Freak of nature

I'm not sure listening to current events is good for my blood pressure. As I was driving to my riding lesson today, I caught a bit of the senate judiciary hearings. I think they probably struck me a little differently (and more forcefully) than other people. I want to spend some time explaining why. (And as an extra note, this will be rather partisan. I make no apologies for that.)

If you hadn't noticed I have a few children; some are biologically related to me and others were adopted. (Sound like anyone else you've been hearing about recently?) So here's the thing. I am treated differently by a good 80% or so of the people I come across. (And really, I completely made up that statistic, so it is certainly not verifiable, but use it as a benchmark to describe my personal experience.)This usually works one of two ways.

Scenario #1: I meet someone new. We talk. I appear normal and conversation moves along as any conversation between new acquaintances does. Inevitably, though I try to postpone it for as long as possible, it veers towards how many children I have. I hedge and say a few. Rarely am I allowed to get away with this, being forced into a proverbial corner to state the number. Once I say 12, that's it, the conversation is done. I can expect to be quizzed about what life is like... how do I do it all... ages... number of loads of laundry... what kind of car I drive... what kind of a house we live in... until I can exit the conversation. It is the exceedingly rare conversation which does not take this turn. It is so rare that I remark upon it when it happens. Instead of being another person, I become a "mother of a lot of children" and all the stereotypes which are associated with that title. I try to keep from talking about how many children I have for as long as possible because the longer I appear to be normal, the more difficult it is to go back and slot me into the stereotype. Because while I love my children, when I'm with other adults I would very much like to talk about other things... books, horses, education, psychology, neurology, history, music, theology, hand work, cooking, travel, etc., etc. I'm pretty wide read; I can talk about a lot of different things. 

Scenario #2: This scenario happens with people I already know and who know how many children I have. These are the people who just cannot let it go. Ever. They are the ones who feel the need to make a joke about the number of children I have at every opportunity. They are the ones who feel the need to circle back and comment on the number of children I have as if they think I might forget. There are certain offenders who are so frequent at doing this that even in a brief and inconsequential conversation the number of children I have will be brought up. You think I exaggerate? I assure I don't. The milder form of this is when talking with other mothers about this and that and they feel the need to apologize for complaining or being stressed or finding parenting hard at the moment because surely their difficulties pale in comparison with mine. (Parenting can be difficult regardless of how many children you have. No need to apologize to me about that.) I am not allowed to participate in most normal parenting conversations because I am seen as different; that somehow the number of children I have negates any other parent's experience. And by not allowed I mean that if I try to participate, the apologizing starts or the conversation fades away and breaks up. I went through a periods convinced my super power was the ability to stop a conversation with a single word. It's what it felt like.

Instead of being treated like a normal human being, I become a stereotype. There are a few options. The first is wonder woman. How on earth do I do it all? All those children? And some of them are adopted?!? No normal person could do that. The proof, I'm told, is that it is so difficult with just two, it must take super powers to parent more than that. You must be so amazing!! 

The second is not smart enough to know better. No one with a brain could possibly want that many children, could they? Why would you do that? What about you? Your career? It must be compensating for not being able to do real, valuable work out in the real world. 

The third can go hand in hand with the other two... selfish and neglectful. Large families cannot be good for the children who are in them. There is not enough parent to go around. Older children essentially raise the younger ones. Because of tight finances, the children miss out on opportunities that children in a smaller family have. There's even been studies that have shown the younger children of larger families have a vocabulary deficit because they are not spoken to as much as the more nurtured older children. (Please, don't even get me started on that one.) 

To add on to those there are the extremely fundamentalist stereotypes (this idea is pretty ecumenical as to what flavor of fundamentalism). The assumption that you are a religious loony so we can write you off. Hello Duggar family. There are the images of the wife being barefoot and pregnant all the time. The treating the children of a large family as a litter rather than individual human beings. You must be on welfare and thus a drain on society. Or you must be incredibly rich and hire several nannies, not even bothering to raise the children yourself. So. Many. Stereotypes. 

I guarantee that any mother of many children, if she leaves her house at all (see? another stereotype) has heard most of them in some combination or another. It goes with the territory, and by the time our children are teens we have usually developed a rather thick skin and a host of deflective comments on the tips of our tongues. And it grows old. 

So there is all my personal baggage in regards to the new nominee for the SCOTUS. I admit it is quite a bit of baggage, so I'm sure I react to all the hoohaw about her in a more visceral way than most would. (And for the record, in case you were in any way unsure of my stance, I do not think she should have been appointed, even if she does have seven children, some of whom were adopted or have special needs.) But even so, I can still be incredibly annoyed at the assumptions about her and of her treatment. 

If you've made it this far, you can begin to see how there is a lot of baggage that our society has with large families. Since I experience this regularly, here is how I interpret this particular event, especially after listening to the "questioning" that I heard by a Republican senator. (I didn't even catch who it was, but boy was it bad. [Turns out it was Ted Cruz. Big surprise there.]) The whole thing feels demeaning, even right down to her nomination. 

I've been trying to wrap my head around why a judge with less than three years on the bench was even nominated. Surely there are other conservative judges out there. It just didn't make sense. Here is my own (admittedly a little out there) explanation. It is because she has more than the usual number of children and not all those children are white. She then typifies the entire super hero/not entirely intellectually capable scenario. That tension between the two is what was needed... a judge who was both amazing and able to be controlled all at the same time. Throw in a little color to add bulk to the argument that those in charge are not racist and you have the perfect little package. I hope she realizes she was not chosen for her intellect but precisely because she had a lot of children and could still get dressed in the morning and string a sentence together. Do I sound jaded and cynical? Perhaps because I am. 

The questioning I heard did not do much to change my assumptions. After I listened to this senator rant for quite some time while doing a fantastic job of fear mongering to boot, he finally got around to asking the nominee a question or two. And what were these questions to determine if the nominee was qualified to be a supreme court justice? The first was how she managed to make it through the quarantine in the spring with all those children. The second was did she speak a foreign language. And the third was did her children play any musical instruments. It was the ultimate trifecta of stereotyping. The first managed to instill the idea that if she could stay at home for a couple of months with that many children, then she must be a cut above the rest. The second addressed her intellectual abilities. Aren't mothers of large families so parochial that speaking a foreign language wouldn't be on their radar. [This back-fired a little bit because she admitted to having taken French in school, but didn't really speak it now. The senator then had to down play his own foreign language abilities so that she could seem more intelligent than he.] The third got at the whole neglect angle. Essentially he was asking if those seven children had the same opportunities than other children did. That was his entire questioning. The only way these questions make any sense is if you buy into my theory about why she was chosen... looks good, but not on the same level as the political rulers. 

What I would have loved for her to say, when asked those questions, is what on earth they had to do with her ability to be a justice. I actually don't know why she didn't because the questions were demeaning, trivial, and condescending. But she didn't. She sat there and took the condescension; she played into their hands. I want a supreme court justice who is going to stand up for what is right. If she cannot stand up for herself, can she do the even harder job of standing against injustice? (That's a rhetorical question by the way, I'm already pretty clear on my answer.) 

I'm so tired of mothers of many children being treated like a freak show. I know an awful lot of these women. Quite a few have more children than I do. None of them fit the stereotypes that are so prevalent. If you happen to meet a person with a surprising (to you) number of children, you can stop and say, "How wonderful" and then go on with your conversation. They will thank you for it. And maybe for a while, avoid asking if any of the children take music lessons.