What is the Path for Women Single by Choice?

Lisa Martens
5 min readAug 10, 2021
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

When I was a girl, careerism didn’t sit right with me. But I also didn’t want to be a housewife and mom. I remember reading Sylvia Plath’s description of motherhood — basically an unending supply of whole milk in the suburbs — and dreading it.

I remember George Carlin discussing feminism, and this part in particular struck true to me:

What’s the alternative to pumping out a unit every nine months? Pointless careerism? Pointless careerism? Putting on a man-tailored suit with shoulder pads and imitating all the worst behavior of men? This is the noblest thing that women can think of? To take a job in a criminal corporation that’s poisoning the environment and robbing customers out of their money? — George Carlin

I definitely did not want to do that, and I briefly considered becoming a nun or devoting myself to religion. But I did not believe in Christianity once I became a teenager, and becoming a nun and paying lip service to a religion just because I didn’t want to have a career or a family also did not feel true to myself.

I did volunteer a lot, and while it was rewarding, it felt like I was not helping anyone gain any momentum.

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Lisa Martens

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