one thing i've recently learned is that women don't stop competing with other women once they get married and have children, they just start competing for something else intrasexual competition never ends and instead of trying to secure the best man for themselves, they're now trying to secure the best possible future for their children, which means competing with other mothers for resources, attention, opportunities, etc. and i wonder how much of the constant complaining about marriage and motherhood is actually part of this even when happily married, loving their children and with a good life, every time they talk to other women they make sure to tell them how exhausting motherhood is, how useless their husband is, how much they miss their freedom or how having kids ruined their body the reason is that they are competing for attention for themselves and that the fewer women who decide to have children, the fewer children theirs will have to compete with they don't even consciously realize what they're doing we've spent hundreds of thousands of years competing for resources to keep our offspring alive and all those instincts didn't magically disappear the moment a woman becomes a mother obviously some women are genuinely miserable. but MANY of them are making their lives sound worse than they actually are (especially on social media) to make other women more miserable and what's fucking terrifying is that until very recently this sort of behaviour could only influence the handful of women around them. now a single mother complaining about how much she regrets having children can reach millions of young women who haven't even started their families yet i wonder how much this has contributed to making an entire generation terrified of marriage and motherhood and how much damage it's doing