Patriarchy and motherhood

"This feminism has really messed up our traditions and culture, many women are avoiding being mothers," one of my friends said with a tinge of remorse in his voice. He knew that I am a proud feminist and was trying to score a point. 

"Women are not avoiding anything, they are choosing whether they want to become a mother and if they want when to become mothers, motherhood is neither an obligation nor an imposed burden for many feminist women, and I think that's good for both, men and women," was my reply. This didn't make my friend happy as he insisted every woman has a fundamental duty towards her family to bear at least one child, he just couldn't fathom a scenario where a woman could have a choice of rejecting motherhood, this was an unthinkable aspect to him. He is not alone who think like this, many men as well as women think that motherhood is an inherent part of being a woman, such is the stronghold of patriarchy over our thinking.

Now, you may ask, "what's the relationship between patriarchy and motherhood?" There shouldn't be any, right? But there is, patriarchy has glorified motherhood so much to make women feel that without motherhood they are incomplete. This is one of the greatest scams successfully pulled off by the patriarchy. When I pointed out this, my friend strongly disagreed and recited the usual stuff related to the glorification of motherhood. However, he did not have any answers to why motherhood defines women, but why fatherhood is not necessary to define any man. There are many men from history who left their wives, and kids, for some other pursuit and still considered great, but one can hardly find similar examples of women. No society or culture dares to glorify a woman who abandons her kids and family and goes in search of something else. Her act of abandonment of her family and kids will overshadow everything else, however, men are immune from such treatment. 

Most cultures around the world still consider motherhood an essential element of being a woman, but fortunately, this is changing fast. Thanks to contraceptives, many women voluntarily chose their time to be a mother, and many women chose not to be a mother. In places where access to contraceptives is limited for whatever reason motherhood is imposed on women against their will. Whether they choose to be a mother or not, they all are women. Glorification of motherhood is a well-planned strategy to trap women in childbearing and childcare so that they remain engaged in other household work. To make this entrapment permanent and secure concepts like divinity, the superiority of a mother's love compared to a father's love, and how motherhood makes a woman complete were introduced. This also added a guilt factor. Any woman not following this well-guarded and exploitative path was riddled with impending guilt and shame for not fulfilling her duties as a woman. These tactics have worked stupendously so far, many women are the flag bearers of the idea that a woman is not complete unless she becomes a mother. Motherhood has to be a matter of choice, without choice, it becomes a burden as it is imposed and not by choice. 

In reality, motherhood is purely a biological incident. Like every other species we need to reproduce so that we don't become extinct, motherhood and fatherhood both result from this reproduction process. Nature has given one of the genders in every species the ability to be a host for the initial phase of the reproductive cycle. However, now with the availability of modern technology, the entire process of reproduction, starting from fertilization (union of an egg and sperm) to the development of a deliverable baby can be carried out in a lab, without the need for any host. This will become a reality sooner or later once society gets over its moral guilt about outsourcing child production. Yes, society will achieve a comfort level where kids can be produced outside the human body, same the way it did to outsource childcare. The glorification of motherhood was mainly to instill the feeling of guilt in women so that they don't complain about the imposed motherhood. Even today, if any woman decides not to have a child to advance their career or goes back to work by her own choice immediately after delivering their baby, she is shamed and made feel guilty whereas men are totally immune from such attacks. 

One may expect that after all this imposition and hard work, the woman gets all the credit, and the child at least carries her name and legacy. No, never. The child still bears only the father's name, even father dies before the birth of the child or had zero contribution to upbringing, the child still bears the father's identity, not the mother's, this is the masterstroke by patriarchy, making women bear all the pain and do all hard work but give the product of all this man's label. So, women do all the hard work, including putting their lives at risk (many women used to die and still die during childbirth), and in return, they only get a hollow glorification, the man gets to attach his name just for being a man. This is also why women's sexual freedom was heavily guarded whereas men were free to have multiple relationships or marriages. Before DNA testing, there was no way for men to confirm that the child from their relationship or marriage was their genetic child. Women didn't need any proof to confirm their genetic link to their baby as they literally produced that baby, but the men had no other way to confirm this without prohibiting other sexual intercourse until the initiation of the pregnancy. This is how the concept of purity and sanctity of the female body arose, just to prohibit females from engaging in the same type of sexual behavior that men freely engaged in. Even today, in many cultures, it is abuse to say that someone has multiple fathers, but the other way (having multiple mothers) is perfectly okay. 

Patriarchy affects both, men and women, but the way it affects women is very complex. Many traditions that look harmless and fun are designed to keep women in only certain roles and stunt their personal and professional growth so that many areas exclusively belong to men. Guilt and shame are often used to attack women who dare to break these traditional boundaries imposed on them. The sooner women realize this better it is for them. Being a parent is a choice, parents share the joy and burden of bringing a child into this world. Putting the entire onus of love and tenderness on women is unfair and brutal. Mother or father, any parent can provide childcare, just because of one's gender no one should be forced to bear a child or take care of a child, or compromise their professional ambitions, the day we realize this we move one step closer to gender equality. Until then, keep supporting feminism, because that's the best mechanism we have currently to counter all the nonsense against women.         

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

©Vinay Thakur,  Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com