A House With One Person In It Is Full
No one tells me what "counts" as a family.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver.
No one is in charge of the word “family.” No one decides what it is, who gets to have it, or how big it has to be in order to “count.” I exist in an ether and a political climate that scares me more every day with an exclusive, imposing focus on descriptions of family. One where a man and a woman have a house bursting with children. Where a woman “submits” and has no income and a man “provides.” A chilling picture that’s “ideal” to some and terrifying to others. Terrifying to me. I believe that single women living in their homes alone qualify as a full house. I also think this level of understood validity is necessary to rise above the lies that would love to shame you, keep you small and settling, and silence your voice.
Male praise of overwhelmed mothers caring for too many children, siblings fighting with and raising each other in equal measure, a house covered in toys and mess, as though all of it is a badge of honor; this sugar-coated narrative is desperately trying to convey an accomplished picture in the hope that more women will not just say yes to it, but actively pursue it, too. They’re trying to get more women to pursue their own overburdening by convincing women that if you sign up for this life, you’ll be praised, accepted, and made special. They’re doing all they can to hide a single woman’s own freedom and potential from her, by painting single life as sad and empty. The sadder state for me is anyone who falls for it. Marriage and children can be beautiful things, and they can create happy homes. But they don’t have the monopoly on family, especially not when they’re used to shame single women into thinking we have nothing, and that women who have too much have it all.