Rinku Ghosh’s article shines light on the age old problem of being a ‘mother’! She cites an example, look up any achiever’s name & they all come with a suffix’ also a mother to so & so’. As if every achievement falls short if one doesn’t pass the motherhood test.
Great if she did it despite it. Ambitious & careerist, if she did it without it. A childless woman is asked everyday why she couldn’t have a baby when it could be that she ‘did not want’ one in the first place.
This societal duty than choice is successful woman are queuing at the IVF clinics & infertility centers. Taking loans for the hefty sums, trapping themselves in the ‘IVF debt’. Nobody talks about the physical pain involved.
In our cultural narrative, women are expected to be selfless. Sacrificing when it comes to continuing the bloodline in a tactical transference of responsibility.
Infertility is not rising because women have poor health & hectic life styles , men are going through the same, without guilt. Men are always assumed to be virile, and women automatically assumed to be infertile.
Men are as enthusiastic about fatherhood as women are about motherhood. Yet there is no prejudice against a childless man.
Freezing eggs or resorting to expensive treatments may happen in cities but if she cannot earn , borrowing money is her last resort. How long should the trials go ?? Rarely we find the first procedure being successful.
Childlessness doesn’t automatically translate to a lack of maternal instincts. As author Maya Angelou says, “If our children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves”.
More & more women choosing careers over getting married or having children is creating an imbalance. An individual cannot live for himself forever, he needs people around. What if it is his own family !?
With developments we are going through problems never thought of earlier. Birth, education, job or vocation, marriage, children, old age, death. Lives were following a set pattern, then.
What can we do to change the thinking for the larger good of mankind?
Asian Entertainment 