Breathe
By Mariana Conde
I respect those who choose not to have children. It is common for them to be labeled as selfish or superficial and I do not understand why. I think there is something reckless in confronting, not only a proliferating, genetic-imperialistic society, but also biology itself, which from the very last cell instinctively impels us to reproduce.
My Aunt Maggie and her husband Phil got married in the 1970s and from the beginning decided not to have children; their determination was absolute and they unequivocally burned their ships: he had a vasectomy and they never looked back.
Both Americans migrated to Canada in rejection of the forced enlistment for the Vietnam War. Previously they protested, wrote letters, joined manifestos, but in the face of official deafness they decided to seek peace in the more moderate Canada.
I always admired them: they had jobs in the area of social service to marginalized families and troubled youth, they traveled a lot, and you almost never heard them argue except about art, politics or literature: she was a die-hard romantic, adored Flaubert and he preferred the American moderns; Fitzgerald and Sallinger were her top, while it seemed to both of them that Faulkner had gone a bit overboard with his stream-of-consciousness. From their socialist point of view, for them good literature should also be accessible.
As a couple, they were a striking pair, not because they were particularly handsome or scandalous, but because of this: Maggie, true to our Yucatecan heritage, was 1.46 m tall and Phil was 1.98 m tall. There was always the cousin with Mexican humor who observed that, given that distance between navels, it was obvious why they never had children.
Like Phil and Maggie, other couples without offspring come to mind and it is clear to me that there are couples that work well both with and without children; I even find among the latter something that I can only describe as tranquility. (Or perhaps I attribute that virtue to a family configuration opposite to my current state with small children, a dog, a workaholic husband and a tortoise). What I am getting at is that one path is as valuable as the other, but I observe,even in these diverse times, a discrimination against couples who break with the role of propagators of the species. Could it be, deep down, out of envy? And that, as in a great game of tug-of-war, we couples want to make the single ones fall into our camp, the married ones to the single ones; those with children to those without children?
Delving into these issues, I inevitably come to the "traditional" role of women, and another aunt comes to mind. Aunt Fina never stopped complaining about her husband, day and night: that he was a drunkard, that he didn't earn well, that his snoring, almost always accompanied by some flatulence, kept her awake at night. It was enough for one of the nieces to turn 15 years old for all that to be forgotten and she would start harassing us asking how many boyfriends we had and when we would get married. "Ay sí, chula, the ideal state of a woman is to be a wife and a mom." Why this sudden amnesia, could it be that she thought we would do better than her, that we would find a less drunk, noisy and farty candidate? No, I am convinced that the joke was that, with a good or bad facilitator, we would join the condition of woman and self-sacrificing mother that in the vision of those of her time corresponded to us.
In today's life, of women, if not empowered, empowering themselves, of breaking glass ceilings and feminist marches, being single is still for many a sign of failure, not of self-determination, and the woman who does not want children is even a threat. Far from reflecting a lack in them, it shows that of a patriarchal society that still pretends to determine their worth by how a man weighs them and by their ability -or willingness- to have offspring. To breed or not to breed, that is the question. And I'm glad that it is; that we don't have children by defaultAnd I'm glad it is; that a woman can decide about much more than her body: about how she wants to live the next 30 years of her life. I mean 30, the rest of her days, because they say: you never stop worrying about your children. If the answer is that they want to spend it with one or several unfolded pieces of themselves growing around them, falling, getting up, crying and laughing with them, great and welcome: it is a full, bittersweet, thankless and beautiful life. But if your path is another, bravo too, I celebrate that everyone has the possibility to make of your life a parrot and fly it as high as you can.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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