It’s okay not to want children

Two weeks ago, photographs of a gorgeous eight-month-old baby girl circulated the Internet alongside heart felt pleas to help find her.

The story was that she had been taken from her home while sleeping in her bed at their home in Mombasa.

Last week the child, Consolata Wambui, was recovered kilometres away in Molo, living with a 35-year-old woman who claimed that the mother had sold the child to her at Sh80,000. Investigations are still ongoing with the baby’s mother Joyce Kairo at the centre of it.

This is not the first time a Kenyan mother has been accused or even caught in the act of selling her child. When they are caught, women selling their children cry poverty.

HARSH ECONOMIC TIMES

It’s true, these are very harsh economic times but I think that is not the whole story. If it were, then women would be selling their children left, right and centre. I think that a woman who sells her child is a woman who is struggling to be a mother.

This reminds me of a woman I met two or three years ago. She was 30 at the time and was regretting her decision to have a child. Driven by her own traumatic childhood, this woman had decided early on not to have children. She married a man who also did not want children. For a few short years, it was blissful. Then she began giving in to pressure from what everyone around her wanted for her. They told her that once she had a child, she would realise that she had always wanted one. When we met, she was struggling at being a mother to her three-year-old.

“I should have just gone with my plan. I didn’t want this,” she told me. At one point during our conversation, she admitted to feeling guilty for even feeling the things she was feeling.

I wish that instead of telling her how awesome babies are, someone had told her that it is okay not to want to have a child. That there is nothing wrong if her ovaries never quiver at the sight of an infant.

I wish all women were reminded this. We wouldn’t have all these cases of mothers who injure their children at the slightest provocation or those who lock them up in houses for days, or the ones who leave them with aging parents who can barely keep up with them and never look back because they just can’t deal with them. We wouldn’t have children being tortured, starved, killed or sold by the very people supposed to be taking care of them.

Motherhood can be great – but it’s not for everyone. Being a mother should be something that a woman chooses to be, not something that’s chosen for her.

The next time a woman tells you that she doesn’t want to have children, hear her. Don’t ask her what is wrong with her. Don’t tell her that she doesn’t know what she is talking about.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t remind her that there are women who want children but can’t have them. Her choice has nothing to do with this other woman. Hear her.