Refusing to Perform

This year, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave birth to a baby girl without uttering so much as a word to the general public. 

You may know Adichie most famously as the confident voice on Beyonce's 'Flawless,' where she lists the many expectations that society places on womanhood.

Because I am female
I am expected to aspire to marriage
I am expected to make my life choices
Always keeping in mind that
Marriage is the most important
Now marriage can be a source of
Joy and love and mutual support
But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage
And we don't teach boys the same?

This time, Adichie has tossed aside another expectation: she had a baby and refuses to discuss it.

"I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy," she said in an interview with the Financial Times.

"We don’t expect fathers to perform fatherhood."

At first, this really surprised me, and I smirked at the idea of 'performing pregnancy' (since it is pretty difficult to hide). Then I thought about it a little harder.

When was the last time you read an interview where someone outright refused to discuss their pregnancy or newborn? Probably never. Celebrity interviews on the topic are usually full of platitudes about transformation and thankfulness, even from the most private people.

Confessions about the challenges of motherhood, or infertility, are rarer still, inspiring lists like this one.

It's because, "we enter the world prepared to perform roles and manage the impressions of others, with the ... aim of getting along and getting ahead in the social groups that define who we are," as psychologist Dan P. McAdams writes.

Yes, society begs our performance and there are so many things to perform...happiness, fun, composure, wealth, motherhood. Personhood.

But what if you're not ready to talk about being a parent? What if you can't have children, or don't want to? 

What if we want to keep our relationships and careers private? Our moods, our outings with friends...

If we start refusing to perform, new expectations could emerge --- a world where people aren't compelled to explain their life choices in interviews and status updates all the time. One with less platitudes and phoniness.

And a good kind of silence, too.