Jackson Free Press

Earlier this week, my friend Terry e-mailed me a link to a short film from 1947 called "The Secret Lives of Cats." Two things struck me as I watched: First was the obvious affection of the two adult cats toward each other and their kittens, which was, in my experience, extraordinary. The second thing that occurred to me was the old adage, "Even a cat can have kittens."

It may be an unorthodox viewpoint, but I've never felt pregnancy to be anything particularly special. Child rearing, well, that's a different subject, but, like cats, getting pregnant isn't an achievement for most women. As my friend Rick commented with exaggerated pomposity when I congratulated him on his wife's pregnancy many years ago, "Ah yes, thank you. I have f*cked successfully!"

I still smile every time his comment comes to mind, which it never fails to do when I hear that someone's expecting. Most people here in the Bible-belt's buckle are quite proud of the dubious "achievement" of pregnancy. Somewhere along the line, folks have decided that pregnancy is the epitome of femininity, that it raises a woman to a sacred pinnacle to be carrying such potential. And while I understand that motherhood is a defining and elevating state for many women, for most, getting pregnant is as easy as breathing.

Seeing the devastating effect of multiple pregnancies on poor women in pre-World War I New York slums, nurse-midwife and birth control activist Margaret Sanger said, "No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." Sanger watched her own mother waste to an early grave after 18 pregnancies and 11 live births, and she was determined to educate women about reproductive choice despite church and civil authorities denouncing her at every turn.

My own mother, well educated in effective birth control, chose to become pregnant four times, producing three daughters and a stillborn son for two husbands. By her own admission, she used two of her pregnancies to trap her husbands into marriage, and she cynically admonished her daughters to do the same, planting the contemptuous message that no man ever marries his lover without that additional "incentive."

I had the dubious honor of being her only "planned" child, by which she meant my father actually wanted me. It carried the weight of "dad always liked you best" in my family—hardly an envious position.

Motherhood has never had any appeal to me, perhaps because my familial role models were far worse parents than the cats in "Secret Lives." But mother-muck aside, I don't find children particularly interesting. They're self-centered little tyrants as far as I'm concerned, with nothing much important to say and absolutely no conversational skills, much less attention spans, and they take up entirely too much of one's time. I can't tell you the number of good conversations I've had rudely interrupted by children behaving like … well, children, while their parents stopped whatever else they were doing to assuage those tiny, tyrannical egos.

Rationally, I chose early not to have children, and a few hormonal pangs aside, I have never regretted the decision, nor has any of the men in my life. Call me selfish if you will, but instinctively, I knew that I would not be a good mother, as clearly as my sister Inga knew that she would be. Both of us made the right choice for ourselves.

It is not a choice that I ever took lightly. In the early '70s, before Roe v. Wade, and more than half a century after Sanger took up the banner of women's reproductive freedom, I marched many times down Constitution Avenue for my right to make that choice. Most of my friends marched with me; it was a heyday of social activism. Opposition was no less vocal in those days than it is today—there will always be people who want to control every aspect of every life—but it was different. There was more space in those days for people to make choices without the constant condemnation—to hell fire, Hades or eternal damnation—that occurs so regularly today.

It makes me incredibly sad to hear women torture themselves with doubt and guilt when their choices are antithetical to the currently popular conservative stance. I don't understand what part of Christianity gives Christians (or Islam gives Muslims or "enter-a-religion-here" gives "enter-an-adherent-here") the right to condemn others when the Bible—and all sacred texts that I'm familiar with—clearly and repeatedly states that vengeance and judgment are not within the human purview. Within the current paradigm, women choosing outside the mainstream may never make peace with their choices and move ahead with their lives. And that's a waste.

When women who don't want children feel trapped into motherhood, no one wins, least of all the children. It is my fervent wish that there might come a day where all children born are individually wanted, loved and nurtured children; that there will be a world one day where no child is subjected to apathy and abuse, and where all children are raised to become productive, compassionate, confident adults. Perhaps that's a utopian, pie-in-the-sky dream. I hope not. Certainly it can't happen in a world where ones rational choices are irrationally condemned.

So, ladies, choose motherhood wisely. Want your children and raise them well. Feed them on your dreams. Don't go there if it's not right for you, and don't allow yourself to be pressured into denying your true nature. You will regret it, and so will your children.

Previous Comments

ID

74864

Comment

I have kids, and I agree with this 100%. Nice articulation of a complicated issue.

Author

kate

Date

2007-05-11T11:11:18-06:00