Our Mother’s Legacies Don’t Have To Be Ours
Uncovering the hidden choice while anti-abortion sentiment rises
When I walked into work a few months ago there was a baby, in a car seat, cooing in my chair. Around the baby, and my now forsaken work area, stood my coworkers swooning, bug-eyed over the idea of precious new life. That new baby smell rolled off the new mother, standing proudly beside the car seat and soaking in the admiration, a reward for her nine-month journey.
This was not the first time my office was introduced to a new baby, the donation box of books and toys cropped up, or a “Congratulations!” card inevitably made its way around the office. Motherhood and fatherhood were widely celebrated and for awhile I thought nothing of it but a small nuisance to my day to day work.
Suddenly all the babies, the engagements, the cards swarmed my brain and filled me with overwhelming shame.
When I first started at this company, I would get dropped at the office by my boyfriend. On this day, like most days, my little brother was in the back and he would get dropped off after me. As I walked into the building, the front desk ladies mentioned they saw little hands in the backseat.
They asked with what seemed to be excitement, “is that your husband and child?”
“No that is my brother, he’s 12, and my boyfriend.”
Notable drop in excitement.
“Oh, I see, well then engaged?”
I wavered on this question. Suddenly all the babies, the engagements, the cards swarmed my brain and filled me with overwhelming shame.
“No not engaged, but soon to be.”
To which they replied with some reluctance, and what seemed nonacceptance, “That is wonderful, congratulations!”
The truth is, I was not soon to be engaged. I just felt like I couldn’t admit I wasn’t. I am not even sure I ever wanted to get married. As a little girl, I didn’t mother my dolls or plan my wedding with magazine cutouts. It was something I didn’t dream about — it rarely crossed my mind.
Our childhood rhymes of marriage and carriages were only that, rhymes, that would have nothing to do with my life…
After giving into this purist idea of motherhood and traditional family life to avoid ten seconds of shame, it finally hit me. Everything I knew and heard was coming to fruition, it was the final phase into my womanhood — marriage and motherhood. I couldn’t hide from it anymore.
Not that I didn’t believe all the women who felt their only worth was in their man and their womb, I watched the same thing happen to my unmarried mother all the time. It just hadn’t been thrown in my face like that yet.
I lived in a bubble surrounded by people who thought like me, believed in what I did, and were anything but the horror stories of traditional life. Our childhood rhymes of marriage and carriages were only that, rhymes, that would have nothing to do with my life…
…Or so I naively wanted to believe.
Life, despite the unbridled excitement shared at my office, is not all God, husband, and child. I’m sorry, but I am not signing a card for a child that is often nothing more than a check mark on a bucket list for the “perfect life.” I am not donating books or toys to a child whose parents have every advantage in an unjust world. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not even done yet.
As women, we are taught in more ways than one that we are fragile beings gifted with child bearing. Raising children, among any other effort, is our first and noble duty. These beliefs are what our mothers and grandmothers were taught and are also true for most American women — find a husband, have a child, check it off the list.
I want to be sure every option is available to me, just like every man, just like everyone else.
Yet between the lines of right to life and right to choice flooding our media, we forget to address the underlying, unspeakable option. Maybe we don’t want our own children at all. Maybe we even feel it is unethical.
We shouldn’t have to feel ashamed about this.
I’m sorry if it makes anyone uncomfortable, but I don’t want children of my own. Not while I know I have a sister, out there somewhere, who was lucky enough to be adopted into a loving home. Definitely not while I help care for a brother whose parents can’t figure out how to provide for him, much like the hundreds of thousands of children living in foster homes and group homes.
Someone needed to step in and help my brother, and so do many children in his situation and worse. That responsibility has given me a lot of perspective — I have a life, a whole being, that needs me and luckily I have the financial and emotional ability to provide for him while his parents sort things out.
When the time comes that he doesn’t need me anymore, when I get to decide whether or not I have children, I want to be sure that choice is mine. I want to be sure every option is available to me, just like every man, just like everyone else.
Deciding to raise a child should be taken with more ethical and practical inquiry than “this is what I believe because someone (or some supernatural being) told me to believe.”
I may have been “gifted” with the ability to carry life, but it doesn’t mean I have to. It also doesn’t mean I was born with the amazing ability to care for life either. I may never want to have a child and I shouldn’t have to justify that decision.
On the other hand, deciding to have and raise a child should be taken with more ethical and practical inquiry than “this is what I believe because someone (or some supernatural being) told me to believe.”
I think the next time I get a “Congratulations!” card thrown on my desk I might ask if they thought about it for at least 72 hours. Those are my unpopular opinions, I know many women share them.
At the end of the day, it is your life and your womb. Have a baby, or don’t. Adopt a child, or don’t. Get an abortion, or don’t.
The choice is never easy, and it shouldn’t be, but it should never be up to anyone else but you.
