12.13.06
My anti-natal anti-motherhood grand aunt and great grandmother
One of my aunts came home for a Christmas vacation. I met up with her and her parents and brought my children with me to say hello. Unfortunately, this time, my aunt did not bring her only 4 year old daughter fearing news of dengue fever.
My grand aunt bore 3 children. Her firstborn has come out and declared his exclusive gayness, note, no children. Her 2nd child is male and has 2 children with his wife who promptly got a ligation; stop at 2. And this her 3rd child, my aunt, has 1 child and says she is stopping at 1; maybe she’s taking birth control pills, she is now 38. So this is my grand aunt’s family: 3 children and 3 grandchildren. And she is smugly proud. She has a monotonous tape recorded speech about how hard it is to raise children, how hard it is to give birth.
What is new to me is she says her mother taught her this. My great grandmother was anti-natal, anti-mother herself. I remember my own grandmother corroborating this observation. My own grandmother said that she was berated for giving birth to 4 children and this influenced her to get a cervical cap, a form of contraception, behind my grandfather’s back. My grand aunt told us that her mother taught her to immediately get nannies to offload child care and free herself from the burden of motherhood so she could go out to work and have a career outside the home.
So the problem with my mother side’s anti-natal attitude is the legacy of my great grandmother. Unfortunately my great grandfather died early, that must have had a big impact, my great grandmother had 5 daughters and only 1 son. My grandmother had 4 daughters and no sons. All the men in my mother side were absentee fathers, dead or busy with careers, abdicating the business of raising children to women.
So it seems letting women run the show of child raising and leading the family is a recipe for disaster, a recipe for extinction. Since contraception and career is the mantra of the women in my mother’s side, it is not unsurprising that my mother side is dying. In fact with my own siblings and my first cousins, I am the only reproducing sibling so far. And I will make up for the incapacity of the others, that is a promise.
My aunt asked me if I was making more after these 3. I said but of course! My smart mouthed grand aunt said, what if your wife does not want any more? I said I, I, I was making more children. 
And I told them why I think this way, unlike their way… I told them… I have a father too. You may be my relatives on my mother’s side, but I have relatives on my father’s side as well. And in my father’s side, our men rule. Children are made. Families flourish. Pronatal blood courses through my veins, you could say it is genetic.
