Irem lists the implicit and explicit judgements suffered by childfree women in Turkey. For married women, not having a child is assumed to be a consequence of health problems only; unmarried women, on the other hand, are accused of selfishness.
Testimony realised for the Mediterranean Women’s Archive project with the contribution of Mediterranean Women’s Fund – Fonds pour le femmes en Méditerranée.
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Ecco la trascrizione completa del video:
IREM: «Actually, I haven’t started my book yet. I’m not sure what challenges I’m going to face, I’m trying to define the structure starting from my personal experiences, from myself, from my friends and the people around us, from stories, from things seen, looking at the experiences of people older than me. But since I haven’t started with the interviews yet, I can’t answer the question.
The subject is not much discussed, I have to say that in everyday life, the fact of being women who can’t have children or who don’t want to is a problem because, in a normative perspective, we are expected to have children and there’s not a lot of talk about that in Turkey.
This could lead to discussion in a public domain, although so far it is discussed only in some feminist circles and I think we should open the debate to other environments.
Actually, the interesting thing in my family is that there are many women without children, and within the closer circle of acquaintances these women don’t have great difficulty. In everyday life, there are often in situations where motherhood is implicitly a duty, or in such environments you feel this very much through small things, such as sideway looks.
At least that’s the case in Turkey, probably in Europe as well, if a woman has no children, if a married woman has no children, it means that there is certainly a health problem. And this justifies the absence of children, no one would ever think that it can be a free choice. But in the case of a childfree woman who is not married the matter changes, it’s a problem, because your choice is questioned. Who questions it? The others criticize the choice.
It’s a cliché maybe, but what happens when you meet friends who have children or older people, maybe relatives, then the comment you will hear is always: “You only think about your own life”! Isn’t it a bit egotistical? It’s not exactly that, the meaning is “life is easy for you! While you’re having fun, we bend over backwards for the kids”. In itself it would be a comment that expresses even envy of you, but at the same time, for this choice, you will not be able to experience this “sacred” condition. Selfish may not be the right term, but as I was saying the message is rather “You enjoy life, you have fun” but at the same time “you never tried it, you can’t understand” or “and when you get older, what will you do”…»
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