[a design of Daisy laying down from the front]

Why queens deserve more love by Irispaw

Irispaw shares why they think queens are underrated in the series.

Art by Murder Cats Designs (tumblr)

Hello, it’s Irispaw here and I’m discussing queens, and why they are underrated and over hated.

It saddens me how no one treats queens as real members of the Clan, and just as cats who happen to have kits. I rarely ever see anyone saying their favorite cats in the Clan are queens, always just warriors, leaders, or medicine cats. The amount of hate I see for permanent queens is unfair in my opinion. A lot of people treat permanent queens as cats who had kits, and are to lazy to start fighting, so just stay in the nursery. This is not true at all. Permanent queens can have a great influence on life in the clan.
Do you hate on teachers for helping young children grow and learn because they are just lazy and want to stay in a class all day instead of doing something productive and helpful? I sure hope not!
Queens are essentially teachers and caregivers. While, sure, you could argue that mentors are, not queens, but I see mentors more as college professors. These people help you learn more about a certain skill or job, much like medicine cat mentors help teach more about the specific skills medicine cat apprentices are going to need to be a medicine cat and warrior mentors help warrior cat apprentices learn the skills they will need to be a warrior. Teachers on an lower level though, are still just as important. Kids need opportunities to be curious, explore, play, and learn how the world works. These teachers and caretakers are almost like second parents that help these kids grow and learn. Even someone as simple as a daycare teacher that may not teach kids the skills they need for their job, is still important to a child. They help children with social and emotional skills. You can see queens do this, they help kits start eating meat, show them how the clan works, play with them, support them, discipline them, and feed them.
You could argue permanent queens aren’t necessary, because these kits already have parents. But that might not always be the case, lots of human parents have jobs and can’t take care of their young children, just as many cats want to get back to their duties early on. These permanent queens help with this. Maybe they don’t even have parents, you can’t asume that someone is going to be pregnant at the most convenient times. Would you rather these kits take care of themselves because of a silly rule that is if you’re not pregnant you must be a warrior or medicine cat. Permanent queens are great because you don’t always know the situation each kit is in. Permanent queens help in so many different ways. They can help as early as birth, by being a midwife. Midwives help people prepare for birth, and help give birth.

Now something that annoys me: when people say “I don’t like queens, all they do is lay around watching little sleeping kits. They are just being lazy because they don’t want to have a real job.” This is assuming taking care of children is easier then having a “real job”. Kids are not easy to take care of. Do you ever hear that being a parent or teacher or a caregiver is easy? The hard part of kids doesn’t stop at the pregnancy or even birth. Taking care of of children is both physically and mentally draining. Around 13% of new mothers have postpartum depression, not to mention Around 70% of new mothers experience major mental problems like sadness, mood swings, anxiety, irritability, and loss of appetite. And these are little sleeping babies. Taking care of a child can also be physically exhausting. Babies need almost constant care, they must be fed every few hours, they may have a hard time eating or falling asleep, and not to mention all the attention you have to give them to avoid them getting into trouble, yet they’ll still find a way to get in trouble. Being a teacher to young children is not an easy feat either. Teachers have a big impact on children’s social and emotional development, and more and more people are realizing that they need more support too. According to the Journal of School Psychology, “…they often report that they feel stressed and overwhelmed when they deal with children’s negative emotions and challenging behaviors.” Yes, they are cats, yes this is only a book series, but the way people treat taking care of kids as something that’s extremely easy is not true at all. These people are great, strong role models, and they deserve a whole lot more credit!

Another reason people don’t like permanent queens is because they wasted their training as a warrior by not going back back to being a warrior. Do you think you know exactly what you want to be already? Plenty of people have training for different things before they know exactly what they want to do. You can still use plenty of those skills in other fields too. Why wouldn’t a permanent queen use what they already know from that training and use it to help protect kits? This really makes no sense to me, there will always be more warriors, but you hardly see permanent queens. These queens help raise the next generation of warriors.

I would love to see permanent queens as a real rank, one where you can train as soon as you are a ‘paw, trained by other queens who have experience, so you don’t have to be experienced yourself. This way we can have have toms as permanent queens as well, because being teachers, caregivers, or midwives isn’t exclusive to females.

Well this was my huge rant on why we need to appreciate queens, I hope you liked it and may StatClan light your path!

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