Motherhood: a choice, not an obligation

The year 2021 is ringing with change but women claiming bodily autonomy is not one we are prepared for yet. The liberal (read: atypical) belief of “your body, your choice” is one shrouded with controversy, shame and guilt where only one school of thought is given attention.

To have or not to have children is a life-changing decision that is often taken for many women; their ‘consent’ to motherhood is mostly seen as an assured constant unimaginable to ever change. But aspiring to motherhood is a personal choice and there are two wings, rather than just one, that must be acknowledged with the same respect.

If raising children is what you yearn for, you should be celebrated and supported for your choice to bring life into the world. Motherhood is a beautiful experience, one that has no substitutes. There’s nothing quite like feeling a growing foetus move and breathe inside of you and having its tiny heartbeats pull at your emotional strings.

But make no mistake, motherhood is anything but a lionised bed of roses. Morning sickness, physical distress, eating and sleeping disorders, not to mention the financial cost and tumultuous alterations a child, small enough to fit in a tiny bassinette, brings with it. What we often forget is that it’s not just the pregnancy that a mother has to endure. It’s the permanency of raising the children you bear and parenting that is a discussion suffering from little to no limelight.

Parenting is a big ask. It demands enthusiasm, training and patience – qualities not everyone is inbred with nor are prepared to develop. A young child left to the whims of neglect and mercy of chance is one who grows up with scars and trauma that take years, if even that, to reverse.

In our society, broken marriages are often seen as perfect rooms to throw a baby in, unrealistically hoping that an infant will somehow act as an aiding tool to overcome cases of abuse, abandonment, mistreatment and miscommunication. It’s important we recognise that this argument is about as good as saying that bullet wounds can be patched with a grenade timed to blow up your whole life, taking your marriage down with you.

To sum up, having a child that you do not want is the greatest injustice you can inflict upon humanity. And, perhaps, the most extreme tragedy that exists in the world is when women vying for motherhood find it impossible to conceive, while others who do not have the maternal gene are ironically blessed with a baby.

“Society was formed to recognise women as a powerful being gifted with the ability to prevent human extinction. Women do this simply by having children. Through the passage of time, helped with a myriad of other factors like women choosing to stay home and misguided definitions of masculinity and feminism, women found themselves with the image of being primary caregivers,” recalls Marjuk.

“Society has not helped this notion much with their over-adulation of parents, particularly mothers, who are put on a pedestal and given a free get-out-of-jail card for everything simply because they are mothers,” he further explains.

Indeed, quoting scriptures and Victorian beliefs of having more and more babies to increase likelihoods of eventually birthing a son are all guilt-trips and emotional manipulations to coerce women into accepting motherhood.

With global population exceeding 7.79 billion, it’s more than safe to assume humans are nowhere near the brink of dying out. Having established that, let’s allow half of our kind to wilfully make decisions regarding their own bodies. After all, women hold the sole proprietorship of their own selves and not having a child is equally as acceptable as having a child. In either case, it has never been and will never be your business anyway!

Read the full article on The Daily Star
Author: Ramisa Haque
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay