Whenever I open up about my decision to be childfree, I get different extreme reactions “HOW COME!?” they are surprised, “You would change your mind” they hope, the classic “Who will take care of you when you get old”? usually tops them all.
Now, being an African woman I take no surprise, it’s actually expected they are going to suggest that motherhood is a “must”, it’s what our society is made to believe, hell, the whole of humanity is made to believe. I get it.
What I don’t get though is, are we only suggesting women have kids because being women (carriers of wombs as a friend recently referred 🙂) or is it a result of a thorough thought process where all pertaining issues have been kept on perspective and ruled in favor of every woman giving birth?
This by the way is a very individual woman thought process, not a community thought process that is then forced to women to embrace and get on with.
If we look at it from a community perspective we may actually end up suggesting the opposite because a healthy world (reduced carbon footprint and global warming implications) requires a effective population growth monitoring but let’s leave it at each woman level.
As every woman is her own individual, different factors would compromise each decision making process. But a decision making process is usually done by asking yourself questions, in this case questions like:
1. Is motherhood for me? (Do I want to be a (primary) caregiver to a baby until they get of age or for their whole life as it happens at times because healthy conditions or just finances aren’t allowing them to move out and get started at life on their own).
This includes consideration of resources like time, money, setting of new priorities from one self to the baby and so forth.
2. Have I figured out what really is my desire? (I mean motherhood like any other well selected path should be a happy and fulfilling path, does the prospect of being a mother to a child cause you excitement or terror or do you have feelings of uncertainty?)
.. have to be asked.
Bottom line is, figure how you exactly feel about it, you want to be as certain as you can be before you take a leap of faith hoping all shall be well.
Motherhood is the most demanding (and equally rewarding?I would like to believe so) job but yet is the most not thoroughly thought through vacancy a woman is expected to take.
It’s more than one hats under one name (a nurse, a chef, a therapist, a nanny, in some cases also a father, you name it).
Every role a woman wants to take little or big, she is encouraged to sit down and figure out how she feel about it and if fits her goals and who she is, yet motherhood, the most requiring of them all is supposed to be a default selection.
Reason being, “that’s what past women have done and here we are” smh.
How many things women of the past have done and how many are we still doing?
Had we continued with whichever women of the past have done we wouldn’t be voting, going to school or getting feminine sanitation facilities we have in place today because “let’s do it the foremother’s way”.
I am all against the plug and play forced on women.
You have to ask questions, ask yourself and others, see what you feel about it individually, is this for me – yes or no?
hermirror 