“Everyone participates in growth and further development with all their strengths at their disposal,” the judge barks at the three defendants. After all, you live in a performance society, even in one based on solidarity. For the judge, solidarity does not mean that the stronger protect the weaker, but that everyone is fully available to the economy.
This absurd trial was staged by the author Ulrike Müller in her radio play The Don Quixot women or what does childhood cost? Sitting in the dock are three single mothers, E., S. and P., who are accused of disregarding both the common good and the child’s best interests of their sons and daughters. The common good because they do not contribute enough to the gross domestic product, the child’s welfare because their small families are materially worse off than the average.
Müller conducted interviews with single parents for the play and then fictionalized this documentary material. Now one could, of course, dismiss the judge with his fixation on money and countable benefits as a laughing stock. But in this caricature of a character – he doesn’t know care work, only Kehrwoche – a lot of the social reservations about single parents and their children culminate.
The defendants have to justify their situation in life
The three women have to bare themselves in this court: biographically, financially, sexually, emotionally. They have to justify the fact that they do not have a husband and still have children, no longer working in their learned profession, ideals other than careers and classic mother-father-child families.
In the end, the women should put together a life puzzle and combine the job of one, the health of the other, the financial resources of the third. If they manage to create a satisfactory picture, he would acquit them, the judge promises. You just have to make a little effort.
The Don Quixot women or What does childhood cost? RBB Kultur, Friday, 7 p.m.