WHY I WANT TO BE A...

Mother and Wife
It is mysterious, and some would say miraculous, how new organisms come to be. The processes of mitosis and meiosis (in the gene transfer mechanics of sexual reproduction) sometimes seem too simple explanations for the fact that a person can resemble one parent completely and the other not at all, or that a person may combine his parents’ opposing personality traits in his own such set, or that a child can sleep in the exact position that her parent has slept in for a lifetime, without ever having been taught to do so. It seems scripted when it is not.
I view motherhood as a twofold privilege. Firstly, to be an ingredient in this process of bringing new organisms to existence, without having done anything to earn such an exciting capacity, and possessing it automatically by having been born female, is by itself quite thrilling, exciting and yet humbling. Secondly, to help a living consciousness go from helpless immaturity to maturity: to a productive, harmonious understanding of self-sufficiency and interdependence with other living and non-living phenomena—this is power, prestige, privilege defined,to my mind. If the human mind is one of the most sophisticated instruments of consciousness on this earth, then surely she or he who guides it into its best autonomous state-- the parent-- is truly the powerful and the gifted on earth.
A mother is a conduit of life, as her body houses the seeds which give rise to new life in new organisms. But she is also an instructor in the ways of life: she teaches her cubs how to hunt, how to track, how to groom, how to bond. This is true for almost all animal species including homo sapiens. A species, to be successful, must not just be genetically ready for survival, but also must be sure to develop survival skills, and the natural mother, for most of the animal kingdom, figures largely in both. I wish to be able to participate in both processes, although I consider the latter process far more important and vital to the maturity of the human race (and by extension the other species being endangered by its current immaturity), in the long run.
I do not just want to be a mother, as so many modern mothers seem to, in order to dress up my genetic offshoots in the cutest and most fashionable baby clothes and booties, push perambulators, or try to get the alleged results of “Your Baby Can Read” as an experimenter would. I want to raise a consciousness to revere itself, to be fulfilled biologically and psychologically, to have spiritual depth and breadth, and to be a boon, not a bane, to its ecosystem. And to do that requires my best and the best from its father, whose input, though little, can be profound (again throughout the animal kingdom).
I don’t think it is right to have a child without a father present. Notwithstanding the mother’s strength, self-sufficiency or independence, a child needs both parents. Some would go so far as to paraphrase the African proverb and say that a child needs a village full of parents. I am inclined to agree, so long as the village shares the same Weltenschauung, or worldview. As today’s world becomes increasingly diverse and globalized, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, such a village seems more and more improbable, and the need for stable two-parent families becomes even more pronounced.
Thus, I first want to be a mother, but to be the best mother, it seems that it’s best that I also be a wife.