Alice Walker’s daughter has learned many of life’s lessons from experience, and there is much we can learn from her. This article speaks to me in more ways than I can explain in this blog because I too am surprised every day by what a blessing it is to be a mother. While some think Rebecca Walker is getting too much publicity saying thoroughly conventional things, those conventional things need to be said.
How my mother’s fanatical views tore us apart.
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.
Motherhood can, and indeed does, make you blissfully happy. Every day I spend with my son is a day I am blessed.
Rebecca Walker continues:
In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from ‘enslaving’ me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late – I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.
As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families.
Make no mistake: no matter how much you try to fool yourself, having a child means that is your top priority. Children need a mother and a father who are totally committed to their child(ren)’s well being. Rebecca Walker suffered because of her mother’s misplaced priorities,
work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.
Narcissism, no matter how you brand it.
If you, gentle reader, think this would have a lesser effect on boys, you are grievously mistaken.
Like most teenage children of divorced parents, Rebecca looked for love by having sex, which makes the child less emotionally demanding of their parents while at the same time giving the illusion that the child in turn has become more independent, and after all, feminism is all about girls’ independence, isn’t it?
But here’s reality: after she got pregnant at age 14 she had an abortion,
Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I’d never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.
Notice how Rebecca knows it was a child she destroyed, and she had to make that decision when she was fourteen years old.
Feminism has devastated the moral character of two generations and is leaving millions of profoundly wounded people in its wake. It’s time we recognize that.
Having read Rebecca’s article, I’m buying her book.
Gloria Steinem, writing in the NYT whines,