For most of my life, I believed being a woman was the same thing as being a mother – there was no distinction between them. The turning point of when a girl would become a woman appeared to be when she produced children and became a mother. From an early age I took notice of every detail of how to be a mother, and because almost all of the grown women around me fitted into this category – there were plenty of mothers to model myself on.

I have three sisters, all of whom are now mums too. It was never asked of us if we would ever like to have children or presented with the idea of there being a choice involved – it was expected of us from the start. If you weren’t born a boy then at least you could have babies one day. It was more a question of ‘when’ it would happen. When I was six years old I very clearly remember being told about a girl in our street who had fallen pregnant in her teenage years and how her life would now be over for her – that she had given up having a life when she chose to have children. So it was at age six that I registered that having children meant you couldn’t have a life anymore. Continue reading “Carbon Copy Mum” →