‘Not going down sufferation road’
Fertility rate fall in part due to women prioritising their own happiness and health, says ‘Miss Kitty’
Published:Thursday | September 19, 2024 | 12:10 AMKimone Francis/Senior Staff Reporter
Media personality and attorney-at-law Khadine ‘Miss Kitty’ Wilkinson says a key issue surrounding Jamaica’s below-normal fertility rate is women choosing to forego or delay childbearing in favour of their careers and well-being.
Wilkinson was among a panel of medical practitioners, policy experts, and academics at a roundtable talk that examined the theme ‘Sustainable Replacement Population: Protecting Your Fertility’, at The University of the West Indies Regional Headquarters in Mona, St Andrew, on Tuesday.
With a population of three million, Jamaica has fallen below the internationally accepted 2.1 fertility rate required for maintaining the population at replacement level. The country has a fertility rate of 1.9.
“Women are choosing ourselves more and first now. Long gone are the days where we’re just getting pregnant for the sake of replenishing a society.
“Even if we get pregnant, it must be to our benefit, too, because otherwise, what does it benefit me to sit and have five children that I cannot maintain? I’m stressed out by myself; there’s no father there,” Wilkinson said.
She said that for the country to get out of what experts are now calling a crisis concerning low birth and fertility rates, by promoting having more children, the promotion of families should take precedence.
She said much of the denigration taking place in Jamaica today can be attributed to the erosion of the family, calling it a primary source of socialisation.
“I for one am not about the strong black woman mentality. I’m about to demystify it because the strong black woman mentality and narrative has really cost a lot of our women our health, our happiness, our contentment, and our fulfilment,” Wilkinson said, eliciting strong support from the audience.
She argued that the strong black woman narrative often looks like a single mother with multiple children.
“When I look at that, from even a medical perspective, that looks like diabetes, it looks like hypertension, it looks like high cholesterol because if you are by yourself, have to feed, clothe, teach, love, nurture, and discipline all these children by yourself, where do I get time for me?” she questioned.
“Where do I get time to achieve my goals and my dreams? Who is there to love me? Because of the frustration that comes with that kind of scenario, then the closest person on whom to take out the frustration are the children. So when it is that someone says the fertility rate is down, we understand because we are taking our birth control. We’re not going down the sufferation road,” the attorney said.
While cautioning against a narrative of two camps that pit women against men, former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Reginald Budhan agreed that it is difficult for one party to raise a child for 18 years.
He said men ought to show greater commitment, which would earn the trust of women to bear children.
Educate men
Dr Loxley Christie, too, cautioned against a separation of men and women in the issues surrounding fertility and possible aversions to childbearing.
Christie, a consultant obstetrician gynaecologist at The University Hospital of the West Indies and the Hugh Wynter Fertility Management Unit, said that in the same way women are educated, men, too, must be about the child-rearing process.
“The ideology of men coming home, sitting down kicking up their feet, that don’t work anymore. The woman has to work. She has her responsibilities; she has her studies. The truth is no matter how we try to swing that pendulum, it will never go in the middle. The burden is almost always going to be on the woman,” he said.
He noted that men must recognise that their roles are changing.
Professor of Reproductive Health and Epidemiology Affette McCaw Binns believes that Jamaica’s education system limits the social development of males.
She called for affirmative action that would ensure that more males go to university, a move she believes would give women better partners.
“It must be looked at from a social perspective. The structure of the family and stabilising it. For the women to have children, the work environment must be able to support them. Workplace nurseries and after-school care so that they can make sure that their children are well supported and supervised in the day. More flexible work-from-home options, paternity leave so that men can share the childcare duties.
“These are what the society needs to deal with because the woman them not going back in the kitchen. Them not going back there,” she said, evoking strong support from the audience.