Chrono-normativity: What is an ideal life?

How expectations of leading traditional lives weigh us down

“One is not born but rather, becomes a woman.” ~Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was one of the great socialist philosophers, and her landmark work “The Second Sex” was an inspiration to the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s. The same work contains the said quote, which sums up Beauvoir’s dismay over the idea of a mystical “feminine nature”. This statement is a perfect exposition of the idea rooted in the feminist and the queer theory that gender is distinct from sex in the sense that its basis is culture, not biology. Women are distinct from men, de Beauvoir believed, because they have been socialized to be so, and the idea of a spiritual “eternal feminine”, a psychological state of being in which women are more in touch with the Earth and the cycles of the moon, is a tool of further oppression by confining women to a singular, ideal state of existence, away from the work, career, and power, or the common pursuits of men.

This ideal state of existence manifests itself in a society-wide chrono-normativity, or the normalized chronological order of events that individuals are expected to follow over the course of their lifetime. This article will explore how stereotypical expectations impact life decisions and career choices for marginalized groups.

Another philosopher, Judith Butler succinctly points out in her essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” that a socially-stable gender identity is an institution constituted by a repetition of acts that are being produced and reproduced all the time. In her book “The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain” neuroscientist Gina Rippon tackles the myth that male and female brains are biologically different at birth, and instead posits neurological sex differences to neuroplasticity caused by gender socialization. This socialization affects us throughout our lives and has an impact on our life decisions as well.

The Scare of the “Fertility Window”

One of the most prevailing myths haunting the collective psyche about women who want biological children in the future is the fear of the “biological clock”. It is often stated that women should have kids before 35, after which fertility begins declining, which in turn, affects choices women make about when to marry and when to have kids. In her book, “The Impatient Woman’s Guide to Getting Pregnant” Jean Twenge uncovered the origin behind the 35-age statistic. She found the number had been taken from a sample population of French farmers’ wives, nearly 400 years ago, when access to healthcare was much rarer and droves of women died in childbirth. Since women are on average, healthier now, and often have access to fertility treatments, having children after 35 is not as daunting as it is made out to be.

But the myth lives on. In an April 2020, a study titled “The Long-Term Costs of Family Trajectories: Women’s Later-Life Employment and Earnings Across Europe” analysed four cohorts of women across 23 countries in Europe (childless, with partner; childless, without partner; partnered mother; single mother) and their career trajectories. The study found that not only were mothers preconceived as holding certain attitudes by hiring committees but also less serious about careers. Women were also less likely to return to jobs after having children, or go back part-time. This, coupled with inequitable stakes in child-rearing in a traditional heterosexual marriage, when it comes to hours spent at home, is a prime example of how chromo-normativity affects women’s professional lives.

The Left-Over Women

Something that is all too common across Asian cultures is the pressure for women to get married. Unmarried women in their late twenties or early thirties are frowned upon. In fact, the Chinese even have a popular name for them- sheng nu or leftover women.

According to the framework of a society's chrononormativity, there exists a heteronormative ‘life schedule’ or ‘lifeline’, as per which a life should follow a schedule of events that need to take place at a certain and in a certain order. Marriage, of of the greatest relics of a community’s culture and social life, is a part of this schedule, and De Beauvoir had a rather unique perspective of looking at it:

“Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being.”

Marriage deals a different hand to everyone who partakes in a culture that pedestalises it. In India, for example, marrying early is seen as desirable, and many women are discouraged from choosing a career as a bigger priority. A study by the World Bank in collaboration with the National Sample Survey Organisation found that 20 million Indian women quit their jobs between 2004-2012, and 70% never re-joined the labour force. Female labour force participation has actually fallen in India, from 34% in 2006 to 19.9% in 2020. (Source- International Labour Organisation).

It is often said that once women are past their “prime age”, they will not be approached by good suitors anymore. There is, in fact, no ideal time for matrimony, and a society which breeds the otherwise compels individuals to find a partner regardless of their present state in life. Not only does it lead to women associating their self-worth with an ever-fleeting youth and beauty, but also furthers a hastened system of choosing a partner based solely on arbitrary aspects. Any deviation from the fixed schedule of marriage or motherhood is seen as a state of ‘immaturity’.

The marriage pressure also advances a system of heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is a term that was coined by Michael Warner in 1991, and it holds up heterosexuality as the ideal or “normal” sexual orientation and alienates people of alternate sexual orientations. Heteronormativity and chrononormativity combined, in countries like India where same-sex marriage is not legal, this practice leads to closeted LGBTQ+ people repressing their queerness and entering loveless heterosexual marriages.

There’s more than one way for a life to be lived

This article does not mean to demonise individuals that choose to be homemakers or get married early. Feminism is and has always been about choice. However, in a patriarchal society, the motives behind that choice are often not made out of liberty, but rather out of expectations that are thrust upon us from an early age. As a society, it is important to be conscious of gendered expectations that can potentially hinder people’s freedom to choose their own life paths.

Living in a society which assumes that every member grows and progresses in life the same as the rest of us, and is ready for the same duties and responsibilities at the same time as the rest of us, pushes us further down the abyss of a forced life, where our individual capacities crumble to give way a normative, socially-approved lifestyle. There is no one size that fits all, and no one should suffer from forcibly being something, or from the after effect not having been.