Guardian · 9 days ago

I’m married, Pakistani – and I don’t Want children. That doesn’t Make Me Broken | Fizza Abbas | the Guardian

A Pakistani woman discovers that saying "no" to motherhood in a society where a woman's worth is measured by her womb requires a courage she didn't possess during a pandemic video call with her gynecologist-but has since found. The pressure comes from everywhere: drivers offering numbers for traditional healers, cousins proposing surrogacy arrangements, spiritual amulets pressed into her palm, and a cultural machinery that frames child-free women as broken, selfish, or cursed. When she developed ovarian cysts and watched formerly child-free friends announce pregnancies, she stared at menstrual blood wondering "could that have been a baby?"-a moment of doubt that reveals how deeply coercion can colonize even the most examined life. Her journey from mumbling "Ji, ji, bilkul" (Yes, yes, of course) to a calm "no, I don't want children-and that's OK" maps a larger revolution: women worldwide choosing fulfillment that doesn't fit inside a nursery. She holds space for stories, thought, and invisible care-forms of mothering a future that don't require betraying the wholeness she's claimed for herself.