HIMYM Child-free Life Choice Option
I was cruising the Bitch Flicks website that Chrissie put up on her last post. I was looking through the list of movies and TV shows that have been written about and came across an evaluation of Colbie Smulder's character, Robin, of How I Met Your Mother in terms of her not-really-a-spoiler alert childless future. I know and understand a lot of the criticisms that HIMYM receives as I feel that I have a love/hate relationship with the show because of the obvious sexism and other social issues present in the show. I thought the author of the critic made an interesting connection between Robin's pregnancy scare and later discovery of infertility as a small shining light of sorts for women who do not want children. She mentions that it would have been interesting and brave of the writers to pursue an abortion story line but knew that had Robin ever been written as pregnant, she would have been written to have the child.
I know this doesn't seem like that much of a big deal given the show's other faults, but for women who don't want children (I count myself among them for now), it was refreshing for this strongish female to be written as a career woman who didn't have children because that's what is expected of women. The writers could have had her adopt as done on other sitcoms such as Friends and King of Queens when the couples of those shows were revealed as infertile. But they didn't. They allowed Robin, as Ted reveals to us in his closing speech of that episode, that Robin instead became an traveler, business woman, and a journalist. He also mentions that just because she wasn't able to have children (not that she had ever wanted them as illustrated throughout the whole series), doesn't mean that she ends up alone. I thought that this last point lies in direct opposite of how society tends to view women who don't want children: that we will end up alone because what man (or anyone!) wants a woman who is not a "real" woman as she doesn't fulfill her "biological" function. It was/is also illustrated throughout the series that Robin doesn't really hate children as she is pretty involved in Ted and Lily's children's lives.
I just hadn't really thought of Robin's future in this light, but as I was reading this article, I found myself agreeing with many points being made.
I think its great to include a woman character that have or want to have children. I The more this shows up in pop culture the better. I'm trying to think of tv shows that I watch that have female characters that don't want to have children and I can't think of any, which is surprising because I watch alot of tv shows.
ReplyDelete