Pretending your dissertation is a “baby” is a thing. I’m trying to work out why I find it enraging, because it does not line up with my stance on “fur babies” aka the supposed tendency of childless pet owners to treat their dogs and cats like children. I am entirely fine with people loving their pets, and find the stigmatization of doing so unpleasant. If someone is channelling parental energy towards a pet, why the mockery? Is it because they for whatever reason (often implied: a woman who couldn’t find a man) couldn’t? In that case, rude. Or is it some sign of Western decadence (or not-Western; have you seen the poodles of Japan) that some choose to have pets and not to have kids? No, it is entirely fine, pets are nice living creatures who should be well-cared-for. And for what it’s worth, having human babies has if anything made me think of the poodle-baby as more of a baby. I can’t explain it but it has.
But what I feel when I see a woman cradling her dissertation “baby” goes beyond cringe. Why? It can’t just be that some women have babies and write dissertations, because some have babies as well as dogs. Some have dogs, babies, and dissertations. Such women are the greatest humanity has to offer and deserve universal congratulations on a continuous loop.
I think what’s off-putting about the dissertation-baby meme is that it thinks it’s a feminist statement. It’s the feminism of that “Sex and the City” where Carrie demands a wedding registry so that she can buy shoes. The implication is that there are on the one hand pathetic lady-acheivements that normie society celebrates, such as having a baby, and on the other, impressive intellectual and professional accomplishments like writing a dissertation, which evil sexist society DGAF about. In a just world, the meme suggests, people would throw baby showers for dissertations. Everyone would coo over dissertations. People would get up on the bus to give their seat to women holding copies of their dissertation, even digital ones on a memory stick.
Meanwhile… exactly how much of having a baby is celebrated by society, and how much is penalized? There’s something disconcerting about feminist mothers (plenty of whom, again, have written dissertations of their own) trying, desperately, to get the word out about things like pregnancy and postpartum health, about paid leave and its absence, about a society that treats a woman having a baby like a lifestyle choice or imposition and not a basic fact of humanity, only for the dissertation “baby”-havers to treat women who have human babies as reactionary or unaccomplished. It’s the stale feminism of two paths—family or career—with the dissertation “baby” representing the latter. A more useful feminism is about the ultimately small-potatoes tweaks that make full lives possible for mothers, as they always have been for fathers.
The “baby” suggests a world where a baby is purely about others’ affirmation, and not, you know, a baby. A child. A dissertation is never in a high chair while you sit, wondering the logistics of addressing a ringing doorbell without leaving a 500-page document unsupervised. A dissertation does not need a complicated-to-schedule flu shot, nor is its covid-shot eligibility a source of any concern. A dissertation poops neither in diaper nor potty. It is a professional milestone, and while some employers will be more impressed than others, none have ever been thrilled at the prospect of however many years of 3pm pick-up, yet that is when schools let out.
If people do make a bigger deal about babies than dissertations (and I’m not even convinced), is it because cruel, misogynistic society only values women when they do woman-y things? Or is it because any professional achievement is hard to relate to for those in other professions? That and: a baby is a new human being on this planet, whereas a dissertation is a series of stapled-together term papers? There’s a cross-culture, cross-class solidarity among those who have had this experience, which is why mothers (esp of young children) get it and congratulate-commisserate. It has nothing to do with a dissertation or a Nobel prize. It’s a life fact, not a prestigious CV item.
The dissertation “baby” is different from “fur baby” in that it is coming from the “baby”-havers themselves. It is not an insult hurled from the outside, by people who may not know the perhaps quite sad circumstances leading to someone having done X, Y, and Z, but for whatever reason not had a kid along the way. No, it comes directly from someone proud-defensive about having chosen career over family, who wants the validation they imagine (because they missed a key feminist memo) comes with having a kid. It’s like they’ve heard about baby showers but not the thing where 4 weeks parental leave is meant to be a luxury. About pregnant women getting congratulated but not the thing where after giving birth they have to sit on a pillow for a month because they literally cannot sit on a chair. Did your dissertation prevent you from sitting on an uncushioned chair? I didn’t think so.
“A dissertation poops neither in diaper nor potty.”
Or on the sidewalk.
Life goes on despite the largest of challenges.