A NEW-AGE FULFILLED AND MODERN WOMAN

“I don’t want children. I knew this at 22, and at 29, I got sterilised.” It’s not every day that one hears a statement like this from a South African woman, let alone a woman of colour. However, women are rejecting what society has expected of them. One of the most controversial ways is by voluntarily not having children or deciding never to get married.

And this is the epitome of a fulfilled and authentic life for Capetonian copywriter and freelance journalist, Carmen Williams. She shares that, as a teenager, she thought she could be a mother one day. But it was only because she had learnt through society that it’s the “normal” thing to do. As she matured, though,, Professor Cherryl Walker addresses, among other things, respectability politics surrounding motherhood. She found that respect and authority are accorded to a woman by virtue of her role as a mother.