Herbert

Have you experienced discrimination for being pregnant or a mother at work? If not, it might surprise you to hear that despite the laws in place to protect women against such acts, it’s more common than you might imagine. A report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission found that  three-quarters of pregnant women and new mothers have experienced prejudice, with one in nine women losing their jobs as a result. What’s more, only one in four women affected raised it with their employer, mainly because of the high cost of taking a case to a tribunal. For the virtuous woman with a wedding band on her finger, sharing early pregnancy news might be their biggest joy but it’s quite different for a 24-year-old who is unwed and has just landed her first job and still depends on her parents for rent bills. Well to my defense, I fell in love really hard and I did not recognize that to be pregnant was a very visible indication of a private act and for some reason provided people with more reason to form opinions. My parents especially my father are old fashioned and so believe that to have a child you must be wed in church and I always wanted to be the perfect daughter. When this natural fall happened I was terrified to have this dialogue. I did not have the energy or the emotional stamina to get through this. My fear wasn’t the child; it was how I’d be received by others for being pregnant outside of marriage. At 6 weeks, I told my parents and they were devastated to say the least, but got over it in a really short period. A few weeks later, I got a call from my mother and she said, “Now that you […]

You start your day at the crack of dawn to get your child ready for school. If you’re lucky, there are no tantrums or complaints, and they eat their breakfast. You head to a job you really care about, and work diligently, despite hearing the occasional passive-aggressive comment from a colleague about your flexible schedule. I am so proud of the little man I am raising even though most of the times I feel like I fall short when it comes to doing enough and giving time to my son.  The kids of this generation count the times your absent, the basketball games you miss, the science fair that is scheduled on the same day as the board meeting and they take it all personal. “Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions — requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs — there was no attention given to preparation for this office.” I conceived Jesse when I had made plans for graduate studies and that meant that I had to take a break and focus on getting through the pregnancy and have a healthy baby but none of this meant that motherhood was going to enslave my conscience, limit my growth or get in the way of being the woman I always wanted to be. Raising children in my community does involve the village chiefs, a loving partner, the nosy neighbor, relatives, a nanny and the school teacher and all these people have a scale on who a good mother is, how mothers dress, talk and behave and so I found myself constantly put on a measuring gauge of some sort and I unapologetically scored below average. The bar to being a great mother and partner continually felt wrong mostly because, I could not measure up to […]