I also have a very difficult time with this perception and consider it a huge obstacle to equality. I am 36 and have no real intentions toward a family, not against it just not in my reality right now. I am also not particularly a “career woman.” Many of my friends feel similarly. Including men. When my close male friend of 41 says he can’t imagine marrying and having kids his friends envy him and assume he is sleeping with a different woman every night. When I say that, the same people assume I am defective and just can’t snag that mate. They believe this no matter what I say.

I find people’s reaction to my familial life choices similar to their reactions to my opinion on the war in Iraq. No matter how eloquently I defend my position, they have put me in a box of preconceived conceptions and I am a right wing nut (but they love me anyway.) because of that one position — as I am a freak female for pretending to not want to have children.
Each individual is a complex puzzle of beliefs, desires and thoughts. I no more buy that nurturing motherhood is an automatic and innate qualtiy of all women than I believe absolute pacifism to be an essential component of liberal thought. The family thing is so culturally driven into little girls and women it is almost brainwash. I yearn for the day little girls in our enlightened and modern society will not look to their wedding day as the most special and important day of their lives, but rather just one potential thing in a web of choices the world offers them . I never meant this to be a political position, just a personal choice — but the older I grow and still fail to see acceptance of the “childless woman” the more political it feels.

To be honest, unless there is some big change in attitudes brought about some singular event or movement, this is unlikely to happen. I feel sad at the way society is progressing sometimes, specially now with the curse of plastic surgery.

Why? I’m 30 and childless, I don’t know anyone my age who has kids. Why should we somehow relate more to older women who are mothers? My dad’s best friend from college is a lesbian, I don’t remember having trouble “relating” to her when I was growing up, I thought she was really cool.

That said, I’m not trying to bust your balls (bust your ovaries?) because I thought Widdecombe’s interview raised some good points as well. I also offer up the controversial viewpoint that Londoners are way more appearance-obsessed than your average American. This may simply be a “big city” phenomenon (i.e., obviously Los Angelinos are obsessed as well), but I swear I’ve never heard so many comments on clothes and makeup and crap before moving here, and the constant expectation that as a female, I should be really into shopping and studying Trinny and Susannah. I *personally* feel that women are pressured far more here to look a certain way than in the U.S. But I also feel like all those tabloid stories about fat white girls who converted to Islam and put on the veil because they supposedly felt pressured to dress like a slut are also disguising the real issue of these women simply not having the strength to do things their own way. Why is it so hard to play soccer, not wear makeup, whatever, and just screw what “society” thinks?

it would be good if women could get beyond the conditioning of society and truly set themselves free.

Wouldn’t it be nice if EVERYONE could just get beyond their religious conditioning and set all of humanity free? Men have a lot of work to do as well in terms of getting over their own issues and culturally-ingrained expectations.

Perhaps the voluntary wearing of the Burkha and breast enhancement surgery are but two sides of the same coin.