by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

Around the time little girls become preoccupied with their own reflections, I remember scanning the various jars of creams and tonics on my mother’s make-up table. I couldn’t yet read so well, but I noticed on the labels that the word AGE was always belittled by a hyphen and another word that “combated,” “defied” or “anti’d” it in some way. Once I started playing with make-up samples in drugstores, I’d see row upon row of these labels: anti-wrinkle; anti-aging; age-defying. Before I reached puberty, I had learned that aging was something to protest.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

While children around the world are taught that God loves all people, even the most pious of nations repress homosexuals; marginalize and abuse women; neglect the rights of children and wage war on fellow human beings often because of their different beliefs, races and ethnicities.

As I write this, devout Jews and Muslims—encouraged by their religious leaders and imbalanced politics—continue to kill each other in The Middle East. American politicians who identify themselves as Christian and insert “God bless America” in every speech pass legislation that slashes funds to educate America’s children while pumping money into a war that kills children in Iraq. Chinese police, some of whom may very well be Buddhists, continue daily to club Tibetan monks and nuns protesting abuses of human rights.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

My sister doesn’t have any children. Neither does my female cousin, nor my sister-in-law. A close female friend of mine from college wants kids but her relationship woes and her career haven’t allowed for an ideal child-rearing situation. Here in Germany, I’m a statistical rarity, as a university-educated woman with three children. Exercising the right to intellectually choose motherhood, or not, has marked my generation of women.

I recently Googled “reasons not to have kids” and got 26,700 hits. Many of the results linked to Corinne Maier’s bestseller from last summer, No Kid: 40 Reasons for Not Having Children. (Maier, by the way, is a mother of two.) Then there is childfreebychoice.com, which declares the resources of its website are “designed to be a haven for those who prefer to be childfree throughout their lives.” There are also countless parenting and women’s blogs where 30 – 40 something aged women (and men) explain their reasons against procreating.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

When Pam’s fiancé, Charles, was deployed on his second tour to Iraq in December of 2004, he feared what awaited him. On his first tour, a year prior, he had witnessed the chaos and the bloodshed, the friends who didn’t return home. Charles had escaped with a shot to his jaw the first time, but, preparing for the worst, he gave Pam power of attorney for his belongings. Still, in a hopeful moment before his deployment from Fort Bragg, Charles put an engagement ring on Pam’s finger. “I cried all night when he left,” remembers Pam.

• Sgt. Charles Eggleston with friends in Iraq. •

Seven months after he’d said goodbye to Pam, Charles’ front-line unit was hit by an IED in Mosul. Six of his fellow soldiers died in the attack and, amidst the confusion, Charles, known as Sgt. Charles Eggleston, was counted amongst the dead. The call to Charles’ mother had been a mistake — one that Pam had been lucky enough not to know about until she’d finally talked to Charles again, three days after the attack.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

“Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. . .
Stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

• Renée and Jacques on their wedding day in Port-au-Prince, 1965. •

In practice, a woman’s place is no longer just in the home. She is often holding down the fort both at work and in the kitchen: juggling meetings while discretely pumping breast milk or fixing a quick dinner before working late into the night on her laptop in bed. Time is also squeezed in for listening to her husband’s trials and tribulations while to-do lists run through the back of her mind. The term “good wife” has been replaced with being a “good partner,” but the job description is similar.

Partnership is perhaps the hardest task to befall modern women. While many aspects of motherhood are instinctual, evolving with a life partner is a long, often arduous learning process. To live together—actively and harmoniously as two equal individuals—is a challenge that proved harrowing even for women like Barbara and Renée who survived dictatorship, war, poverty and fleeing their homes.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

They leave holding only their children's small hands in their own. A crumpled photo of a relative might find its place among their few possessions. Most often it is nothing more than a prospect—of safety, peace, or a new chance at life—that accompanies millions of people who flee their homes.

• Kenyan women flee the post-election violence with their belongings on their backs. Photo courtesy of the Humanitarian Coalition. •

Two women we have now come to know by name, Barbara and Renée, were lucky. Barbara didn't squeeze herself into the back of a VW Bug to get across the East German border. Renée did not cling for her life on a shabby boat in shark infested waters to get to America. They did, however, leave their homes and their families for a chance at a better life, a decision, which is never free from risk or worry.

Renée left Haiti with her husband in 1966 so that he could finish his medical studies in Canada. Uncertain of what lay ahead, they left behind their infant daughter and paid off a Haitian official to let them out of the country. Although a newly married couple, they sat separately on the plane to avoid suspicion by Canadian officials that they might be planning to stay. Their efforts would prove futile.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

Before we had our own children, my husband and I began sponsoring a child in Senegal named Absa, a pretty little girl with clever eyes.

• Absa in Senegal. Photo courtesy of World Vision Germany. •

It has been seven years and our children know the pictures of Absa, standing behind a large wooden bowl and holding onto a tall wooden mortar.

Recently, we received a check-list with a blank space next to school attendance. My eyes rested on the latest picture of Absa, now almost a woman, and I wondered what would become of her?

I called the aid organization and asked why Absa was no longer in school. The woman on the other end of the telephone line sighed.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

As a child, my parents told me almost every day to be grateful for the food on my plate. When I occasionally grimaced at the offerings, my father would say, “No problem, we can put you on a plane tomorrow. There are plenty of kids in my hometown who would love to trade places with you.” I took my father only half seriously, but was still too young to be completely sure. It wasn’t until I saw true poverty for myself, that I understood just how quickly another little girl would have taken my place at our table; delighted to sit behind a mound of food that I was too spoiled and finicky to finish.

I was seven years old when I first went to Haiti, and I will never forget the other children my age who smiled at me in wonder, their bare feet scurrying across the hard pavement. To see their bones poking through their skin made my own bones ache. Every time they smiled at me, despite me having everything they didn’t, a piece of my naïveté drifted away.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

January 30th marks the 75th "anniversary" of Hitler's rise to power. Today, appropriately, we begin a nine-part series by Rose-Anne Clermont conceived as "Parallel Histories from Different Worlds." The series begins with the early experiences of two of the women closest to Clermont whose lives were tranformed under brutal dictatorships more than 50 years ago.

In the next part of this series, the two women Clermont interviewed, Barbara and Renée, talk about the challenge of growing up in poverty, with scarce food and resources. - Ed.

• Barbara and her brother, Michael in 1937 in Germany. •

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

When we think of children killed by their parents, we may recall a news documentary about a poor Indian family with an unwanted girl. Or, the media has helped us conjure the image of a Chinese family terrified of violating the government’s one-child policy. For those of us in wealthy, western countries, it is easier to believe that infanticide and child killings are tragedies unique to poor and quickly developing nations.

• Infanticide and child killings in Germany have cast a light on a phenomena that was previously considered a problem of developing nations. Photograph by Marian Steinbach. •

Every newspaper in Germany has run a headline similar to “How Could This Happen?” or “Who Will Protect the Children?” Politicians have given swift reactions to the recent tragedies. Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Germany to develop “a culture of looking” at families in potential crisis and has scheduled a conference on December 19th to address child protection in Germany. Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen is pushing for mandatory medical check-ups so that children, especially those being abused and neglected, don’t fall through the cracks.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

BERLIN - Seventy years ago, every kernel of a German’s identity was accessible by the government; financial statements, personal correspondence, family and religious information remained unprotected and defenseless. Private was what could be hidden in an attic, in the lining of a coat, or quickly swallowed in desperation. The absence of data protection allowed for Nazi officials to easily pick apart its citizens and brand them with a star or deem them racially superior.

• Patriotic Way in Rostock, Germany. Photograph by Fabian Bromann. •

“There were some things we just didn’t say outside of our house,” remembers Barbara Boock, 73, of both regimes. “One never spoke about politics outside of the family.” Boock was born in a small eastern town outside of Jena, in 1934, a year after the Nazis came to power. Because her parents were Anthroposophist, (a spiritual philosophy known mostly for Waldorf schools and biodynamic agriculture) the family was scrutinized by the Nazis. “I remember coming home from school and watching the Gestapo storm through our house and take away all of our Anthroposophist books.”