How We Survived (a story)

You’re wondering how it happened. How did we survive? How did our population suddenly plummet from six billion to half that. Enabling our natural resources to recover and, eventually, support us. All of us.

In 2020, all of the indicators pointed to our imminent extinction. We had to reduce our greenhouse gases by 50% before 2030 in order to have just a hope in hell of avoiding what would otherwise become inevitable in 2050, eventual human extinction. And in 2020, we were nowhere near being on target. The U.S. continued to deny that there was a problem; Canada continued to allow the production of greenhouse gases just for fun (via snowmobile, PWC, and ATV use; in fact, the government had gone so far as to designate 121,000 kilometres of crown and private land specifically for snowmobile use).

And so there continued to be—and every year, more—devastating droughts, forest fires, heat waves, floods, superstorms, and pandemics, as well as all the rage that typically accompanied such events—riots, assaults, mass shootings …

In the middle of all this, single mothers just … gave up. They’d had enough. Enough part-time, temporary, casual work for which they earned half of what men would have earned. (No, what am I saying? Men would never be offered, would never have to accept,part-time, temporary, or casual work. Not if they had kids to support.) Enough of no pension, no benefits. So no affordable medical care. Enough of looking after other people’s kids as well as their own, but needing to do so in order to feed their own. Because no affordable daycare.

They’d had enough of fighting for child support every fucking month. They’d had enough of the men, the absent fathers, still calling the shots. For example, preventing them from moving back to where they could get the help of their extended family, because said family was in a different state or a different country and they, the men, wouldn’t therefore be able to see their kids as often, as easily. (Suddenly that mattered.)

They’d had enough of living in a culture that “values work that contributes to the destruction and exploitation of life over and above work which nurtures life,” to quote Abigail Bray. And Marilyn Waring. And how many other women who had been ignored.

They’d had enough of being considered, treated like, damaged goods and sluts.

Why were they single, you might ask. Their husbands, the kids’ fathers, had abandoned them, saying they just weren’t cut out to be fathers.

Or they’d left their husbands, the kids’ fathers, after years of abuse, psychological and physical, that hadn’t started until the first pregnancy.

Why were they mothers, you might ask. Their husbands had refused to use a condom. They’d said they’d pull out, but didn’t. Usually, they just raped them. It was their right, after all. (The consequences, apparently not their responsibility.)

So the next time their kids were with their fathers for the weekend, they just … disappeared.

You might think it would tear them apart. Well, they were already torn apart.

Yes, their daughters would likely be raped. That would’ve happened anyway. Eventually. The famous ‘one in four’ had crept to ‘one in three’ as men got angrier and angrier with the world at large.

Yes, their sons would be raised to be misogynistic psychopaths. That too would’ve happened anyway. The porn culture enabled by the internet had turned most men into misogynistic psychopaths. Which was no surprise, if they’d been watching women being humiliated and hurt, and apparently liking it, since they were eight. Which was the case now for most males.

And then it wasn’t just the single mothers. Married women started divorcing their husbands and insisting that said husbands, their kids’ fathers, assume full-time custody.

“I’ll take them every other weekend,” the women would say, magnanimously.

And oh my god, was it wonderful. They’d work from nine to five, and the rest of the day, the evening, was theirs. All theirs. To do as they pleased. The housework, the laundry, the cooking—it was surprising how little was needed for just themselves. And the quiet. It was … bliss.

In a way, it seemed that women had started getting over themselves. Truth be told, in most cases, the kids would be no worse off with their fathers. It’s not like they, the mothers, had been doing a stellar job. Their kids were, across the board, oh so ordinary. At best.

In a way, it seemed that they’d finally realized they’d been suckered into believing that raising children was something that only they could do, something that they could do best, being women, being mothers …

“You know, it’s strange,” Ann said to Beth during their coffee break, as they read the latest statistics on the phenomenon. “It’s like all these women, single and married, suddenly don’t love their kids anymore.”

“Yeah, well, love,” Beth replied, cynically. “Oxytocin by any other—”

And that’s when it hit them.

They did the research (suspending, for the moment, their development of an air-borne contraceptive, with a somewhat onerous and impossible-to-regulate antidote, like holding one’s breath for 60 seconds every hour for 24 hours straight, that would change the default from having to do something not to get pregnant to having to do something to get pregnant), and sure enough.

There had been a decrease in oxytocin. For many, that bond was all that had been holding mother-and-child together. Once it started to dissolve, once their oxytocin started to decrease, well, it was … easier. To just give up. Give up their kids, leave them with their fathers. It actually didn’t tear them apart. Quite so much.

We should have seen it coming. After all, we’d been using pesticides, handling plastics, wearing cosmetics (that turned into a nice irony: you want us to look attractive all the time, well, okay, but … it’s gonna cost ya), and coming into contact with god knows how many other industrial chemicals for almost a century.

We even knew that many of these chemicals were endocrine disruptors: they could increase, or decrease, certain hormones (special signal-sending chemicals); they could interfere with the signals hormones were supposed to send; they could even turn one hormone into another.

In fact, we had proof way back in the 1940s that DDT, for example, caused problems for bees, and in 1962, biologist Rachel Carson sounded a strong alarm about such pesticides (and was dismissed as hysterical for doing so). It took ten years for the U.S. to ban DDT. And another forty to make the link to breast cancer.

But, well, research into women’s bodies was not exactly a priority. The first-ever statement about women and heart disease—the signs of heart attack in women are different than in men—was published in 2016. And we had Viagra (and Cialis and Levitra and Stendra …) long before safe contraception. And—

Simply put, women weren’t as important as men. It was an opinion that was, apparently, impossible to change. After all, Viagra (and Cialis and Levitra and Stendra …) was covered by health insurance plans ten years before any of the various contraceptives were covered.

As more and more women entered the sciences, there were attempts to change that, but men continued to dominate the funding decisions. (Ann and Beth had resorted to crowd-funding for their research.)

As for research into mothering, that was especially emasculating. Only a wuss would choose to do that! I still remember when I first read Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics, in which they present an astounding connection between access to abortion and the crime rate: twenty years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. crime rate dropped. Astounding indeed. That men were surprised by that. What did they think would happen when a woman is saddled with a squalling baby she does not want, on an income she does not have, because she has a squalling baby she does not want— She’d get a ‘Mother of the Year’ award?

So. Oxytocin is a chemical produced by the hypothalamus. It motivates and reinforces attachment. Therefore.

Their conclusion was validated when almost overnight, the proportion of new mothers (single or married) with so-called post-partum depression went from one in seven to four in seven. That’s over half.

We’d only recently hypothesized that post-partum depression could be caused in part by low oxytocin. Turns out that it’s not so much that low oxytocin causes post-partum depression as that high oxytocin masks post-partum depression—the reasonable (healthy) response to the forementioned state of being saddled with a squalling baby … (Especially reasonable when you were absolutely exhausted from having just birthed it, in part because you went into that labour in a weakened state due to the multiple stresses, emotional and physical, of being pregnant for nine months in the first place.)

Those who thought post-partum depression was just a medicalization of not wanting kids were right. Maybe, just maybe, women’s sole responsibility for that squalling baby explains why they experienced “a loss of energy, changes in sleep patterns, a diminished ability to think or concentrate, and recurring thoughts of suicide.” I mean, duh.

So when the increase in oxytocin that typically accompanied pregnancy and labour didn’t occur …

Almost overnight, most new mothers acted like those with post-partum depression. Or like men. Quite simply, they weren’t all that interested in their newborns. They saw them as the demanding shit-machines that most new fathers, truthfully, had always seen them as. (‘Honey, I have to stay late at the office again, sorry.’ Right. Code for ‘I can’t stand another minute of its crying. You’re different, you’re a woman, it doesn’t bother you, just like you don’t mind changing its diaper ….’ Right.)

And, simply put, most women did not want to have to look after a demanding shit-machine twenty-four/seven. Who would? Looking ahead, they saw nothing but exhaustion, frustration, resentment, anger, rage … Being completely responsible for a completely helpless human being for years …

So, many women just left their newborns with their husbands.

“If you didn’t want to look after it, you shouldn’t’ve had it!” Dave said when Diane told him she was going back to work the next day.

She waited a few moments, then saw that she had to say it out loud. “Same to you.”

And then in the morning, when she was on her way out ahead of him—in many households, there was actually a race for the door—he objected. He’d obviously not taken her seriously the night before. But then, when had he ever?

“But … this is crazy.”

She stared at him. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Dismiss as ‘crazy’ anything you don’t agree with. As if you’re the standard of sanity.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did.”

“But … I can’t stay home, quit my job. I make more money than you!”

“Yeah, pity you never joined the fight for equal pay for work of equal value.”

“But—”

“And,” she sighed, “it’s not all about money.”

Many women took their newborns to their rapists. In many cases, in many countries, that meant the same as leaving them with their husbands. But in many other cases, it meant taking the infant to a male relative, a ‘friend’, an acquaintance … As statistics have shown, in most cases, women are raped by someone they know.

“You can’t leave it here!” Tyler said. “I don’t want it!”

“Then why’d you make it?”

“I didn’t make it!”

She waited just a moment. “Do you really not know how babies are made? When sperm—”

“I know that shit! Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Well, unless you taught your sperm how to swim backwards …”

It was amusing, though appalling, that so many men seemed to assume that women had some sort of innate control over fertilization. That getting pregnant was their choice, hence their fault.

“Why didn’t you take care of it?” He glared at her.

“I am taking care of it. I’m giving it to you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Then say it. Say what you mean.”

“Why didn’t you get an abortion?”

“Why didn’t you get a vasectomy?”

“I thought you were on the pill or something.”

“Why did you think that?”

He shrugged.

“Well, shouldn’t you have made sure? Before you put your sperm into my vagina?”

In many countries, women organized and took their newborns, en masse, to their legislatures. They walked in, close to a hundred at a time, and set their infants, strapped into carriers, baskets, and car seats, onto the long meeting tables.

“What’s this?” The Man-in-Charge would say.

“The babies you forced us to have by prohibiting abortion.”

“Well, we don’t want them.”

Then you shouldn’t have forced us to have them.”

And then they started to walk away.

“Wait! You can’t just walk away! What kind of mothers are you?”

“The unwilling kind. The coerced kind.”

And then with great self-righteousness, the Man-in-Charge would call Security and have the women arrested for abandonment. Right then and there. They’d be taken away to holding cells. Sentenced for, possibly, five years. With smug satisfaction, the Man-in-Charge would turn back to—

The babies were still there. Now wailing. Every one of them.

Oops.

Initially, it was concern for the kids that received all the media attention. (Of course. Even fertilized eggs are more important than women.) Women with post-partum depression don’t bond with their newborns; as a result, said newborns don’t thrive. They are likely to have a wide range of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and medical problems: lower IQ scores, attention problems, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, conduct disorders, my god the list goes on. (Tell me again why mothers, if they’re so very important, are ‘paid’ just room and board.)

Most women fully understood the importance of the first six years; they were the formative years. Literally. But why were women best suited for those first six years? Why was onewoman best suited for those first six years?

And if those years were so fucking important, they said, they screamed, why did men keep undoing what women did? With advertising—sugar-sweetened drinks and cereals, fat-laden and nutrient-poor fast food … With toy stores—stocked with gun-wielding action figures on one side and pretty pink princesses on the other … With television, intentionally attractive, intentionally addictive—the more kids watch tv, the worse their social skills, their language skills, their school performance, their physical fitness …

Of course, many women argued that the ‘What about the children?’ response was just a guilt trip, and a way to keep so many of us sequestered, segregated, in the home, overworked, too tired to care about, or to do anything about, anything else. And not an expression of genuine concern for the children, for those formative years.

And so … the men found out what it was like. To be home alone with one, two, three kids who demanded their attention every minute, every second. They’d had no idea how exhausting it could be. Physically, psychologically …

What did they do? Some desperately hired other women to look after their kids. But ten hours a day, five days a week, it added up.

Naturally, those who were married expected their now-working (wait, now-working?) wives to pay half the mortgage, half the electricity, half the insurance …

“I can’t afford that. We’ll have to sell the house, move, find something cheaper.”

“Sell the house? But—”

“And of course I won’t be paying half the nanny’s salary.”

“But they’re your kids too.”

“I can’t afford it.” It was true.

Suddenly men were speaking out for equal pay for work of equal value. Suddenly they were insisting their wives get pay increases and promotions. Suddenly they were appalled at the jobs their wives didn’t get hired for.

“But you’re qualified! More than qualified!”

Duh.

“Can’t you pay at least part of the nanny’s salary?”

“Why should I? It was your decision.” Because oh, the rage. Their husbands were paying some stranger more than they’d ever paid them. To do the same work.

And, again, “If you didn’t want to look after a kid, why did you make one?”

And, of course, it wasn’t just about money. Unless they hired a 24/7 nanny, the men whose wives had left found they no longer had their evenings and weekends to themselves. To put it mildly.

When hiring a nanny proved impossible, the men stayed home. What choice did they have? Many were fired because they didn’t show up for work. Or couldn’t stay late. Or had to leave suddenly in the middle of the day for an emergency. (Fortuitously, this opened positions for all the women now seeking paid employment.)

Suddenly men were speaking out for, demanding, state-funded daycare.

They insisted that their estranged wives pay child support. But when the arrears for 24/7 nanny services to date had been calculated, minus their portion for all the joint expenses, in most cases, the men still owed the women. No child support would be forthcoming.

Regardless, most men found they simply couldn’t handle the non-stop neediness of babies, infants, toddlers, their relentless whining presence … When their infants wouldn’t stop crying, some men threw them against the wall. Or worse.

So when that proved impossible, the staying at home with them, they just started leaving them alone during the day. And often during the night. Some men just left the house at one point and didn’t come back.

The kids died. Of course they died.

Some starved to death. Some died of thirst. Some had fatal accidents. They fell when they tried to get out of their cribs, or they drowned when they slipped in the tub, or they died in a house fire when, so hungry, they tried to make supper …

Call it ‘failure to thrive’. In a big way.

So, yes, the incidence of infanticide increased. The incidence of child abuse and neglect increased. More prisons were required. More foster homes were required. Proposals were made to bring back orphanages.

The number of street kids increased. More social services were required.

Juvenile crime increased. More young offender facilities were required.

Governments were overwhelmed.

Of course, early on, almost immediately, actually, the men realized they hadn’t wanted kids after all. Not really. They’d just wanted the badge of respectability, the measure of maturity. And they realized they’d been duped by the association between the two: being able to get a woman pregnant had nothing to do with respectability. Or maturity.

And they realized, now, that if they did have kids—that is, if they did create some new human beings—they’d have to look after them for a good fifteen years. Actually look after them.

And then what happened?

Nations that had hitherto spent half their budgets on weapons found that they had the money for state-funded daycare.

Legislation was passed for equal pay for work of equal value. And enforced.

Legislation was also passed for equal opportunity for promotions. And enforced.

Contraception became not only easily available, but free of charge.

Abortion became legal. And available. On demand.

And, finally, there was an increase in vasectomies, from a global rate of 2.2% to 81.9%.

And then, zero population growth.

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