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Politics
Pragya Agarwal, Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice, Loughborough University

Should I have children? Why society's idealisation of motherhood benefits no one

FotoDuets/Shutterstock

Mothers – and non-mothers. Our language creates the falsehood that being with a child is a norm. Words like childless or childfree firmly place the person without a child as the one lacking. Women who decide not to have children are marked as outsiders by our social and cultural norms.

And the expectation is not just that women will be mothers – it is that they will be the right kind of mother.

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