A WOMAN SAID recently in this column that she would never want children. I want people to know that her saying so does not make her a bad person. That woman was being honest and should be respected for it, even if people disagree with her.
What people need to realize is that sometimes women go through such a rough time in their lives that they have no desire to go through that experience again with children. I understand this because this has been my life as well.
I have a child but gave him up for adoption as I did not want anything to do with him. Yes, I care about him because I carried him for nine months and bore pain for him, but I don’t miss him. I have no feelings as a mother towards him.
But this is not just about my child, it is about me and who I am. All my life I have been alone and I prefer that. I would have boyfriends but I would never want them around me constantly; I just like to be alone.
The reason I am this way goes back to how I was treated as a child. I can remember myself from the time I was five years old and when I think back, I recall there were two women at that time in the house. One was real nice to me and used to take care of me really well. I don’t know who she was but she died and that changed my life forever.
The other woman, who never used to pay me much mind when the lady who died was around, was actually my mother, and she took over my care.
This woman, my mother, used to beat me and treated me as if she did not like me. She never used to allow me to go outside and play and she never gave me any gifts for Christmas. Furthermore, if she got vex and I had any toys, she would mash them up.
I never had any father to run to either. I remember how she pointed out a man as my father but she obviously hated him and he never played any role in my life.
Before my mother died, she told me she was raped by my father. He had been watching her for some time but she never knew this. So when she asked him for a lift one day, he took the opportunity to take her to a cart road and ravished her. He was going to leave her there but she begged him to take her back home and she would not tell anybody what happened.
She kept her word, but she hated him – and men after that. And, most of all, she hated me.
Her hatred of men was so great that she always used to tell me to keep away from men because they were no good. She used to ring that in my ears all the time. Â
When I was 18 years old. I never had anybody to help me until a lady at the Welfare Department got a job for me, which I still have to this day. She also sent me to the National Housing Corporation and they helped me with a little house. But I lost that because of a man and got a child in the process.
I had to take him to court for the child when he was just six weeks old and after that, I gave him to a children’s home. It wasn’t that I did not love him. It was just the circumstances I found myself in. His father’s relatives took him out of the home and he is a man now.
From what I went through, and my mother before me, you can see that when women say they don’t want children, they have a good reason.
