We start the month of May sharing opinions about motherhood, a beautiful topic, but also controversial. A rebellious spirit against injustice like mine, could not miss the opportunity to talk about realities that are there, in front of our eyes, and about which many prefer not to talk, regardless of the clear need to change them.
Although in other societies women more often face situations that are more difficult to overcome, such as being forced to marry, suffering rape within marriage, among others, I feel that Western societies also reveal a stereotype that implies that "all women have to be mothers”. The social expectation is that you become a mother and for some people, groups, and cultures, the requirement comes in a combo, accompanied by any number of conditions: the age you must be, the number of children, traditions to follow, stereotypes or values that should be instilled, the type of mom you should be, anyway…. And, although I have no doubt that in many cases this is done out of love and with the best intentions towards women, thinking that we are helping them, in my opinion, this is invasive and disrespectful towards the human right that each woman has to decide whether she wants to be a mother or not, and how she wants to assume her motherhood.
Each woman perceives motherhood differently, and it may even vary throughout her life. For more than 25 years, for me, fulfilling myself as a woman did not imply having a partner, getting married, or having children. I was focused on training, developing professionally, and being financially independent. Around my 30s, when I had already achieved important achievements in these areas, I began to think that careers, postgraduate degrees, positions, and good annual packages would lose meaning over time if I didn't have a family of my own to share them with. So, I reorganized my priorities, schedules, activities, and above all, the time to generate opportunities to start my family project. Thus, at 32 years old she was married and at 34 she was already a mother. And if you ask me today if I would repeat the experience, my answer is yes, and a thousand times, yes.
Now, motherhood is a huge and lifelong responsibility. Certainly, it is not for all women. And I ask myself then, why pretend that they are all mothers? Just as there are women who intensely want to be and can't, there are others who can and don't want to be. All women have sexual and reproductive rights. Sexual rights refer to exercising your sexuality in a healthy way, without violence, abuse, coercion, or discrimination. Reproductive rights refer to deciding if they want to have a child or not, how many they want to have, how much time they want to elapse between the birth of one and the other, information and access to contraceptive methods and family planning, or on the contrary, on fertility female, assisted fertilization, useful guidance for before, during and after pregnancy, etc. In these matters, any other person can give an opinion, preferably when requested, but they must be very clear that their criteria are not instructions and that women must know their sexual and reproductive rights, exercise them fully without pressure, and above all, without being judged and discriminated for it.
The call is to be more empathetic and respectful of the sexual and reproductive rights of women; and women, to exercise them with authority, and commit to demanding their respect and compliance from their own homes and families. This could be an effective way to drive change.
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