Are We Valid?

Last week, Frank Warren published this anonymous email on his PostSecret website:

-----Email Message-----

My doctor recently told me I'll never be able to have kids. I corrected her and said, "You mean I'll never be able give birth". I am proud to say I will adopt one day and it won't make me any less of a mom.

This brought me to the following two thoughts: 1) What is motherhood? And, pending the first definition, what is womanhood in relation to motherhood?, and 2) How are doctors (you know, the people with the ultimate authority over our bodies) treating and relating to women (interestingly, in the email, the doctor is female)?

Alors...

1. For years I have considered adoption a much more plausible and ethical option for me and my family. More so than childbirth, that is. This may seem illogical to evolutionists, and maybe I am still a naive 20-something-year-old whose biological clock has not chimed in (this is true), but I just cannot find any reasonable justification for bringing more people into the world. As with everything, there is a political and spiritual debate over the issue of overpopulation, although I tend to side with the UN figures that state that we do not have the resources to care for all the people in this world. In any case, adoption also makes humanitarian sense to me. I'm not interested in telling various countries to stop having babies, but since there already are abandoned and orphaned children all over the place, I feel that I must do my part in providing some of them with a chance for a family. And I don't think this would make me any less of a mother.

Of course, there is always that need and curiosity (although, again, my biology has not yet turned on) for women to birthe and breastfeed, and those who adopt will likely go through a mourning process regarding those issues. [Although, how many women really give birth or breastfeed "naturally" these days? But that's a topic for another time.] My point is that motherhood is not limited to women's use of their breasts and vaginas, and women are not damaged in some fundamentally female way if they choose not to employ those anatomical features to acquire a child.

But sadly, this opinion still seems quite unpopular. Just look at the rise in fertility treatments.

2. On another note, I recently came across this article about the relationship of (presumably male) doctors and their female patients. It's true: sexism prevails in our health systems. When people ask me why I am in the field of psychology of women (is there really anything to study about women and psychology?), it's hard for me to explain the amount of discrimination that went on and still goes on in the theories, diagnosis, and treatment of women. So, like the woman in the email, be on the lookout for sexist language, and please, stand up for yourself. The more we speak up, the more the system will have to give way and start treating us as valid beings.