adminAndile Tshuma
THE pressure exerted on childless women is often hurtful and insensitive to those on the receiving end.
In some communities, I learnt that a woman’s worth is measured by her ability to reproduce. This is a society where a child is valued way more than its mother.
In Africa, women are often blamed when pregnancy fails to materialise and Zimbabwe is not an exception. Women are often publicly ridiculed, humiliated and ostracised by friends, relatives, neighbours and in some cases by their partners.
While efforts have been made to address male fertility, the subject remains a taboo and a woman is often blamed for failing to produce a child without testing both couples for fertility.
I spent this week in Masvingo Province where I had gone for a National Aids Council (Nac) tour of some of their HIV intervention projects.
I must say I was impressed by the efforts of Nac in the fight against HIV, and how they have managed to engage young people who come clean about their HIV status and educate their peers on how to live positively or how to protect themselves from the virus if negative.
A lot of good things are happening in Masvingo; well that’s a story for another day. During the media tour, we had the opportunity to visit places such as Mupandawana, Gutu, Ngundu, Lundi, Mwenezi and Sovelele, which are all dotted around the province.
I had a brief encounter with a woman in Mwenezi who is a peer educator and a retired sex worker. Yes, she calls herself retired and says she doesn’t want to say she quit because she had no problems leaving the age old profession.
Stella, the peer educator who is in her late 30s said she ventured into sex work after she was abused by her husband of six years who blamed her for their childless marriage.
She says she endured beatings, insults from her husband and cruel stares from her in-laws.
She left the marriage in 2001 and went to stay in Lundi before moving to South Africa.
Stella said she could not find work in Rustenburg, South Africa, at restaurants before eventually moving to Johannesburg where she was introduced to prostitution by another woman from her home village.
Well, fortunately or unfortunately she fell pregnant by one of her clients. She says it was her first pregnancy.
She doesn’t want to disclose whether she got sick or she deliberately did it but she says she suffered a miscarriage, but was happy to have been pregnant as in her own words the brief pregnancy wiped away her tears over barrenness.
Fast forward to 2018, she is a mother of two and is still a single mother, however she says she is happy alone and is happy when she meets the relatives of the man who called her barren when she sired no child with him.
According to Stella, her ex-husband remarried, and still does not have children.
She had the last laugh, which I feel she deserved after suffering years of blame and being treated less of a woman compared to other members of the female species who have managed to reproduce.
Stella’s story represents the plight of many women who suffer silently as communities reject them for failing to conceive.
While having no children is a choice for some women, some struggle for years to conceive, before eventually giving up.
Some women conceive but fail to carry pregnancies full term.
Some men fail to reproduce due to infertility problems such as low sperm count; however this is less talked about, as compared to all that is said about women.
Sometimes women are the worst when it comes to treading on other women and making them feel less feminine.
You may find that at church gatherings, workplaces, and family meetings, it is often women who whisper about other women’s problems.
Some are so daring enough to ask straight up, “hey makoti, you have been married for years, when are you giving us a little one”.
While it may seem as a little innocent joke, it may cut deep on someone who suffers secretly and wants to have children. Some women ridicule other women for not having children.
When a childless woman tries to correct or discipline another woman’s child she is quickly told to bear her own children so that she can exercise her own parenting styles.
But sisters, why are we like this?
Infertility is not a curse; it is a health condition which may sometimes be sorted out.
It is high time society stopped looking down upon women without children. It’s high time society also stopped pressuring men who have not reproduced.
It must stop.
Childless couples are still a family even without that blessing of little ones in the home.
After all, in actual fact, it is nobody’s business except for the couple, whether they have a child, why they do not have a child, how many children they will have, or if they want any children at all. Everyone else must just sit down and mind their own business.
In these modern times, women, and men that are having problems to conceive need not suffer anymore as fertility clinics offer support and medical facilities that could bring them joy.
Various options are available for different conditions that manifest in failure to conceive.
Some of the medical interventions are medical procedures that are now available.
While they may prove to be a bit costly for some members of the community, it brings hope to men and women that at least such facilities are available in the country.
While we celebrate the availability of such facilities in the country, it might be said clearly that a woman’s worth is not in her womb abilities or disabilities.
Men must equally be spared and not treated as boys just because they are not called by the names of sons and daughters.
It takes a community to change such demeaning practices that are disguised as norms, values, culture and religion.
Online Reporter