GENDER EQUITY AND CHILDBEARING COMMON SENSE
This global breastfeeding week is as good a time as any to start this conversation. Should humans check in with the rest of the animal kingdom where childbearing is concerned? Raising the next generation and ensuring the continuity of the species is a job that is worth recognition in its own right.
During childbearing years, women should therefore not have to work except they absolutely choose to do so.
Having had children while working as a career woman and then having my last child a few years ago as a stay-at-home Mum, I discovered really late what a huge difference lies between the two approaches to having children. Watching other mothers-in-waiting during antenatal visits while pregnant with my last child, there was something sad and frankly a tad incongruous about seeing women dressed up in work clothes, some taking work-related calls while waiting for their appointment. “This used to be me”, I thought, feeling faintly hysterical as I struggled to recall specific memories of my previous pregnancies. I could not. In their place were memories of workshops I proudly facilitated in spite of being very pregnant, trips I made to faraway places, and deadlines I met. Unfortunately, I can barely recall what they were about but I am more saddened by all the precious milestones I missed and tried to imagine as the Nanny filled me in on my return from work. Looking around the Doctor’s waiting room, it just seemed so out of place for a woman who should be resting up, reveling in being at one with nature and a partner with God in keeping human-kind going, being pampered and cared for (like all of God’s creations during pregnancy), to be working flat out, stressed and harried with maintaining a work-life balance. The more I pondered over it, the clearer the epiphany: women have been conned in the best con of all, the kind that you work very hard to get into yourself.
For decades we fought for equality and finally, we got it. But what does it mean to be equal? Did we work so hard to be equal that we lost all the equity we had? In nature, there is a division of labor. In the ant kingdom, the worker-ants are sterile females charged with looking for food, taking care of the young, and defending the nest from unwanted visitors. The male mate with the Queen and die off soon afterwards, their duty is done. The reproducing females are the Queens, whose job it is to lay eggs and perpetuate the colony. The Queen is continuously surrounded by worker ants who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste. Everyone has his/her place. If every ant in the colony had to forage, then every individual would be exposed to great dangers and the colony would face possible extinction. If ants know that, how come humans have evolved in the opposite direction? What is worse, women all around the world have bought into this delusion: that equality means having a career and raising children at the same time – supposedly the best of both worlds? In the ant kingdom, the equivalent of that is foraging and reproducing at the same time. How much smaller is an ant’s brain than a human’s again? I mean what does that leave the men doing? Nothing! How did we get here?!
Of course, I don’t believe a woman should be helplessly dependent especially in a world filled with men who could potentially up and leave one and one’s children with no thought of what would become of them. Statistically, women become much poorer after divorce and live more impoverished lives than divorced men. In a world where marriage is not any more of a commitment than hair color, it is dangerous for a woman to be without marketable skills that arm her with the means to take care of herself and her children if she had to. However, having lived both lives (working mother and ‘kept’ woman), I am now a firm believer of the fact that women should NOT HAVE TO WORK in their reproductive years. In this regard, even single mothers should be supported by the State and community to focus on being healthy and doing good with their babies in their child-bearing years. By all means, we should work before the babies and return to work after the babies are grown but when that is your job, let bearing and rearing your babies be your job and do it well!
EDITOR’S NOTE
The United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF) states that infants should ideally be breastfed within one hour of birth, breastfed exclusively for the first six months of life, and continue to be breastfed up to 2 years of age and beyond. Infants that are not exclusively breastfed could be at a substantially greater risk of death from diarrhea or pneumonia as breastfeeding supports infants’ immune systems and may protect them later in life from chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes. In addition, breastfeeding protects mothers against certain types of cancer and other health conditions. Adequate feeding from 6 months onwards can prevent undernutrition and decrease the risk of infectious diseases, such as diarrhea and pneumonia.
Sadly, only about two-fifths of infants worldwide are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, and only around two-thirds are introduced to solid foods in a timely manner. This is mostly due to unfavorable workplace policies that prevent millions of women from breastfeeding.
