no win situation in which prosecutors placed women accused of witchcraft. The suspect witch was submerged in a pond. If she drowned, she deserved to; if she didn't, she was a witch. In the first case, god was revealing her nature; in the second, the devil." Hall Jamieson points out that centuries later, "the penalties are disdain and financial loss, not death, and the sanctions social, not theological, but it can still be hazardous for a woman to venture out beyond her ‘proper sphere.'"

Sadly, little has changed in the sixteen years after Hall Jamieson wrote these words. Despite advances toward gender equality, women still are subjected to negative labels, double standards, and impossible double binds by a world that in some ways seems to have moved beyond rigid gender roles, yet at the same time still handcuff women to the past. 

Why do these binds still exist in a society where women make up half of the population and half of the workforce? And as Notkin discusses, why are childless women viewed so negatively ("unnatural, unwomanly, uncreditable, and undervalued") in a society where more and more women are choosing to not have children? The answers are complicated, but at least partly lie in our past.

Lingering Ties that Bind Us

America is a relatively young country that flourished at first by allowing people to practice religions of their choosing, and later by being open to new ideas of government that gave people the right to govern themselves. This break from the tyrannical reign of royalty was an exciting time that opened up opportunities never seen before. But not for all. The rights of the "people" and the opportunities those rights brought were not truly "for the people;" they were the rights of men—white men, actually. They were the ones who had rights when this country's constitution and laws were established. So it should come as no surprise that when "the rules" were being decided, there were no women in the room.

Women were property. They could not vote. They had no voice in the government. They could not keep any money earned or received. They could not enter into a legal contract. They had one role and one role only—domestic. They were responsible for taking care of the home, taking care of their husbands, and bearing and taking care of their children.

In 1848, the first Women's Rights Conference was held in Seneca Falls, New York, but it still took more than seventy years for women to win the right to vote. More change began to appear in the nineteenth century, but the fact still remained, as it does today, that the "golden rules" that dictate how mainstream society expect us to live, work, and play were created by men for men. And despite many years of progress, in many respects, women are still held to the restrictive rules and roles of long ago.

Motherhood is one such golden rule. Motherhood continues to be regarded by society as the quintessential accomplishment of a woman's life. And although women now have the right to choose, those who choose to be childless continue to be viewed by a large and vocal section of society as somehow betraying their true destiny—and these voices are not just men's.

You're Not Alone

If it helps reduce the sting, childless women should know that they are not alone in their struggles in a world that doesn't fully accept or understand them. Single women, with or without children, are commonly stereotyped and negatively labeled (see Bella DePaulo's PT blog, Living Single, for lively commentary on this issue). In fact, a common double bind that single high-achieving women often find themselves in involves the common expectation that they not only pursue and maintain a meaningful and fulfilling career, but also a meaningful and fulfilling relationship—often at the same time. In other words, it's all fine and good that women now have the same freedom to pursue an education and a career as men do as long as they don't ignore the marriage expectation that somehow comes along with it. For many, these kinds of pressures become a persistent source of stress and emotional turmoil (i.e., guilt, anxiety, sadness).

But don't think that those who choose to have a career and marriage and/or children escape the pressure. It's just a different kind. Although few would argue that juggling a career, marriage, and children at the same time is one of the most difficult balancing acts a woman will ever perform, somehow society sees fit to make it worse with the classic double bind of good moms/bad moms. It generally goes like this: good moms raise their children themselves; bad moms go to work and leave others to do it (for more commentary on this issue, see Motherhood versus Career: An Epic Battle that Need Not Be).

My point is that whether you're childless, single, married with children, or whatever, if you're a woman, you can expect that at some point (probably many points) in your life society is going to play some head games with you (if you allow it, which we'll get to in a moment). In doing research for my book, High Octane Women, I came across an editorial piece written by Dan Antony for the University Register, the newspaper of the University of Minnesota, which nicely sums up many of the points in this article.

Antony writes, "Looking around, it's easy to see how many opportunities that women in modern society have that were not open to them in any practical sense previously. But digging beneath the surface shows how little the position of women has changed. The key is to understand that these are additional opportunities. Very few of the expectations laid on women before have changed. My sisters received a lot of encouragement (and pressure) to succeed and get an education (as did I), a modern egalitarian vision. Less egalitarian was the pressure applied for them to get married and have kids. Parents eager for grandchildren aren't particularly sympathetic to the plight of the modern woman .... Society allows women to explore new roles, but only if they continue to fill the old ones as well. Society hasn't changed the roles of women, they've added to them, creating an extra burden for modern women."