Non-mothers

PalmRecently, curiosity and a series of coincidences led me to the project 'No Mothers: Identities Beyond Motherhood', spearheaded by Llucia Bauçà. Ten women of diverse ages and backgrounds share the commonality of not being mothers. The project questions whether being a mother is a factum unavoidable for 'women'. This questioning, which gives voice to diverse experiences and legitimizes them, is a commitment to freedom and transgression. Because to transgress is to go beyond the mandates that each era inscribes on our bodies.

It is impertinent that every woman should be implicitly or explicitly forced to confront the question of motherhood. Expectation, social pressure, innate imaginaries, narratives about instincts and biological clocks cannot prevail over one's own curiosity, over the desire built from the singularity of each woman. We cannot accept the marginalization that operates on our bodies when we answer that we do not want to be mothers; we should not allow the doubts or suspicions that arise when the answer is negative. My body has never had the desire to bring forth a life; childbirth seems to me a thriller Far removed from my life's horizon, but upon turning forty, it seems you're given the last tickets to the festival of order. Patriarchy invites us to take stock of regrets and oddities because there's an age when it's frowned upon to still be playing in the street, to have lunch on the table and let it get cold.

Sara Torres argues that culture prepares us to associate our bodies with the experience of pregnancy and motherhood. I've never felt called upon by this experience, and yet I have an excess of love and tenderness that I pour out on children, on cats, on my lovers or my friends, and the dominant narrative of motherhood has pushed me to confront the question with unease, with haste. The patriarchal narrative tells us that women's vital and loving power must be directed toward reproduction. Without that experience, emptiness looms like an omen, hovering over us and reminding us that we'll never have it all.

It is urgent to create a more creative, kinder narrative, one that tells of all the things we can do with love, tenderness, and companionship—things that don't necessarily have to involve motherhood. We need role models, voices, and stories that allow us to create a powerful vision for non-motherhood.

It is urgent to tell the stories of the many women who endure years of hell and frustration trying to achieve a desire that may not even be entirely their own. We need stories that tell us about childbirth, postpartum, and raising children without the romanticized notions of selflessness, unconditional love, and fulfillment. We need more examples of women like Rodoreda. We must explore alternative parenting styles like the one Bel Olid practices to dismantle heteronormativity and the gender binary. We should prevent the monogamous, heterosexual family from monopolizing the only valid way to spread love. We need to broaden our imagination so that many people stop experiencing legitimate difference with anguish.

I wish that the question "Do you want to be a mother?" wouldn't be a mandatory toll. That we could tie our bodies and lives to the present, accepting that a finite life like ours doesn't allow us to develop all the possibilities of which we are capable. We must live the potentialities, as Aristotle called them, not as existential imperatives, but as paths to freedom.

La Bien Querida has a song I really like; it's titled It could have beenIt might be a good antidote to the pressure of the patriarchy to imagine all that we could have been if we had followed its unbalanced desires, and to laugh loudly when we see that now we are somewhere else, just as uncertain but more our own.