August 2016
And What About You?
How Many Children Do You Want to Have?
Marina Vegas Romero
IFMSA - Spain
marina.vegas.mv@gmail.com
I can’t remember the first time someone asked me that question, but I’m sure I was really young, probably just a child. For the next years, that situation repeated itself in many family meetings and other social events, with the difference that my answers turned into an “I don’t know” that didn’t wrap up the conversation until someone said that I was still too young to think about it. I have to admit that sometimes I’ve subtlety hinted that I may not have any and I immediately got some inquiring glances looking for a reasonable explanation and I… I feel pressured to justify my decision. It goes without saying that my brother was barely ever bothered with the same question. Since the first moment we are able to distinguish the
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external genitals in an echography, we tend to impose a gender identity and roles that will definitely mark the following years of the fetus. In the case of women, understood as a social construct associated to specific anatomic and physiological characters and behaviors considered female because of the heritage we receive; society believes they have the right to interfere in many aspects of our daily life, including our sexual freedom, reducing the person to a reproductive function. One more time, our uterus becomes a matter of state to the point where it takes over our body’s autonomy. This is because we live in a culture with deeply rooted a gender stereotypes that make us believe that the woman who is not a mother, is not ultimately a woman.