I was thinking this morning about the description I had written for my Open University profile, and realised that I had automatically written "married, but no children", which just goes to show how even I am programmed to think that marriage = children.
When himself and I got engaged, my brother-in-law asked us about having children; I think we replied something about not planning to have them, certainly not straight away. His response was "why are you getting married then?". I was gob-smacked, and if someone said that now I would probaby reply "um, love?"
Things have changed in society, but our inbuilt stereotypical ideas still hold strong.
I have now removed any reference to children from my OU profile; after all, people who have children always mention them when describing themselves; so by default my not mentioning them should make it clear that I don't have any, right?
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteIt's the 'but' that enforces the stereotyping I think