Choices

A friend of mine recently posted an article that brought up a hot topic: women who choose NOT to have children and the stigma that is attached to that choice. We all know the "choice" debate covers lots of areas, including whether to keep a pregnancy, whether one wants to have children at all, how many children to have, etc etc. Women are constantly bombarded with the baby question, starting at (in my opinion) way too early of an age. My basic answer to all of those questions, in all of their forms, is that it is no one's damn business but mine. I'm not going to get into a big political/social issue/moral issue debate here because that could go on forever. Suffice it to say that I am firmly in the "mind your own business" camp. But it is interesting to me that so many people, mainly women, get up in arms when a grown, intelligent woman makes the conscious choice to not produce children. Is it that they feel the decision is an indirect judgement against their own decision to HAVE children? Do they feel it is a woman's primary job to produce offspring? Is it a religious thing? Regardless, it fascinates me.

As a mom, I know that having my children is the most important and rewarding thing I have ever done.  It has changed me in many ways, most of them for the better :) And while it doesn't work this way for every mom, my decision to become a mother was a VERY planned and conscious choice, both times. I would cheerfully rip the head off of anyone who threatened my babies or questioned my rationale in deciding to have them, just as I would do the same for anyone who questioned my choice had I decided not to try to produce children. As a woman, I wish we would support each other's decisions more. As a feminist (yeah, I said Feminist! If you have beef with that one, we can talk about it another time) I yearn for our society to treat all women as equally and fairly as we deserve. As a mother, I revel in my motherhood, and I plead for all women to keep their judgements to themselves. Whether you are a mom or not, we are all sisters.