Stop watching people’s ovaries – Miss Kitty

Freshly minted attorney-at-law, Khadine 'Miss Kitty' Hylton, is today encouraging women who have chosen to get their careers in order before having children to "not allow anyone to belittle your self worth or self-esteem".

"Everybody's life takes a different path and trajectory. Some people take it early and some take it late and some won't be able to take it all. Sometimes before we are neighbourhood watching on people's ovaries, we need to mind our business," she told THE STAR. "Childbearing and child-rearing is not something to take lightly and every woman in her own time will make that decision. Stop pressuring women to have children, it's not your business."

The popular media personality, who on Tuesday was called to the Bar, says persons have 'castigated' her over the years for choosing her career over child-rearing.

Patriarchal agenda

"On Mother's Day especially, you will see the snide remarks. 'Miss Kitty, a time yuh have a kitten now' or whatever type of shallow, myopic way of thinking people have. I don't allow it to bother me but I don't like it. There are women who push that patriarchal agenda and will say 'a time now yuh have a pickney' but a time now yuh get a subject. Yuh nah think bout dat? A time now yuh get a house. Make we talk bout that. A time now yuh get a man fi love yuh and stop beat yuh inna yuh pancreas. A time now," she said. "And when you counteract with that dem say yuh hype and this and that. So yuh nuh hype to fi a walk round a watch my ovaries and a castigate me or alienate me or judging me and yuh don't know my story, my situation."

Miss Kitty said that when it comes to women and childbearing, society can be insensitive, as persons must remember there are many women who have illnesses that prevent them from conceiving.

"Some come fi have and some come nuffi have and we ought to be respectful and have some tact, decency and dignity in what we say and our pronouncement because you don't know what a women might be going through," she said. "I would much prefer for a woman to know that I don't want a child or I don't think I am ready or refrain from having them than having them. Yuh can't take care of them, yuh can't maintain them and they become a pestilence to society and a problem to other people."

Miss Kitty reiterated that a women does not have to have a child to be a woman, to be worthy and to be loved.

"On the 10 commandments I don't see where it says yuh affi have a child fi enter Heaven. It say things like 'thou shall not steal', 'thou shall not kill'," she said.