Free the Womb, Free the Home, Free the Family

Why “making motherhood your whole identity” isn’t a bad thing

I recently went through a harrowing familial health drama that I am not going to get into in detail here, but it resulted in quite a bit of time being spent at the small community hospital my mother, myself, and my eldest daughter were born at. This hospital is a block away from a very historic cobblestone street, backed by the Missouri River and still has nuns walking the halls. Almost quaint, if I can block out the painful episiotomy I had cut into me in a room overlooking that same river or the fact that my Grandmother had twilight sedation given to her while she birthed the generation before me there. Not the sort of place where you expect radical street graffiti boldly proclaiming the phrase “FREE THE WOMB!”

Some righteous hospital parking garage vandalism for your viewing pleasure

My eleven year old daughter saw this graffiti and asked me what it meant. “Well, it could mean a lot of things” was my vague and apparently very unsatisfactory answer. The most obvious, and probably most accurate to the artist’s message, is of course something to do with abortion legislation. My own interpretation takes us away from that topic and delves much further than the obvious. It made me ask myself: “Does the womb need to be freed? Is it already free? If it isn’t, then who has this mythical grip on the center of womankind?”

The womb is the literal physiological center of the woman, and some say the more metaphysical creative center as well. The truth about the womb is that on a micro-level, it does not need “freeing”. Some women may need a mindset shift to understand this, but it is true. On an individual level, women do hold the capacity to reign supreme over their bodies. This fact does requires commitment, self-trust, self discipline and a choice- the choice to listen to our intuition in an environment that scoffs at the value of it. This choice often requires some honing and muscle memory, but it can be quite valuable once tuned in. Women are capable of creating the internal environment for creation of life, and they are capable of preventing that same creation. Women are capable of nurturing those lives created, in a multitude of ways-from making breastmilk to making a home. Women are capable of tending to their wombs-the home that lives within us.

On a more macro level, however, I do think we could make an argument for the need for some “womb-freeing”. This is due to both societal attitudes regarding it and the technological warfare that is at play against it, and this is what I seek to examine in more detail here.

First, the technological assault on the womb and therefore the mother and the baby. Let us count the ways:

• Birth control that, no matter how useful you find it to be, does in actuality completely dull and numb the senses of the womb by way of disabling it’s literal purpose and function

• Further- IUDs that are an actual assault on the lining of this most intimate part of us, attacking healthy tissue to render it inhospitable

• Reproductive care that is completely driven by numbers, insurance company policies, pharmaceutical sales and surgical intervention as the standard executed with a clinical sort of coldness (often by males), when what is actually often supportive of reproductive health is the opposite-warmth, connection, woman to woman care, nourishment and connection before surgery and drugs, decisions made soundly with patience and nuance

• Hysterectomies as the common answer for issues that should be tended to in less radical ways

• Healthy, normal birth being considered a medical event by default and one which requires hospitalization, medication, and sterilization

• Breastfeeding at the breast being considered an optional afterthought that is only pursued if the conditions are perfect, and if not-we have the technology of artificial milk substitutes, bottles and teats, breast pumps and every possible related thing that can be sold in between

• Second party reproductive technology that renders women and their wombs as commercial means and babies as commercial ends

• Menstruation and female fertility being perceived to be in need of “control” in general- the control is almost always executed by means of technology

• Menstrual products that are inherently unhealthy, tampons leeching chemicals and causing micro-tears on the vaginal wall, menstrual cups putting constant positive pressure on the cervix, pads with similar chemicals as tampons, etc.

• Typical and widely available diet offerings and options that do not support a healthy female reproductive system- this is technological because these “foods” and the systems that promote and market them only exist due to technology that makes them further and further removed from actual whole foods that feed female fertility.

• Menopause being yet another capitalized-upon normal female life event that is “treated” with all manner of pharmaceutical and surgical intervention

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I hope you can glean from it the fact that from menarche to menopause, the female womb is, on that macro level, both an industrialized problem to be reckoned with or an industrialized asset to be pimped out for cash money. Technology’s place in an industrialized society is at the top, anything underneath it is subject to its reach if we allow it, and unfortunately we have allowed it. Industrialized society demands efficiency at all costs and the womb is no exception to this demand.

“It is easy to boast of victory over ancient oppression, but what if victory has been gained at the price of an even greater subjection to the forces of the artificial necessity of the technical society which has come to dominate our lives?”
― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

Now we can touch on society’s general attitude towards the womb. It is one of disgust and jealously, of misunderstanding and disregard. No reverence where reverence is most certainly due. It is one that considers the form and function of the womb as the “ancient oppression” that Jacques Ellul is referring to in the above quote. Society sees the technological victory over the perceived oppression of female fertility and function as a good thing to not just be celebrated but also at times to be sanctioned and ministered.

Society looks at a bleeding womb and says “stop it up”. Society sees a bleeding woman or girl and says “keep working”. Society sees a womb with child and either says “get rid of it” or “you’re disabled now”. Society sees a womb that has recently birthed and again says “keep working”. Society sees a womb that fails to conceive when conception is desired and says “you’re broken” and seeks another womb or the fruits of one to replace her at a cost. Society sees a womb that has stopped bleeding and says “get out, you are of no use now”.

These utterances are those of an efficiency-obsessed society that has failed to tend to it’s most precious of resources properly. Are wombs not the first homes of the people society is comprised of? Are wombs not the wellspring of the family, the foundation of society? The issue becomes not one of just freeing the womb, but of freeing the home and the family. If wombs are thought of as ancient oppression, then families and the homes they inhabit are ancient relics to be cast aside, and it is no coincidence that this same efficiency-obsessed society does not in any way support these concepts and realities.

Family is replaced by culture (media- bolstered by technology that is dripping in falsities and often devoid of morals) and outsourced to schools (where children learn on computers in air conditioning and aren’t allowed to touch one another or pee without getting permission). Where family members would have cared for one another in the past ( whether the care be for little dependent children, the elderly or the ill/disabled), outside help is often paid for instead, because the care cannot reasonably be carried out due to a lack of time and energy. This lack exists because in our society those personal resources are reserved for the market, expended for the economy.

The home is completely trivialized. A place to sleep and shower. A place to dump your prizes you paid for with your rationed monetary allowances, allowances dependent upon your ability to assimilate to modernity and it’s demands without too much fussing or fighting. To store the evidence and supplies of hobbies you don’t have much time for. For many people, home is not a concept they have considered very thoroughly despite the fact that it is a concept that has the potential to save us from the “subjection to the forces of the artificial necessity of the technical society” referenced above. What is this artificial necessity?

The artificial necessity is the pressure to work endlessly to keep up with a certain standard, that then robs us of our most innate yearnings. For many women, these yearnings are the language of the womb. So to free the womb is to free society from the technologically informed pressure to be ever-efficient and in service to the market. To free the womb means to listen to the womb and yield to her desires. These desires may be a great many things, but the most obvious and most common are the desires that result in children and therefore family and home-with the first home of those children being the womb that was listened to.

The dismissive and brash attitude towards the womb in society is extended to the societal attitude towards mothers. I write on motherhood often, and have for years now, and this being the case, I have had many comments directed at my desire to discuss the issues of mothers, many of which have been quite negative. The negative comments can all be succinctly summed up as “you clearly have made motherhood your only identity and that’s gross and pathetic.”

When a woman becomes a mother by way of her womb’s desires and then makes motherhood her primary identity-the home and the family benefit and flourish. When a mother chooses to identify with her motherhood, she is in a relationship of rightness with herself and her children. Why should a mother choose any other primary identity anyway?! Not to mention, this is a choice that has it’s foundation in what simply is-her womb made her a mother biologically. Aligning properly with biological reality is mentally healthy. It is the best thing a mother can do. What child wants a mother who prioritizes a different identity over her identity as their mother?

It almost sounds silly, but choosing motherhood as your primary calling when you are a mother is good. It is the ultimate good. This choice enables us to be free- free within the chosen confines of the home and family we have made. This is because when women make motherhood their whole identity, they are much more likely to make room for it. That room-making often requires a lot of prioritization and re-orienting of lives. Getting the time to care for our own children shouldn’t feel like a bonus that we get access to when we are allowed a break from our other more important jobs. Caring for our families and our homes is the the most important job.

I think the negative comments I have received and have also seen directed at other mothers who think similarly as I are the result of a deep disconnection from material reality. When any human-male or female, a parent themselves or not- has been convinced that the careful and loving tending of a mother to her own children is not actually the most important job that she has and therefore not the identity she “should” align with most, that human has been broken in the exact precise way the industrialized society wants them to be broken.

All of this to say- true freedom for the womb means that natural laws are the only ones a woman must abide by, not the will or authority of industry, government or the market. When this is attained, the woman, the home, and the family are protected and venerated. A world where the womb is free is a world where a mother in full alignment with motherhood is the picture of female health and happiness, a feminine vision of goodness and righteousness. This is my utterly revolutionary hope. A hope sure to offend, sure to be misunderstood as a prescriptive judgment rooted in biological essentialism, and yet- sure to be for the true and ultimate good of every human, each one of them born of a mother.