I have a dog — a female named Taffy. She was a gift to my children two years ago. To date, she has had three litters of puppies. I watched her give birth to all those puppies and I even recorded a few of the births. It has never ceased to amaze me how knowledgeable she was — how absolutely calm she was as she gave birth unassisted. It must have been quite an effort to give birth without anesthesia, but she did it and she seemed none the worse for the wear. In fact, as she birthed and cleaned and nursed each puppy, she seemed competent and confident in her ability — as though she was born to do just this thing — and she was.

She is a rather vigilant mother, protective of her little ones and quite attentive to their every need. She very often falls asleep as they nurse but wakes up with each noise they make. I don’t think she holds anything back — she gives of herself until she has fully nursed those puppies and they are old enough to eat solid food. As a result, she sheds much hair, she loses weight, her breasts sag and become swollen and misshapen. She finds it difficult to walk or run as her breasts, so full of milk, hampers her every movement. She does not know a moment’s peace as even when she is peacefully asleep, her little ones come to the breast to seek nourishment.

It is only after three or four weeks of non-stop breast feeding, and the puppies’ teeth have come out and her breasts and nipples are red and often wounded from their sharp teeth that she starts snarling at them when they come to the breast. She starts to avoid them, sleeping atop a bench so that she can be out of reach to the puppies who still cannot climb or jump up to reach her. It is usually as they get to this stage of development that I start finding homes for the puppies — they are already viable. They can live away from their mother. So, I teach them how to lap up milk from a bowl and I start giving them bits of boiled rice with their milk so that they learn how to chew. After a few days they can stand a bit of dry puppy food mixed in with the milk. After that, they only suck from their mother when she allows them.

As I give away each puppy, Taffy looks at me passively. She has obeyed every biological imperative and so she can go back to her existence as the family pet when her puppies are gone. Soon, her breasts will become less swollen and she will be her old playful self. After about seven to nine months, she will again come to heat and the cycle will begin all over again until Taffy gets too old to be pregnant.

Lucky for Taffy, she doesn’t have to think about retirement or financial security. She can bring puppies into the world without having to think about spending for their shots or sending them to school. All she has to do is give birth, breastfeed and wait until they are old enough. Not so with human females these days.

Back in my grandmother’s time (she was born in 1910), women were allowed to go to school only until they learn how to read, write and calculate — that’s about until fourth grade. Then, they had to learn some sort of trade like embroidery or tailoring or dressmaking so that they can have some sort of income for their personal upkeep as they wait to marry. When they do get married at age 14 or 15, they were expected to keep house, raise children and grandchildren and pamper their husbands until the day they die.

Life is more complicated for women now. A woman is expected to go to school and proceed to university and engage in a career or find employment so that she can be financially independent regardless or being married or not. If she does get married, she really still has to work to help feed her children and send them to school. She does this until she is unable to do it because of old age, injury or sickness.

What happens then, when a female gets pregnant at such an early age, and before she has had enough education? She will have to raise her children and be dependent upon her parents for her own support and for the support of her children. Or, she will have to depend upon a husband or partner as she will clearly be unable to earn sufficient income for her own support, let alone for the support of her children and raise them at the same time.

Some women don’t get pregnant early. They wait until they’ve finished their education and have a career before they marry and have children. Just the same, when a woman gives birth, her life is re-arranged. When before she only had to think of herself and her partner or spouse, she now has to think also of her child. Her efforts are no longer for herself alone, but for her husband and her child. Some women balance work and child rearing and they do it rather well. Some women, forced by ill health of their children and other circumstances, find themselves having to be stay-at-home moms. At any rate, the woman will be living and working primarily for her children and her husband or partner, and lastly for herself. When at last her reproductive years are over and her children are grown, she has widowhood to look forward to, or maybe she will go on until old age with her spouse or partner, if she’s lucky.

When I gave birth to my second child, my mother said to me, “Don’t love your children too much. They will grow up and leave you.” I was shocked by my mother’s dry-eyed pragmatism. What I didn’t understand then was the context in which she was saying that. Only now that I am in the last few years prior to full menopause do I see what she meant.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my children. I love my husband. I think that I am a better person for having had children and for having had a husband. I do not think that I could ever be the person I am today if I hadn’t had children or had gotten married.

Just the same, though, as my child-bearing years will soon be over, the child-rearing duties that used to take up so much of my time and attention will also be over soon. I would have (hopefully) raised strong children who will not need me in order to survive. They will have lives of their own in which I will be an avid observer and occasional participant. What next? Where do I go from here?

When a woman has had the time and the opportunity to develop herself prior to having children, perhaps she has something to go back to — she would have a career and an occupation to go back to with renewed enthusiasm. If a woman has not had the same time or opportunity to develop herself before having children, what does she have to look forward to?

A woman with an education and a career will probably balance her career and home. A woman with an education and a career who has given herself to her home life can always go back to her career after menopause — but a woman without an education and without a career — what does she do after menopause?

I suppose this is what I wanted to tell my students during the International Women’s Day. This is not feminism — this is practical reality. A woman has to have worth that transcends her biological function. She must be her own person, able to live and function independently, but free to choose and enjoy married co-existence if she wills. This is so that after her reproductive function has ceased, she is still something.

To my students, take it from me: being a wife and mother is absolutely thrilling and fulfilling — but this isn’t all you have to be. Develop yourselves through education and employment prior to having children so that when you are older and you’ve finished raising your children, you will have something to go back to, something to do, something to occupy yourself with.

I suppose I say this because I am so tired of seeing female students get pregnant even before they finish high school or college. They should consider themselves extremely lucky if, after childbirth, they can finish the education that they left behind because they got pregnant. They should consider themselves lucky if they can find some income that can help them while they are raising their children. But it is much more crucial to have something to go back to after you’ve finished raising your child — when you reach menopause.

When menopause comes, we women lose something of ourselves — we lose our youth, our vibrance — all because we lose our reproductive function. If, like a diamond, we’ve taken time and opportunity to polish the many facets of our lives and person prior to getting pregnant, then, when the reproductive function ceases, there will still be something besides motherhood for us; something more than our children and spouse will animate us and give our life some purpose and direction.

For most of us women, life will not be over when our menstrual period stops — life will go on for us. We will then have to redefine ourselves: we have finished being mothers and we must go on and be something else. Whatever we choose to become after menopause will largely depend on how we have prepared ourselves for this time.

To my students, please don’t get pregnant fresh out of high school or college. Believe me, having a husband and kids can wait a few years. Develop your inner resources first. In this way, you will have more to give to your children when you do have them. And when you develop your inner resources, you will be much stronger, more able to weather adverse circumstances that so often occur and when you have survived to menopause, after you’ve raised your children, you will have something of yourself to go back to. You will have yourself.

I remember a conversation I overhead between two children in preschool. One child said, “when I grow up, I will go to UP for college kasi, doon nag-college ang mommy at daddy ko.” The other child said, “ako, hindi ako magka-college.” The first child then retorted, “Uy, dapat mag-college ka. Kasi, kung magka-anak ka at hindi ka nag-college — you’ll have stupid children.”

I thought it was rather well said. Happy International Women’s Day! Sorry for this late post.