Let us watch societal pressures on childless women

It is often said that culture is not a thing to part with but surely, there are certain cultural and societal norms that need to be thrown out of the window in this 21st Century enlightened world.

Pressures of childlessness The pressures emanating from some of our beliefs and practices as a result of cultural and societal beliefs are deadly. They should not be given any value in our thinking forward. Childlessness and all the tags associated with it is one such belief.

Nothing breaks one’s heart more than to see or hear a young woman lose her life through pregnancy and child birth complications. It is even more heart-wrenching when that woman is an accomplished hardworking individual who was at the prime of her service to mankind.

When the loss is as a result of needless pressures or expectations from societal and culturally misplaced demands, the heartbreak gets even devastating. And so my heart was in pieces last week when I read the unfortunate story of the passing of a 34-year-old lecturer after a fertility surgery. The kind of surgery she underwent apparently increases a woman’s chances of spontaneous pregnancy.

It is said that every surgery has some degree of risk attached to it. However, but for the frowning of society and culture on childlessness, what place would a surgery to improve the chances of spontaneous pregnancy have in our lives? Our society and its cultural beliefs have tagged childlessness in women as shameful and abominable. It does not matter if the infertility problem is from the man; it is the woman who faces the brunt of society.

Psychological traumas To the extent that some childless women go to steal babies from hospitals and maternity homes shows the psychological torment that childless women in our culture go through every day. The stress from family and friends and those looking on from afar drive such women sometimes even beyond reasoning.

No one, I believe, can imagine what goes through the mind of a woman as she crosses the age of 40 without any child of her own. It does not matter her accomplishments in life, that one act of God to go through nine months of pregnancy and hold a baby of her own remains a silent torment.

A few years ago, a casual friend told me about why she decided to go in for adoption several years after trying to get pregnant without results. Before then, she said going to work each day was the most miserable task she used to perform each morning. Why? She said almost all her colleague female employees in their female-dominated office had been on maternity leave and they always resumed with adorable pictures of their babies, some of which adorned their desks.

Adoption as an alternative She said she used to have feelings of guilt and self pity, dreading each day the conversations her colleagues went through in the office and which centred on babies and family life. When she finally decided to go in for adoption, she had the blessings of her husband and even her mother-in-law. Within a short time, her application was approved for her to adopt two adorable children, a baby and a toddler. The feeling was as if the gates of heaven had been flung open in her face. Life now became more meaningful to her, especially when she thought of the enriched life she could give to her new family.

Ideally, every woman’s dream is to hold her own baby for the first time at the delivery ward. But it is not everything one wishes for that one gets in life. It is what God wishes for our lives that really matters.

It is ironical that in our world where babies get abandoned by parents who never planned for them, where some children are orphaned pretty early in their lives, adoption is not well defined and encouraged as an alternative.

There are couples in responsible positions and stable homes who want to adopt and take such children as their own. However, there seems to be too many myths surrounding adoption in this country.

Child adoption is the answer for many women who are suffering needless societal and cultural ridicules and guilt. No woman needs to live with the psychological trauma of childlessness.

No woman should go through death for the reason of infertility or any other medical reason. There are countless beautiful children out there waiting for homes and mothers to call their own.

The steps leading to adoption in this country should be made easier and transparent in order to encourage patronage, plus our culture needs to take a second look at our attitude towards childlessness.