Childless and Childfree Muslim women and men, speak out! Make yourself heard anonymously or not, but let people know how you feel. No one will express it for you. No one can guess if one does not live it.

Family and friends can surround childless men and women; especially women childless by circumstance, without suspecting what they are going through: multiple miscarriages, returning from hospital without the child they carried for months. They don’t know what it feels like to sit in a waiting room in the gynaecological ward next to pregnant women with their partners when you are unsuccessfully trying to conceive a child or are prevented from doing so by illness.

No-one can describe what it feels like to confide in one’s immediate family one’s lack of desire for a child. No one can explain the mockery, the accusations of heresy when one formulates a non-desire for children in Muslim communities. No one can express it better than a person in the situation.

Lack of representation

As you may have noticed, women’s magazines for Muslim women are all about motherhood. It is impossible to read magazines for this readership without this topic, which is important of course, but they become discriminatory when no space is given to Muslim women childless by circumstances or by choice.

This reflects, in a sense, the vision of women and their place in our Muslim communities. These web magazines only address childless women from the perspective of infertility faced by couples. It can then be assumed that diversity among the journalists of these magazines does not exist. Only, mothers seem to feed these magazines. This reduces the possibilities of being interested in and reporting on the feelings of childless and childfree women and men . Especially, if they themselves have not experienced any difficulties in having children or have been mothers since their twenties or early thirties.

In the comments sections, words of comfort are often given to women trying to conceive to make their wish come true. In contrast, these comments very rarely offer words of support to those without children forever. This prospect is probably frightening, so it is not considered.

So, take up your pens or keyboards childless and childfree Muslim women and men! Join me, talk about this topic, talk about your experience.

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Original text Femmes et hommes sans enfant musulmans, faites-vous entendre!

Translation by Discussions Essentielles and DeepL

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©Photo Credit Pexels- Sora Shimazaki