Source: Eric McCandless / Getty
Real Housewife of Atlanta, Cynthia Bailey, is not shy about sharing the details of her life. Whether it’s about her relationships—the beginnings, middles, and ends—or her daughter’s sexuality, she’s been generous with what she shares with fans.
Recently, Bailey shared a tidbit about her reproductive options.
During a recent interview with Sarah Hyland, of “Modern Family” fame, Bailey shared how she got on birth control shortly after she started her period.
Bailey, in a discussion about what safe and affordable birth control has meant for her life, she said:
“It was huge for me. I grew up in the South. My mom didn’t really talk to us a lot about sex. We didn’t have the birds and the bees talk.
Literally, once we were old enough to start our menstrual cycle, she put us on the pill. No real explanation. It was just, ‘Uhhtt you can have a baby now. So you take this everyday.’ I was on the pill for so long, I didn’t realize I could get off of it if I wanted to. That was her way of saying, I don’t want you guys to get pregnant.
And had we not gotten on the pill, because we didn’t have a lot of information, I probably would have three or four kids now and my life would have been very different.”
While it would have been great if her mother could have had more honest conversations about sex and sexuality—she does credit her mother for making a way for the success she experienced in her life. And in speaking about what she did learn from her mother and the independence her mother’s decision granted her, Bailey said this:
“For me, [independence] means everything. Especially being an African American woman. When it comes to women’s rights, we were not the first on the forefront of any of the changes to give everyone equal rights. So that being said, I feel a personal responsibility. I’m just trying to live my best life and making up for the things my mom was not allowed to do. So, I kind of feel like I’m living a double life. I’m living for me, I’m living for her and in a lot of ways she’s living through me. I always feel the pressure to be amazing so she can be like, ‘Thank God I had you! What a blessing you’ve been to my life.’ That’s kind of why I feel such an obligation to be great. Her life turned out very differently because she had kids early on.”
You can watch this interview in the video below.
