Life lessons rarely come from the lips of Hollywood celebrities. So I’m in shock that Jennifer Aniston, of hit comedy series Friends, has given me pause for thought.
In a recent interview, the star, who faces constant speculation about her love life and maternal status, talked about how society tends to judge a woman’s value based on whether she’s had children or not.
She said: “I’ve birthed a lot of things and I feel like I’ve mothered many things. And I don’t think it’s fair to put that pressure on people.”
When it comes to women, personal reproductive choices are deemed public property. How dare a woman be private about the exercise of her female genetic disposition? That’s a public right isn’t it? Obviously not. There could be a painful medical condition. She may desperately want children but be unable to have them. Perhaps her husband is unwilling. Maybe they have been trying for some time with little success. What might seem like encouragement rudely oversteps the line into harassment.
If you don’t have children, you’re asked when you’ll have one. After the first, when will you have the second? And for those who have a large brood, I’ve had plenty of friends tell me that people they’ve met barely once or twice will start questioning them about whether they know how to use contraception.
The worst thing is that it is usually women violating other women and devaluing them. Reproduction and motherhood are deeply personal issues which reach into the sensitive subjects of one’s own childhood, one’s intimate relationship and one’s medical situation. To assume one should be given public access to these is to show an enormous disrespect.
The public discussion of a woman’s reproduction is a reduction of a woman to nothing but her ability to breed. A man is rarely if ever defined by his fatherhood (or lack of). His children remain part of his private domain, not up for public dissection. It’s the same perspective that demands to know what on earth will become of the children if a working woman is away for a day, but doesn’t bat an eyelid if the father is gone for weeks. Rather, if he’s looking after them while she’s away, poor him, how will he cope?
And what if a woman opts not to have children? An increasing number of women are choosing this option. Perhaps it’s a blip in human history as women explore the option to work, have a career, or simply not bend to the expectation that motherhood is what defines their value and their existence.
Please note, I’m not saying that motherhood is not incredibly important – central even – to a flourishing society. In fact, I find it paradoxical that despite the obsession with whether a woman is a mother or not motherhood itself is rarely supported and respected. I’m simply saying that motherhood is not the sole definition of a woman’s existence, success or failure.
Having my own child has shifted and deepened my perspective and my humanity in a way that nobody could have described to me. But nobody could have persuaded me of it, and intrusion into my space would in fact have alienated me from it.
I’d be delighted to live in a society that extols the virtues of motherhood if it offers women the support and status to deliver to the tough demands of such a project. But to define a woman as the sum of her reproductive organs is one dimensional and disrespectful.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk
