Jennifer Obakhume is a reporter for Youth Radio. She questions the limited models of womanhood available to young women today.

By the time I was in my late teenage years, the Barbies and baby dolls that were supposed to help young girls become women were long a thing of the past. But, the number of girls in high school who were following the model set by those dolls was growing day by day. I knew so many girls who, I think, got pregnant before their time. Having never had a boyfriend, I naturally couldn’t connect to their situations. Frankly, I would rather have something that is more likely to stick around for the long haul: my education.

Now that I’m getting ready to graduate from college and build towards my career, I don’t really have a realistic model of womanhood in front of me. It would be nice if I did. Instead, I’m working on my career with the idea that I’ll be on an equal playing field with my male colleagues and that I’ll have a medium to large-sized student loan debt that will have to be paid regardless of gender.

Despite the constant suggestions of my relatives to stay away from serious relationships that could result in a pregnancy, I notice that, lately, they've been bugging me more about kids. My family insists that every woman is born with a maternal instinct and that it’s my job to get with the program by my early 30s at the latest. That myth is far off base. I've talked to some older women about motherhood. While many of them are happy with the way their kids turned out, some of them said that they would have waited until later or not had children at all.

At least not everyone treats motherhood as a requirement for being a woman.

Mayra Jimenez is a reporter for Youth Radio. She embraces motherhood, but craves more mentorship about it.
I would like to be a mother someday, just not at the moment. But it seems that not everyone is as ready or as stable enough to know what they want as far as babies go. Most girls I know who get pregnant decide to keep their babies, usually because by the time they find out, it's too late to do anything but deliver the child.  Most of the young mothers I know weren't even planning on staying with their partners at the point that they found out they were pregnant. I find this situation very sad. I know of one girl in particular who went through with an abortion. She described it as painful and as feeling a void . This scared me because these girls were acting out of ignorance.

I tried to learn about motherhood on my own. But it's hard to ask people without them judging you. Then I came across Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, which imaginatively explores issues of womanhood in Biblical times. The book is named for the sequestered space where women retreated to during their menstrual cycles (hence the color of the tent). Within the tent, younger women learned about everything from sex to childbirth. It was a community space where older women could pass on their knowledge to the younger generation.

I would call this a positive group of women. It's a lot different than these days, when single moms, especially teens, are left to their own wits. I think it would be great if we had more of this kind of bonding before we had to bring up a child. What's better than knowing that you are bringing your child into a nurturing world?

I think being able to learn about motherhood from older women without fear of judgment is the key to empowering younger women to be in control of their bodies and their lives.