by barliquin
Women have been the ones in the past who collect memories. We made the pictures or engaged a photographer to make a family photo. We made sure that the children made their school pictures and kept watch until the children delivered them safely home to us.
We created family albums and scrapbooks. We wrote in diaries to unborn children that we carried, and kept journals of those experiences of the early months following the birth of those we eventually delivered into the world. Many of us still do. We have been, and are the keeper of memories.
Amid the hustle and bustle of trying to accomplish the tasks of the late 20th century and 21st century woman of western cultures, the mother, daughter, female whom feminism and women’s liberation has freed from the apron strings of jobs relegated to women, much has been lost within all that has been gained.
I applaud the ability and reality to choose the kind of life I want to live. And yet I lament the torture that choice in any matter delivers. Deciding on one road means leaving behind certain gifts attached only to the alternative. And the reverse.
Choosing to have children brings millions of sacrifices in nurturing a child along with the daily uncertainty the entrance of any new life into your daily living brings. In exchange we open ourselves as their mother to the infinite possibilities of joy and epiphany, purpose in living and relationship that live within and each child delivers.
Choosing not to have children brings equal possibilities of life fulfillment–the freedom to travel and search now new worlds both within and around you and to not grow bitter from giving so much, and so early in the relationship with your child, while not knowing how and if all will come to fruition.
The greatest gift for me as a daughter is that of being a woman, a female who has the choice to open myself to either of the possibilities that come with having children or choosing not to.