Many young women are questioning the whole idea of motherhood as necessary to a woman’s identity. They want to be able to make a choice and define themselves as they deem fit… Because of this work, they are impoverished, derided and punished as the weaker sex, and they are sometimes ignored in old age by the children they sacrificed the most for.in America, the day we celebrate the unique role of women in bearing and rearing children.
My paternal grandmother was a woman who knew her own mind and the value of dignity. As the story goes, she left her abusive marriage three days after she delivered her last and third child, to move into her parents’ home. That was in 1930s rural Ekiti. She lived in her parents’ home, in her natal quarter, with her brothers and sisters nearby, within a community in which she grew up. She thrived and prospered, and it was in that house I grew to know her, as her granddaughter.
She no longer lived near her own kin, a community of people she loved and who loved and respected her. Her family members still visited her but it was not like living near each other. She could not even cook her own meals, because her son’s wives were now supposed to cook for her, and they did. And she made me bear witness. She did not like their cooking. She invited me sometimes to taste the stew and pounded yam with my ten-year-old palate. She was not nitpicking.
During one visit, she said to me that she only wants to sit on the beach and eat a piece of chicken. That was her fantasy as she lay isolated in this sterile nursing home. Outraged, I called one of her sons but was only able to speak to his wife. American women do not have the obligations of taking care of their mothers-in-law in old age.
Grace
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