hould newlyweds be forced to have children in a twinkling of an eye, asks Enjy El-Naggar Against the wishes of her mother-in- law, newlywed 35-year-old Mariam Ahmed decided with her husband to defer pregnancy for six months. But during that period Ahmed's mother- in-law nevertheless put her under insurmountable pressure because the would-be grandmother wanted to see grandchildren as soon as possible. It is a predicament that may be familiar to many Egyptian women. Though Ahmed has managed to deal with her mother-in-law's nagging, her colleagues at work remain a headache because of their non-stop queries about pregnancy. "When I replied, 'not yet,' the answer was always, 'oh dear, we're sorry for you. You should consult a doctor,' and so on, all said with obviously fake concern," Ahmed recalls. If Ahmed asked one of her colleagues why she was asking about her pregnancy, the answer would be, said in a blaming tone, that she just wanted to make sure that everything was alright. Ahmed spent nearly three harsh years doing frequent tests and check-ups in her efforts to become pregnant. Yet, even her suffering was not enough to ward off the unfavourable attitudes of her family. "When I didn't get pregnant during the first three years of marriage, my family believed that I was infertile," Ahmed remembers. Today, she has two little girls. Despite the fact that Ahmed's family is well- educated, their impatience to have a grandchild led them to take her to traditional healers in order to try to find out what was wrong. And Ahmed's experience is by no means exceptional: the lives of many Egyptian women revolve around the edgy issue of the unfair pressure imposed on newlyweds by families urging them to have their first baby. In my own case, I thought I would never have to go through such painful experiences, but soon after my wedding, while I was accompanying my husband on a fellowship in the United Kingdom, I got a phone call from a friend of mine, asking "any news?" "What kind of news?" I asked. "I mean news of pregnancy, of course," my friend said. Her question was like a bombshell. "No, not yet," I said, surprised to find that my pregnancy was of such interest to the people around me. However, on returning to Egypt and making further enquiries I discovered that such interfering was the norm, and most newlyweds are flooded with the same type of questions. Twenty-seven-year-old Lamees Magdi, a bank employee who became a mother four years ago, had a similar problem with her mother-in-law after her marriage. "I postponed pregnancy for about a year and a half," Magdi said. "The first year of marriage was not easy, so I decided to put pregnancy off for a while until everything was going well in my marital life." However, Magdi's family, like her husband's, was pushing her to have babies because they wanted to become grandparents. Reem Mustafa, a working mother in her early 30s, also suffered after her marriage because her family kept pushing her to have a baby. "My mother started talking about it almost from the beginning of the marriage," Mustafa said. "Why do people bother themselves? I know that my family is doing it out of love, but only my husband and I can decide when we should have children." Mustafa was annoyed when she got pregnant because she believed that couples should not have children before the third or fourth year of marriage. "Marriage is not all about pregnancy," she believes. "It's about the good social and economic conditions that should be in place before a couple has children." Mustafa's problem now is that even after having had her first child her family is now pushing her to have another one. She has become tense when discussing the issue with her family. "It's my life, not theirs," she said. For their part, her family argues that their granddaughter can't live alone, and that she has the right to have a sister or brother to support her. Both Mustafa and Magdi agree that their families should support them, but both also think that their families should reduce the pressure on their getting pregnant. Both have decided that they will not have other children until their daughters are five years old. "In our Eastern societies, marriage and childbearing are main concerns of a wife's marital life," said Hoda Zakaria, a sociologist at Zagazig University, in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. "Being a mother is an important thing. But there is also a question about how our society deals with motherhood, since the consequences of not giving birth are harsh for a married woman, and can include unfair treatment and severe pressure." Such pressures can be all the greater in rural areas. Thirty-two-year-old Nihal Mahmoud, a housewife who tried to have a child for nearly eight years, is a case in point. "Not having a baby immediately after marriage is a really painful experience, especially if you live in the countryside," said Mahmoud, who comes from a village in the Ismailia governorate. "Relatives, neighbours and friends used to be rude to me for not being able to be pregnant. They even urged my husband to get married again so that he could have children," she said. "Their questions upset me and made me feel like a prisoner inside my own house," Mahmoud adds, though she also says that her mother and husband were kind to her. According to Zakaria, many Egyptian women feel pressure from outside the family regarding pregnancy and childbearing, including hints from friends, acquaintances, or work colleagues. "Oh, poor girl," a friend might say, reminding a woman of her weakness. "There are new medical methods to help women conceive. Why don't you try them?" a colleague might volunteer. For 57-year-old Laila Abdel-Aziz, Mahmoud's mother, being a grandmother is the best thing in life. "I can't blame parents if they push their daughters to have kids, as long as they do it in a kind way without hurting their feelings," Abdel-Aziz said. People's curiosity was also a source of concern for Abdel-Aziz. "Some people intervened out of love, but others were less well- intentioned," she adds. However, Mahmoud did not like even people's good wishes for her to be pregnant. "If anyone wants to pray for me, they can do it in secret. It hurts when it is said out loud," she says. Given that the divorce rate in the first years of marriage is high in Egypt, Zakaria advises families to avoid talking to their daughters or daughters-in-law about childbearing at the beginning of their marital lives. "Instead, they ought to advise the new couple to take their time until they are sure they want to continue their lives together," she said. Unlike in the West, Arab societies are preoccupied with the idea of having children, no matter how they may be raised. In Egypt, Zakaria adds, some people are ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of having a child in order to continue the family name.
