Most women on the planet can get pregnant. Infertility only affects about 12% of couples that are considered of 'childbearing age', whatever that means. That is a infinitesimal number consider the amount of people having kids these days. However, those women are still referred to as barren. According to the dictionary, barren is defined as showing no results or achievements, unproductive; bleak and lifeless or empty of meaning or value. Yikes ladies, we better hope we don't have any fertility issues, because apparently that renders us less valuable just by the nature of the word.
I don't get it. Sure, back in the day when queens were required to produce a male heir, a woman who couldn't produce was a 'problem'. But now a days is that still really the way women who can't have children should feel? Hell, adoption is en vogue now, so with those kinds of possibilities, is an uncooperative uterus or a pair of flippant ovaries a situation still punishable by shame and ridicule?
I guess part of the reason is the fact that for some women, no matter how much time passes or how far the pendulum shifts, it seems they've not reached their full potential until they're a mother. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, I just wonder if there will ever be a time when there will be no stigma attached to women who are barren. Or who I like to refer to, just for laughs, as productively challenged.
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