LONGING BEYOND WORDS

Cravings for a child are not just of the body, but of the soul.

- Dr. Harleen Pandher

The land is barren, said one of the farmers to another farmer. When this was said, something strange happened. Radhika, a lady sitting beside Bijju the farmer, started crying. All looked perturbed, wondering as to what went wrong. The lady got really upset on hearing the word “barren”. She related this word with her personal life. Radhika was married for nearly eight years, but she had no kids. She was “childless”. Barren reminded her of being baanjh (a lady who is unable to bear a child). She wept bitterly. Unfortunately, the couple, especially the lady who cannot conceive, is looked down upon in our society. The desperation goes to the extent that the partners go to various religious places begging for the child with open arms. The newbies visit and try every doctor to get a glimpse of their new one.

The majority of Polish and foreign studies on the personality traits of infertile people concern women. Their results demonstrate that childless women are considered “inadequate”, as they fail to fulfil their fundamental socio-biological duties, while infertile men are not assessed in the same manner. Lew-Starowicz claims that infertility in women affects their sense of femininity, which they then perceive as inadequate. Motherhood becomes the ideal believed to be the guarantee of a happy married life. The inability to be fulfilled as a mother is the reason for thinking that life is meaningless, as a great number of women regard life without children as aimless. Moreover, studies demonstrate that infertility in women (unlike in men) destroys their sense of identity and leaves them with the feeling of incompleteness and hurt.