Kids will take your freedom away, because the WHO - World Health Organisation, sexist doctors and health professionals will tell you that you have the "obligation", the "duty" to breastfeed exclusively and on demand, until the child is 6 months; they will also say that breasfeeding must to be kept "at least" until the child turns two (years old).
"Baby-friendly" hospitals will hinder or even forbid you to bottle feed your infant, will put you into rooming in regardless of your will, which means forcing you to listen to the child cry, change nappies, breastfeed even if labour exhausted you, if your life were at stake, if you could hardly breath, had a C-Section, a forceps or vacuum delivery. In "baby-friendly" hospitals, if you say "I am not going to breastfeed", nursing will force you under the threat that unless you do so, you will not be discharged; in such hospitals, staff may even oblige you to attend "educative lectures" right after delivery, regardless of how worn out, anxious and distressed you are.
Do not have kids, because the WHO, the hospitals, health professionals and the Goverment that impose compulsory breastfeeding are your ENEMIES.
Do not have kids. You will LOSE YOUR JOB, become penniless, depend on others to live. Research evidences that maternity leave curtails women's career. This is true in Canada - How maternity leave can hurt a woman's career . This is true in the UK - Pregnant then fired. This is true in Brazil - Mulheres perdem trabalho após terem filhos).
In several countries, maternity leave is compulsory. Making maternity leave compulsory reinforces the idea that it is mother's obligation, and not father's, to take care of children. Such laws also bolster the belief that the priority of a woman's life is her offspring, and mothers must put children above themselves: above their job, their income, their freedom, their health, their... lives.
One may argue, but this is not the child's fault, it is market's, capitalism's, sexism's fault.
Let's not try to find the guilty, but search for ways out.
1. "Sexism's fault"
Do you know what sexism is?
Sexism is a set of ideas and practises that abridges women's freedom, imposes more obligations and prohibitions on them, makes their lives harder and may subject them to the will of one or more men.
When the WHO upholds that you must stop working, take a leave to take care of your kids, it diminishes your freedom of work. When a government imposes maternity leave as compulsory, this government abridges your right to work. Your freedom to work
Yes, this is sexism.
So what is up to you?
Answer NO to government's and WHO's intervention on your body.
2. Quit or lose your job to take care of children.
You will be penniless and depend on your husband's/companion's/former companion's/family members'.
As a consequence, your freedom will be reduced.
Laws and societies that urge or force women to stop working and take care of children, under the excuse that babies specifically "need" their mothers, are sexist, yes.
Are women unfriendly, yes.
What can you do in such societies?
Say NO to government's , societal and familiar interfearence in your life and decisions.
3. "My husband insists on having children".
And screw your job? Shall he be the only one to take a parental leave to care for the children?
If the answer is no (and I am sure it is), sorry to tell you this, ma friend, he does not care about you. He does not respect you. He is using you as a means to his ends. Because the burden he is willing to impose on you is extremely unfair: you will lose your job, put on wait, take care of the children all by yourself, have no money, while his life will remain almost... unchanged.
If working and earning your living is important for you, do not have kids.
4. "A woman without children is not complete".
What do you miss, dear reader? If you are not "complete" for not having children, than you are crippled? A parasite?
Men need women to become fathers but, in order not to cope with children's needs, they force women to stay home, lose their jobs, remain penniless so they cannot go away. Separate from them. They force women to breastfeed, get exhausted and, while they have fun with other women, the suffering mothers have no time, nor enegy, nor money to leave them behind.
Women bear, deliver and breastfeed children, but the kids take the father's name, the man's name, a.k.a. family name, the most important in our society... This is sexism.
Women do not go to work when someone has to take the children to the doctor, to the hospital, or nurse them when they are ill, while men seldom, or never, do it. Is it to live in such an uneven, unfair situation that you want to have children? This situation is not acceptable. This is sexism.
Do not have children. Not while your life is not as free as men's.
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