By Mariette Reineke
When I told my mother about this website, it led onto a beautiful conversation about motherhood. She said, that in her time—she is 82—there was only one option: you get married and have children. There was not a ‘maybe’ or ‘this is not for me’. It was just that: becoming a mother and stay at home to raise them.
A lot has changed since 1967, the year my mother had her first child—my oldest sister—yet the pressure and need to fulfill a picture of having a family and taking on the role as a mother is still an insistent message around the globe today. The question: “Do you want children or do you have children?” is a frequently asked question, often laced with an expectation. If you don’t want children, or simply don’t have them, for whatever reason, there is still this surprised look and at times uncomfortable tension, when the question has been answered. When you say you are not sure yet, you get all reasons why you should and that you will reconsider one day. Replying with a simple ‘no’ to the question, “do you have children?” creates for many women, and it has for me too in the past, a sense of needing to explain or justify yourself. Why is that? Why do we assume all women will have children?
There are many expectations and impositions on women, and the need to be a mother, in order to have a fulfilled and purposeful life, is one of them. Sometimes these expectations and impositions are not communicated in words, yet in the silence a lot is expressed on an energetic level, which we can all sense. Media, such as Disney or Hollywood, religion, politics, fairy tales and education, play an impactful role in the many pictures that are being fed to us about what it means to be a woman.
All expectations have one main message in common: we are never enough, so you have to become something. Why not a mother? I have talked to many women who do have children and yet still don’t feel good enough, as if something is missing.
The why of having children…
Since I made the choice to stop fertility treatments and knew I was not going to be a mother, I have had many learnings, insights and realizations about motherhood, parenting, life and about being a woman. Over the past twelve years, I have come to understand that there is more to life than giving birth, and that in truth, I am a mother, for many. But also, that the why of having children, in my case a need, is not a true foundation to have and raise children. I wanted my child to unconditionally love me, but that is my job.
Growing up I thought that all women, at some point in their life, would be a mother. Most women around me were mothers, and the exceptions, like my aunt, were labelled with, “There must be something ‘wrong’ with you.” It was not a point of conversation during dinner back then, but even today, we don’t talk openly and honestly about motherhood, and the why of having children, and the responsibility that comes with it. Why don’t we ever ask each other why we want children?
There were no role models while growing up, but also later in life when I was eventually trying to get pregnant, who reflected to me that there is no need to have children. I never met women who were settled, fulfilled, and living a life with a deep love for themselves, taking their position in society, whatever that is, and doing what needs to be done. No emotions, no drama, no missing something; just feeling enriched with how life is unfolding.
We are complete, with or without children…
Over the last years, I started to meet those role models, and felt to interview them and share their stories.
I have learned how important it is to confirm all women as powerful, sensitive, beautiful, and deeply caring and nurturing beings—with or without children. It is this that has inspired the why of Women & Motherhood.
There are as many voices as their are women and it is through these voices of all lives lived that we may see and hear how it is that we are women first before we are any of the roles or labels we may be given in life.
A website like this is never something you do on your own. Just as you don’t parent your children alone, it takes a group to launch, lovingly hold and work together to make this happen. With the support of Marian Lowe and Ingrid Ward, two of the many role models in my life, Women & Motherhood is what it is: a platform that inspires and ignites women to be the woman that they are, in all their glory and beauty.
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