I actually found the article moving. This womans 'mom' is everything we complain about here! And Rebecca Walker is just the kind of parent we find all but absent in todays society.
Many of us CF'ers have had pressure to have babies shoved down our gullets for the better part of our lives, and have vehemently rejected it and followed our own paths in life. This woman had feminism rammed down her throat in the exact same manner - both are very wrong. She was denied what every child in this world longs for, MOM. I am a grown woman now, and I STILL want my moms' friendship, advice and love. She was cheated out of that and for years tried to please her mother and win her approval by ignoring very strong desires to become a mother, just as many people who truly don't want children have them anyway to try and please friends and family. One is just as bad as the other.
To disown your daughter just for the fact that she had a baby is twisted. I mean my God, a friend was paid to go shopping with her to buy her first bra...WTF?! Rebecca is [apparently] a good mother, wife, she is successful and extremely happy being a mom. What is so horrible about that? In today's time of bringing babies into a world born of mothers who truly don't want them, I find a woman who is full-filled and happy to be a parent refreshing and not at all threatening. Some women DO have a biological 'clock' - some don't.
What I do not agree with however, is how the author believes abortion affects ALL women negatively, which is obviously not true. It affected her so because she truly had the desire to have children. Someone like me who has never experienced one tiny little itty bitty incling to have a baby likely wouldn't share her same feelings of guilt and loss.
Then there's this statement made by the author: "Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: 'I'd like a child. If it happens, it happens.' I tell them: 'Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.' As I know only too well."
What she is sorely missing here, is that if a woman makes a statement such as "I'd like a child. If it happens, it happens", she doesn't TRULY want children. "I'd LIKE a child"? Well, I'd LIKE a condo in the Virgin Islands but if I TRULY wanted one, if I felt so strongly about one, I'd make the necessary financial sacrifices and plans to get one - but it really isn't THAT important obviously because I haven't set out to get it. The would-be mother hasn't thought it out good and hard. These are the children who suffer, who's parents didn't bank on parenting being so demanding and sacrificial; they wind up taking it out on their unfortunate children due to their lackadaisical way of thinking. Children don't just 'happen'. They're MADE.
And there's this one: "Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They've missed the opportunity and they're bereft."
I am sure there are women like this, who feel they've somehow missed out on being a parent. But to blame it on feminism is, to say the least, wrong. It was a CHOICE they made. No one put a gun to their heads, they made their bed and now they're lying in it - tough, life is all about choices. At least they had a choice - isn't that in part what feminism is about? Of course, we know that there are plenty of women (and men) who chose to remain without child and are perfectly happy and satisfied - look at all of us here :-).
And lastly: "Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating."
It's only devastating to those who allowed someone else's views on how a woman should feel and what life choices she should make to obscure what she really wants and not follow her own heart. The author seems to have forgotten that not every single woman of any given generation is devastated by 'childlessness'. In fact, I believe if she did more research, she would be shocked at just how many women truly never even really wanted children to begin with.
Just goes to show you that no matter how you're raised, you are an individual and unique. Your thoughts and feelings are your own, not your parents. Alice Walker has displayed the very behaviors she claims to abhor - not giving women the freedom of choice to do and be what they want.