You are a woman be­fore you are a moth­er. I’ll say that again: you are a woman be­fore you are a moth­er; there­fore, hav­ing a child does not make you a woman. This dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant be­cause we live in a world where — and some so­ci­eties are worse than oth­ers — for a woman to be con­sid­ered a woman, apart from the phys­i­cal qual­i­fi­ca­tions, she must meet the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of hav­ing had a child. We al­so live in a world that dic­tates to a woman that in or­der for her to be com­plete, con­tent­ed, and ful­filled, she must have a child. But this is prob­lem­at­ic.