Straightjacket

When I run into or come across women my age who are grandmothers, it makes me think about the age at which women have children and how that changes from one generation to the next. Age, economics, education, and the evolution of women's rights, and even medical advances, have all impacted the determinate year of life at which women have children and how many children they have.

My mother was 16 when she got pregnant and married shortly after her 17th birthday. In that era it was not acceptable to be an unwed teen mom, and being the daughter of a minister, she was quickly wed.  That fall she gave birth to my oldest brother. I doubt that birth control was widely publicized or easily accessible because over the course of the next ten years my Mother continued having babies.  By the time She was 27 she was raising six children and the toll it took on her body and mind were significant.  At the age of 27 my mother  faced a medically necessary radical hysterectomy.  At the time, this was a serious surgery. There were no laproscopic procedures like they offer today, it wasn't done with lasers, it was done the old fashioned way with scalpels and stitches and the removal of the female reproductive system.  This drastic surgery left her body in a tail spin.  She took hormone replacement therapies for her missing organs and steroidal drugs for her asthma, and any number of other prescriptive medicines.  Her medicine chest was full. Pharmacists didn't think about contraindication measures then, they just filled the prescriptions as the doctors indicated.

As a child I had little understanding of the trauma my mothers body and mind had been through.  I knew her as short fused, frequently cold and withdrawn, quick to snap from hot to cold and back to warm. She could just as easily express love and kindness as she could rage and anger. As a young teen I used to confide to a friend of mine that I thought my mother was crazy and needed a straitjacket.  Kids can be so intuitive and aware, and yet sometimes they fail to see the truth behind the pain.

By the time mom was 37 she was a grandmother for the first time.

As a young woman, I decided early on, after observing my  own mother,  that I would wait until I was ready for children if ever.  I elected from the start, that no matter the circumstances, two would be my limit.  I was 25 when I had my first and 29 with my second. Today I am  45 and don't anticipate grandchildren until well after I turn 50.

This was my choice. The truth is, I was not equipped to follow in my mothers footsteps, or even the footsteps of my siblings.  I suspect that had I followed the lead of those before me I would have surely been in a straitjacket myself. My own personal hell.  6 children was not in my repertoire, nor was early motherhood or grand-motherhood.  It works for some, even in today's modern independent woman's world. 

Statistics show women are having babies much later in life. Becoming mothers after career or world travel.  They are not sacrificing their educations, or freedom as much as in generations past.  There is still a portion of women who yearn for and fulfill their desire to be mothers young in life, some by happenstance and some through planning. There will always be young mothers, teen mothers, but there are more and more women choosing to wait, or not to be mothers at all.  I think I fell in the middle, the in-between, but 30 is the new 20 and 40 the new 30 and children are being born into well established homes at increasing and encouraging rates.  An unplanned pregnancy no longer means immediate shame and humiliation. And it doesn't mean a life destined to a loveless marriage. Women have choices now, more than they did when my mother was still such a young woman. Shame is no longer a stigma. There is no scarlet letter, waiting to pinned on the front of our pinafores, we don't even wear pinafores anymore.

My advice is simple and true.  If your going to have sex, use protection to prevent pregnancy. When you are able to make a conscious and well planned decision to have children, then do so with conviction and dedication and realize it is a lifelong commitment.  If you decide not to have children, then live your life happy and fulfilled in whatever way you see possible and right for you.

Avoid the mistakes and shame of our mothers and grandmothers, and know that you are WOMAN. You are powerful and majestic, rather you chose to use your ability to create life within yourself or not.  You are made to be phenomenal.