NO Kidding

Last week, I was invited to a party at one of my relatives. But I was not told what that party was for. Must be someone’s birthday, I thought. I went through my personal diary in which I jot down the birthdays dates of my friends and relatives. But no one in that family was nearing a birthday. So, I went, without even bothering to buy a gift.

Once there, it didn’t take me long to figure out the reason behind the party. My maternal auntie was pregnant. They had been married for seven years but were childless. Now, she was pregnant, and my uncle’s joys knew no bounds. When I heard the news tears came to my eyes. I remembered all years my uncle and aunt had to pass in pain, and not because they were childless. What hurt them most was the society’s perceived importance of motherhood for a married woman. The society had tagged my aunt as a ‘childless woman’. Perhaps unsurprisingly in our patriarchal society, none pointed a finger at my uncle. I found the hypocrisy of it all intolerable.

The society makes it normative that all married couples have children. Inability to reproduce becomes a stigma, especially for women, even if it in turn, in the final analysis, it’s the male partner who’s to be blamed. Our society is structured in such a way that women in particular are targeted for failing to conceive. In my uncle’s case, many people proposed that he remarry. But he kept rejecting all proposals. (Just imagine what their reaction would be if it was my aunt who wanted to marry again.) Announcement of wife’s pregnancy is considered an assertion of the hubby’s manliness. But the failure to conceive invariably is attributed to some physical and/or psychological problem in women. Some even consider it as the wife brining omen for the family.

My aunt wanted to adopt a child. But no one in the larger family circle stood by her.Other family members, mostly males and older generation females, argued in favor of the importance of biological motherhood. They needed someone to carry on the family blood; a task which could be fulfilled by adoption of a child. Since womanhood culturally is so closely linked to biological motherhood, it is not surprising that adoption has a discrediting influence on women.

We as a society need to redefine the notion of motherhood and infertility. Let’s put an end to the disparaging cultural attitudes towards infertility or childlessness. Let’s collectively imagine a nation based on equality, love and respect for all. A country where no one is discriminated on the basis of age, sex and physical endowments.

(The Kathmandu Post)