We are all sensitive to how hard Mother’s Day can be for women who have lost children, are unable to have children, or wanted children but made a difficult choice not to have them. It’s common to experience feelings of emptiness if you are a mother, you’ve unsuccessfully tried to become a mother, you have a mother, or you no longer have a mother. There’s pressure if you don’t want to be a mother but the world is saying you must. A mother wound exists inside many of us, and it cuts deep because the umbrella that “mother” covers is our first safe space. Inevitably, this covering changes for us in one way or another.
Having a child is indeed a blessing to many women. The truth is that not every woman can relate. All through history, women have been expected to become mothers. Many people believed, and still do, that a woman’s primary role in life is to bear children. So, choosing to be childfree wasn’t really a thing. Instead, women who didn’t or couldn’t have children were often shunned by society. Not to mention, Black women were forced to raise white babies and their own during slavery.
Black women still experience joy in bringing new life into this world, even with the reality of Black mother’s experiences in America: a global health pandemic, a nationwide racial reckoning, and horrifying rates of Black maternal mortality. Our choice to be joyful in the face of all this is often weaponized against us. It’s the idea that Black women are not human; that we’re not worthy of anything good in the world. As scholar Imani Perry wrote, joy is a choice for Black people that, while intimately tethered to pain, simultaneously “exists through it.”
A Black mother choosing joy is in glaring contrast to the most flagrant ideas about Black motherhood. Throughout generations, society has reduced Black mothers to being: the Black matriarch of the 1960s, the welfare queen of the 1970s, and the crack mother of the 1980s. In her 1998 book, Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts states that “white childbearing is generally thought to be a beneficial activity: it brings personal joy and allows the nation to flourish.” Black mothers, however, are seen as degenerates that must be controlled and disciplined, even within Black communities themselves.
I got married shortly after finishing college, and we agreed to wait at least two years before starting a family. Two years came and went, and my then husband revealed he wasn’t ready yet. Three, four, then five years came and went. Finally, he was ready but my body wasn’t. Years of birth control pills had taken its toll and my cycles were all out of whack. I had to take medication to stabilize my cycles which, in turn, caused weight gain and mood swings. We tried and tried. Nothing. Naturally, my doctor thought it was me. Yet, after every test imaginable, it wasn’t me. It was my husband. Ultimately, we were unable to have children which contributed to our marriage ending.
Even though it is a story of many married couples, I never wanted it to be mine. There I was in my mid-thirties, divorced and not knowing if I would ever become a mother. When I got married, people were asking me when I was going to have a baby before I even left the church on my wedding day. “When are you going to have a baby?” “You’re not getting any younger.” “Who will take care of you when you get old?” “Who’s going to give me grandchildren?” After my divorce, those same people painted me with doom and gloom because I didn’t fulfill what I was supposed to. More so, what was expected of me.
Mother’s Day has been complicated for me since then. I’m reminded of being without children, as well as without my mother. Then I have to deal with friends and family members who are determined to call me every year and say, “Happy Mother’s Day!” When I remind them, I am not a mother, I am swiftly told that I am indeed a mother to my siblings. No, I am a sibling to my siblings. Some are actually offended that I don’t accept their good tidings, which for me is simply trauma and loss.
While children are a blessing to many women, what works for one doesn’t always work for another. Throughout history, women have always been expected to become mothers. Women are still fighting for the choice to say no. I have friends who have never had a desire to be a mother, and that’s okay. Now more than ever, women have the opportunity to decide what’s best for them. Motherhood is a choice and some people choose otherwise. Oftentimes, they receive public surveillance, scrutiny and judgment that is on a whole other level.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications that white women. Even celebrities such as Serena Williams have opened up about their difficult pregnancies. In a personal Vogue essay, Beyonce even shared her experience. “I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth to Rumi and Sir. I was swollen from toxemia and had been on bed rest for over a month. My health and my babies’ health were in danger, so I had an emergency C-section.” She says, adding, “I was in survival mode and did not grasp it all until months later.”
To the women who are mothers, unable to have children, or wanted children but made a difficult choice not to have them. If you’re missing your mother because of distance or loss, I see you. The world is a better place because we’re here — and not necessarily because of the choices we’ve made, or the difficult situations we’ve been through. But simply because we’re making the conscious decision to keep going, despite what we are told or what happens despite our best intentions.
The love you willingly extend to your children; to yourself; to your nieces and nephews; to your neighbors’ kids; to your fur babies. It’s the care you show them and yourself. Whether the pain is nearly impossible to manage, or it just started to become a little easier this year, you’re doing great. This world may place its expectations on you, or even hold you up for the time being because you checked all the boxes.
If you don’t have children, you may experience loneliness from friends and family sharing experiences you can’t relate to. Maybe you’re like me and considered the cool auntie that gives the best gifts. Maybe you do want children one day. Maybe you’ve been silently trying for years and it just hasn’t happened. Maybe you are content with fur babies, or not having any babies at all.
Regardless of your situation, I see you. Just in case the world forgets to tell you, you are valued. You make this Mother’s Day exactly how you need it to be, even if it’s complicated.
