Fairly recently, I was intrigued by a Facebook comment thread. One mom was listing the reasons she was happy with her decision to have only one child. Fair enough. It wasn’t the post that got me thinking, but the comments about it. Why was she making excuses for her decision?
The comments reflected the author’s need to justify her decision to have one child. As a mom of an only child, I reflected on my own article, “Why I’m One and Done.” I felt as though I had done the very same thing. In fact, my entire article was a list of reasons why I chose to have only one child.
I started to think it wasn’t just about women explaining their one child, but about explaining away all our choices as mothers.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hear a mother answering a question with an excuse or justification.
Question: How many children do you have?
Answer: We have one. You see, we wanted more, but I had so much trouble conceiving…
OR
Did you vaccinate?
No, because I heard that some of the vaccines have some pretty harmful substances, and we are an organic family, so…
OR
Do you stay home with your son?
No, I work full-time, but it’s okay because he’s only in daycare half the time, and my mother watches him one day, and my nephew picks him up on alternate Wednesdays…
JUST.STOP.IT.
Your choices are good enough answers. Nobody needs an explanation of why or how you came to your decision.
The person asking doesn’t need to know why you’ve chosen to breastfeed or not, why you have four children or only one child. Why you decided to vaccinate your child or didn’t. Or why you had a planned c-section or natural birth. None of it matters. What matters is that you made each of these choices with your family’s best interest in mind. But most of all, it’s time we learn to be comfortable with our own decisions and know that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of them.
So, mama, how will you answer this:
Question: Did you deliver naturally?
Answer: No, I scheduled a c-section.
And let it be enough.
