Who Do You Save?: Love, Motherhood, and the Logic of Scarcity
6 min read
When faced with an impossible choice – saving a parent, a partner, or a child – society expects men and women to choose differently. A friend’s startling assertion that she would save her husband because “you can always have more children” disrupts the deeply ingrained belief that a mother’s love must always come first. While men’s choices are seen as noble, women’s are judged as selfish, reinforcing the idea that motherhood must erase personal identity.
What if women valued their own desires equally? What if a mother’s love was no longer treated as an obligation but a choice? The real shock isn’t my friend’s perspective – it’s the unspoken rule that women must never even think this way. Choosing self over sacrifice isn’t unnatural; it’s a radical rejection of a system that has long dictated a woman’s worth.
Picture this. A man is standing on a riverbank. In the river three people are drowning. One is his parent, one is his wife, and one is his child. He can only save one of them. Who does he save? Now picture this. A woman is standing on a riverbank. In the river three people are drowning. One is her parent, one is her husband, and one is her child. She can only save one of them. Who should she save?
Your judgements on these questions reveal something very telling in how you’ve been conditioned to think. It certainly did for me when a friend of mine, without the hypothetical scenario, told me she would always choose her husband because ‘you can always have more children’.
Cue major brain spasm and a desperate need to lie down.
I’m not even a mother, yet this existential whiplash felt like she had spoken the unspeakable, the thing that defies everything we’re taught about motherhood – that mothers are supposed to choose their child(ren). And yet, her logic was so compelling. Because if we remove the emotional weight of that statement, it’s simply scarcity math in countercultural-sounding capitalist reasoning. There are more children in the world, but finding a true life-partner? That’s really rare.
Why Does This Feel So Unspeakable?
The reason her statement was “so shocking” is because it contradicts one of the most sacred myths of our culture: that a mother’s love for her child(ren) is above all others – that it’s the greatest, most unconditional love ever. To think otherwise isn’t just taboo – it’s practically heresy against the doctrine that a woman must solely choose and completely sacrifice herself for her child. And to speak it is to disrupt the idea that a woman’s first and primary identity is Mother, rather than Woman, Partner, or even Person.
But if a man is allowed to prioritize his parent or wife, why is a woman condemned for doing the same?
'Scene from the Great Flood' by Joseph-Désiré Court
Men Are Husbands, Women Are Mothers
A man who chooses his parent over his wife and child is seen as noble and honourable, for to do so is considered a mark of deep respect and duty. And a man who chooses his wife over his child(ren) is often seen as romantic, devoted, principled. But a woman choosing anything other than her child(ren) must be selfish, unnatural, unmotherly. And even if you don’t have a child, whether by choice or not, the rules are still the same.
Women’s roles are already predefined by society, but once they have children, their entire identity is rewritten in service of that role. Their relationship to any other individual than their child(ren) becomes secondary, if not entirely irrelevant. Men are allowed to be sons and husbands, but women must become mothers first and foremost.
This is why my friend’s statement felt so radical. Because she rejected the idea that becoming a mother means ceasing to be herself.
Scarcity vs. Abundance Thinking: What’s Really Rare?
Her logic was so straightforward:
Children are not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (no matter what we’re made to believe).
There will likely always be more children. (The world is already full of them.)
A true “soulmate”, life-partner, person you can trust and build your world with is much harder to replace.
But we’ve been conditioned to believe the opposite – that children are the ultimate treasure, while romantic love, for example, is fleeting and expendable.
How Capitalism Fuels This Mindset
It’s no coincidence that this “mothers always choose their child(ren)” narrative has been able to flourish as it has when we exist within capitalism. This is because capitalism is a system that thrives on the idea of scarcity and control – propagating the belief that resources, love, and success are finite and therefore must be fiercely protected. Thus, we have:
The “Precious Child” Narrative: In a capitalist world, children are considered to be high-value long-term investments. Parents pour in time, money, and labour in the hopes of “producing” successful adults.
Motherhood as a Sacrificial Economy: Capitalism relies on mothers being self-sacrificing. The economy benefits from mothers being endlessly giving because unpaid care work sustains the system. If more women stopped prioritising their children, capitalism would have to pay for the labour of raising them.
Spouses as Replaceable, Children as Permanent: Romantic relationships are seen as unstable (and filial piety time-limited), while children are positioned as forever. This reinforces traditional family structures that are meant to equate to economic stability.
Under capitalism, a woman choosing anything other than her child(ren) is not just a personal decision – it’s a direct challenge to a system that relies on women as producers of future workers and consumers and requires them to sacrifice everything for the survival of this next generation.
Disrupting the Expected Outcome
Under capitalism, people are treated as replaceable units – workers, consumers, family members. But, from an exchange value perspective, a husband, for example, provides partnership, stability, and shared resources. This makes him a more strategic long-term investment than children, who will eventually grow up and leave. In a capitalist framework, you invest in what is irreplaceable. So, the logic aligns with capitalism, yet is still disruptive. In stripping away the emotional idealism of motherhood and replacing it with a risk-benefit analysis, it remains capitalist in its logic, but is anti-capitalist in its outcome.
When Life Forces the Choice
The idea of choosing between loved ones in a crisis is nothing new. We see versions of the scenario featured in my opening dilemma in history, literature, and art. But the clearest example is probably childbirth – one of the most dangerous times for a woman. Husbands have been and often still are forced to choose between saving their wife or their unborn child.
These moments of forced decision-making are more than pure survival instincts but a revelation of cultural values – because the economic, social, and emotional weight of that choice has never been neutral. So, when my friend said she would choose her husband, she wasn’t just flipping the script. She was exposing the deep contradictions in how we think about love, loyalty, and survival.
What If More Women Thought This Way?
Historically, women didn’t have the option of choosing anything other than their child(ren). With no jobs, no financial independence, no real alternatives, prioritising children wasn’t necessarily an act of selflessness and deep maternal devotion – there was just literally nothing else for them to do.
Now women do have careers, options, and other aspirations. The fact that society still expects women to behave as though they have no choices, even when they do, exposes how this isn’t about practicality – it’s about control. For it is still that case that not all women who become mothers choose it. Societal, cultural, and/or personal policies and pressures mean that women who never wanted to have children have them anyway. While others who don’t feel that all-consuming, overwhelming maternal bond that was promised, are not permitted to voice that out loud.
What if more women were like my friend and considered their own wants, needs, and attachments as just as valuable as their child(ren)? What if a woman’s primary loyalty could be to herself, rather than her child(ren), husband, or parent? What would happen if more women allowed themselves to see and save themselves first? What if a woman’s value wasn’t measured by who they served, but how they lived?
Maybe the real shock isn’t my friend’s choice but the fact that women aren’t allowed to even think like this without it somehow being a violation of her “fundamental purpose”. Because perhaps the real unspeakable truth is that choosing children isn’t actually as “natural” or inevitable as we’ve been led to believe. Perhaps it’s just what we’ve been told is the only right answer.
