The poor treatment of childless women

We have and are still having women rights activists and feminists who advocate against issues such as rape, battery and molestation, injustice and harmful traditional practice on widows, among others.One issue which has not been well attended to is that of discrimination towards childless women and  the treatment meted out on them. Once a woman […]

We have and are still having women rights activists and feminists who advocate against issues such as rape, battery and molestation, injustice and harmful traditional practice on widows, among others.
One issue which has not been well attended to is that of discrimination towards childless women and  the treatment meted out on them. Once a woman gets married, the expectation from her family and in-laws is that she takes in after the first few months of marriage.
 Once that time passes with no sign of pregnancy, begrudging questions begin to spring up, family members begin to get unnecessarily worked up. Before you know it, external members of the family begin to pay unwelcome visits, giving their own piece of advice as they come. The marriage that was supposed to be between two people soon becomes a marriage for the entire extended family, and the woman becomes the center of attention and discussion.
This event occurs over a period of time and if a woman lasts between 18 to 24 months in a marriage without getting pregnant, a label is given to her “the barren one”, “the bad egg” or ‘the fruitless tree of
the family.” Insults begin to fly from all directions as her mother-in-law reminds her of how productive she was during her child-bearing years.
Little do they know that firstly, it is possible that the couple might have had a family plan concerning the spacing of childbirth.
Secondly, people often forget that even when a couple have no children, it is possible that the fault might come from the man and not the woman. And even if the fault is from the woman, is it not God that gives children? Or is it that God made a roll-call for those who wanted to have children and some women chose not to be on the queue?
These women want to have children more than their in-laws could ever understand. There are couples today who have lasted 25 to 30 years without having matrimonial kids, but they are still happy because they help, understand and support each other, and their love is big and strong enough to accommodate adopted kids.
The reality thereof is, instead of chastising these women; they should rather be encouraged, supported and taken care of in every way because if childlessness is a “wrong”, discriminating against the childless doesn’t make it any right either.
Ibrahim writes from the Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri.