When I was 29-years-old, I was told to hurry up and marry. That women are most fertile in their twenties and that I must have a baby, really fast. I was shown a graph of what happens to a woman’s fertility throughout her thirties and early forties. So, as a good girl who does what she is told, as well as one with a mild case of anxiety, I married the first dip-shit I met shortly after my big three O, and I convinced myself that I could love him with time. We married within a year of dating.
I struggled a lot throughout the marriage as I just couldn’t keep going with a base of “you are thirty, you need to get married and have a baby.” I mean, I could have, but by tranquilizing myself every night with Xanax so I could just…live. “The baby would become your whole world,” they said. “Who cares about the man,” they said. “Consider him a sperm donor.”
Then I thought, well, if they all want me to marry for the sole reason of having a baby, then why can’t I have a sperm donor? “Because this is not the Western World,” they said and “because your culture, country, friends, family, colleagues, society and the doorman (yes the bawab is vital for us) will wonder where this child came from and then you will never marry.” But I thought you just said that the baby would become my whole world and no one cares about the man?
One of my female mentors who helped me reach my current state of consciousness said to me, “do you know why women need to have a child? Because it is in a woman’s nature to nurture and give love. I agreed completely and gave all that nurture and love to myself.”
After my child-free divorce from dip-shit (I don’t like the word childless because it means that something is missing or is less), I decided to focus on me and what I want and not what ‘they’ told me what I should or should not want. I read and read and read. I set up a business and sold it, bought a house…then another one. Started Pilates, got into nutrition and anti-aging remedies, I had fun and lived my life to the fullest. I took care of me, I fell in love with me. I got married. To myself.
Then at the ripe age of 35, I met a wonderful man…but he wanted to marry and have a child right away. I said that I wanted to travel for a year or more together first, spend lazy days and nights with each other and enjoy marital bliss. The answer I got was not one I expected. “But my love, you are not getting any younger. Men can have kids till anytime, but you only have a few years to go; are you sure you want to wait?” He told me.
Now, he probably meant well, but, I am a Libra with a Scorpio rising…and the Scorpio rising came out. I explained very calmly but sharply that none of us are Benjamin Button and that it was just a movie. That the quality of his sperm is probably shit anyway due to his excessive smoking, drinking and general lifestyle, but yeah sure, maybe he can still have a kid at 70. By then though, he will be fugly and end up with a woman who would probably marry him for his money. I also said that while he perceives himself as being some sort of timeless Greek God, I will not be bullied into having a child because “I am not getting any younger.”
Women over the years have been empowered with so many things in the Arab world. No longer having arranged marriages, acceptance of having boyfriends, access to birth control, careers, studying till they get a a PHD or two if they want to, and acceptance of interfaith marriages. You may think these things are not a big deal…they are…ask your grandmothers.
Giving women a choice of when they can have a child has been implemented through Modern Medicine in the West through Egg Freezing. I like this concept a lot but I will not delve into it as I am not a doctor and only know what I have read. The probabilities of it working are still controversial but whatever they are, isn’t it a massive step for women to be able to call the shots on when they are ready to become mothers without a clock ticking? That they can have kids well into their forties, or whenever, but when they are truly ready? How wonderful is that sense of freedom? No deadline, no clock ticking and that they are not a walking bomb about to detonate.
Many may argue that it’s better to be a young mother, and I agree…if you can predict the future that is. What guarantees what we have in life? What the future holds for us? People leave us at different times in our lives while others live to blow out a hundred candles. Some parents have a wonderful relationship with their children and some are estranged. Some mothers become the best ever and some suffer from serious depression, a serious illness which does not equate to the sufferer being a bad mother.
I won’t share whether I will freeze my eggs or not but I will say that I support it 100%, especially in our culture and society that sometimes refers to women as poultry – “she ain’t no spring chicken man, you sure you don’t want someone younger?” I overheard this comment in a pub in Zamalek, and yes, all hell broke loose and I think I am banned from going there again.
If I ever have a daughter, I would advise her to freeze her eggs in her twenties. Other than the quality of the eggs being better, if she does have a decision to make about a man in her thirties it will give her confidence in herself, and about her choice of a life partner. There are no distractions, no deadlines and no clouding of judgement. It would be about her and her partner with no other external factors. Isn’t that what marriage should be about?
WE SAID THIS: I don’t want her to get deafened by the sound of the ticking clock…tick tock, tick tock. She can stop the clock. Well, for 20 years at least.