Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Marilyn Monroe

So many words come to mind when we think of Marilyn – bombshell, icon, tragic, to name but a few. Her image is universally recognizable, and almost half a century after her death, she remains an enigma. Above all, though, Marilyn Monroe was a star. She understood fame, even if she didn’t always like it, and she understood that her image was everything. She played the dumb blonde to perfection, but beneath that veneer, she was far from innocent or ignorant. You only have to read some of her whip-smart quotes to see that.

I have a special affinity for Marilyn that I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on. Her movies are among my guilty pleasures, with Some Like it Hot topping my list. There was something fragile and untouchable about her, and yet she had a strength and fortitude that I admire.

Marilyn was married three times, to James Dougherty, and more famously to Joe DiMaggio and then Arthur Miller. She never had children.

I wondered if she was childfree-by-choice, and how having children would have changed her life, her career, and her image. This was during an era when stars disappeared to quietly give birth and then reappeared on screen as stunning as ever. Motherhood and sexiness did not go hand-in-hand.

But in snooping around for this post, I discovered that Marilyn had suffered several miscarriages and at least two ectopic pregnancies that were terminated. For me, this information casts an entirely different light on the sadness I could always sense behind Marilyn’s eyes. Maybe that’s the unexplainable thing that has always drawn me to her.

Marilyn is one of my favorite Cheroes from this month, and she’s also responsible for the quote that stumped almost everyone in the Expressing Motherhood contest! Fortunately, Jennifer Segundo got it, and by virtue of being the ONLY correct answer, she is also the lucky winner! Thanks to everyone else for some great guesses.

Joan of Arc

By Kathleen Guthrie


Joan of Arc has been known by many names, including Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans, and Saint Joan. Born in 1412, this illiterate peasant girl rose to fame when she stepped in to lead the French army during the Hundred Years’ War, an ongoing struggle between the British and French over who could claim and hold the French throne. Here are a few highlights of her life:

  • When she was 12 years old, she had her first Divine vision when Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret came to her in her family’s field and told her to help kick the British invaders out of the country. She later revealed her father had “dreamed [she] would go off with men-of-arms” and, he told her brothers, “in truth, if I thought this thing would happen which I have dreamed about my daughter, I would want you to drown her; and if you would not, I would drown her myself.” She soon left home—without first asking her father’s permission.
  • At 16, she presented herself to military leaders, won them over with a prophesy of victory, and got herself appointed as head of an army that was near defeat.
  • Under God’s guidance, Joan led the French army in significant victories. She earned the respect of her troops when she was shot in the neck with an arrow—and in another battle was hit in the helmet with a stone cannonball—and continued to lead.
  • Her success on the battlefield made it possible for Charles VII to take the throne.
  • Then she was captured, sold to the British, and imprisoned when Charles VII refused to pay her ransom. She was tried for heresy in a church court. “Everything I have done is at God’s command,” Joan testified, yet she was convicted, condemned, and burned at the stake. She was 19 at the time of her death.
  • Twenty-five years later, the Catholic Church reversed her sentence and made her a martyr. She was canonized in 1920 as a patron saint of France, as well as for military personnel, prisoners, and the Women’s Army Corps.

By 1750, average life expectancy in France was 25, which means it was even less 300 years earlier. Had she followed a traditional path, Joan would have spent her brief life working hard, marrying young, and giving birth to a number of children, of whom maybe half would survive infancy.

But no one called her maman. Instead, Joan mothered an army, aided an ungrateful boy-king, and saved her country.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.

Guest Post: Terry Gross

Credit: Will Ryan

Guest Post written by Laura Nye

Recently I was excited to learn that my favorite radio show host, Terry Gross, is childfree.  She hosts the NPR interview show “Fresh Air”.  A couple of months ago, she interviewed Stephanie Coontz who wrote a book about Betty Friedan’s book “A Feminine Mystique”.  Toward the end of the interview Ms. Coontz says the Feminine Mystique has been replaced by the “Perfect Mother Mystique”.  Terry comments that many women who came of age during the first women’s movement rejected the idea of being a perfect homemaker and decided not to have children.

This made me wonder if Terry was one of us.

I looked her up on wikipedia and found that she is childfree by choice.   At the beginning of an interview with actor and author B.D. Wong, she says she and many of her friends have decided not to have children.  During an interview with John Waters, she asks if he worries about who will take care of him when he’s old because many people without children worry about this.  He advises to have young friends!

 

Thanks, Laura, for a great post! ~Lisa

Lucy Hobbs Taylor

By Kathleen Guthrie

The idiom “like pulling teeth” is a fun way of saying something is “extremely difficult.” Getting out of a cozy bed when it’s 26 degrees outside is like pulling teeth. Deciding to train for a marathon when you’ve been a couch potato for the first 40 years of your life is like pulling teeth. For Lucy Hobbs Taylor, becoming the first American female dentist when schools wouldn’t admit her because she was a woman was…like pulling teeth.

Born in 1833 in New York, Lucy was determined to move beyond the traditionally limited female roles of motherhood, teaching, and nursing. She was after an advanced degree in medicine, but a college of medicine in Ohio rejected her application because she was a woman. Undaunted, she began studying privately with one of the school’s professors. She discovered a passion for dentistry and continued private studies with the dean of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery and as an apprentice. Still, the college refused her application. In 1861, she was only 28 when she opened her own practice in Cincinnati, which she soon moved to Iowa.

By 1865, Lucy had proven herself to her colleagues, and the Iowa State Dental Society accepted her as a member. That same year, with four years of professional practice serving as credit, she became part of the senior class of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery. She graduated with her doctorate degree in just a few months, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to write “D.D.S.” after her name.

In 1867, she married James M. Taylor, a railway maintenance worker. With his wife’s encouragement, he also became a dentist, and together they built a successful practice in Kansas. Much of their work concerned dental care for women and children, although the woman affectionately known as “Dr. Lucy” did not have children of her own.

After her husband’s death and her own retirement, Lucy became involved in the woman’s suffrage and other political movements. By the time of her passing in 1910, a thousand women had become dentists in America. According to American Dental Association (ADA) statistics, by the end of 2010, there were 45,038 active licensed female dentists in the U.S.

That’s something to smile about.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.

Win Tickets to “Expressing Motherhood!”

As I mentioned recently, I will be flying the childless/childfree flag in the upcoming show Expressing Motherhood in Los Angeles next month. If you (or someone you know) would like to see the show, I have a pair of tickets to give away!

All you have to do is answer a little question and post your response in the comments below. I’ll draw a winner at random from the correct answers on Friday.

Expressing Motherhood will be at the Elephant Space Theatre in Hollywood, from Wednesday April 27 through Saturday May 7. Tickets are good for the night of your choice.

The question:

Which famous childfree woman said, “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition?”

Answers below, please. Good luck!

Tea with Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

“First Fig”
from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)

This is one of my favorite poems and I’ve adopted it as a kind of mantra for life.

Its author was Edna St. Vincent Millay, someone with whom I think I would have enjoyed having a cup of tea (or something a little stronger.) She was a feminist with a reputation for her many lovers, one of whom described her as “a frivolous young woman, with a brand-new pair of dancing slippers and a mouth like a valentine.” She turned down at least two other marriage proposals before marrying Eugen Jan Boissevain. She was an avid vegetable gardener and built herself a barn (and later a writer’s cabin) from a Sears Roebuck kit – unorthodox behavior for a woman born in 1892.

But more than all this, Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of America’s greatest poets of her time. She won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Frost Medal for her work, and is equally well known for her beautiful sonnets as for her controversial anti-war poetry.

Thomas Hardy is quoted as saying that, “America has two great attractions: skyscrapers and Edna St. Vincent Mallay. If I’d been born 80 years earlier, I think I would have made a point of getting to know her.

[Editor’s note: For those of you just joining this blog and wondering what on earth is going on here, we are celebrating National Women’s History Month by featuring great women who never had children.]

Ride, Sally Ride!

By Kathleen Guthrie

For years, whenever I heard Wilson Pickett sing “Ride Sally, ride” in the classic tune “Mustang Sally,” I thought he was singing “Ride, Sally Ride”—for astronaut Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. It still makes sense to me, although I now know the song was first released in 1965, and Sally made her historic flight two decades later.

While my contemporaries and I were playing dress-up in our mothers’ satin pumps and imagining glamorous exploits for Barbie and her chums, Sally was paving the way for a whole new universe of possibilities for girls. With a BA, BS, and a master’s degree in physics, she was a PhD candidate in astrophysics looking for new challenges when she responded to an ad in the newspaper. Over 8,000 people applied, only 35 were accepted, of which six were women. In 1978, Sally joined NASA’s space program.

Her giant leap for womankind occurred on June 18, 1983, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. During the 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds of Mission STS-7, Mission Specialist 2 Sally K. Ride and her four crewmembers deployed two satellites and conducted numerous experiments. They traveled 2.2 million miles and orbited Earth 97 times. Her favorite part was being weightless: “I could do 30 somersaults in a row and slither like a seal from one side of the cabin to the other,” she said. “And of course we couldn’t resist playing a little bit with our food!”

Sally is childfree, but she has spent the intervening years raising future astronauts. She has made it her mission here on Earth to show kids that science is cool. She has written several books on space aimed at kids and, in 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, a company dedicated to encouraging and supporting boys’ and girls’ interests in science, math, and technology.

Maybe one day she’ll return to space. As it stands now, Sally took her second and final space ride in 1984. Guess what was played as her morning wake-up song?

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.

Erin Go Braugh, Dr. Lynn!

In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day I thought I’d forego the green beer and pay homage to an incredible Irish woman.

Kathleen Florence Lynn was born in 1874 in Co. Mayo. She was a political activist, supporter of the women’s suffrage movement, and an accomplished doctor.

Dr. Lynn was one of the first women to graduate in medicine from the Royal University of Ireland and she was the first female resident at the Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin. Sill, these qualifications didn’t protect her from discrimination because “she was not a man.”

Dr. Lynn joined the ranks of the Citizen Army and was Chief Medical Officer during the 1916 Easter Rising. When her Commanding Officer was shot, she, as next highest-ranking officer, was promoted to Captain. She was imprisoned for her role in the uprising.

While working with Dublin’s inner city poor, she realized the need to provide adequate medical and educational care for mothers and infants. At that time 164 out of every 1000 babies born in Dublin died from preventable diseases. In 1919 Dr. Lynn helped establish Saint Ultan’s Hospital ‘for the medical treatment of infants under one year of age.’ She thumbed her nose at the hospitals who had turned her down in the past by insisting that St. Ultan’s be staffed and managed entirely by women. During her time there she pioneered use of the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis more than a decade before it went into general use in Ireland.

Dr. Lynn devoted her “spare” time to children, too. She served as Vice President of Save the German Children, an organization that found homes in Ireland for evacuated children during the Second World War. It’s impossible to say how many children’s lives she helped to save during her career. And of course, she had no children of her own.

Dr. Lynn was definitely her own woman. It is reported that she turned down the use of the hospital’s chauffeur and enormous car, preferring to make her own way through the world by bicycle.

In acknowledgement of the role she played in the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence, Dr. Kathleen Lynn was buried in 1955 with full military honors

Susan B. Anthony – Fighting for Equality

By Kathleen Guthrie

Susan B. Anthony made her first public speech for women’s rights at the 1852 national convention in Syracuse, New York, and campaigned tirelessly throughout her life. When asked if women would ever be granted the right to vote, she once responded, “It is inevitable.” Yet it wasn’t until 1906, 14 years after her death, that American women finally achieved their goal with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

She also was the first non-allegorical woman to be featured on a circulating U.S. coin, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which was minted in 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1999. I always thought this was cool, but didn’t know until recently that it’s ironic.

In 1872, Susan was arrested for voting illegally in the presidential election. Despite passionate arguments that invoked the recent passage of the 14th Amendment, which gave the privileges of citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” (with no gender distinctions), she was convicted without being allowed to testify on her own behalf. The judge ordered the jury to find her guilty and then sentenced her with a fine of $100. Here’s where it gets fun: She responded by announcing, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.”

She never did. The embarrassed government never made any concerted effort to collect, and in fact, the trial fueled her notoriety and opened the doors to a bigger platform from which to spread her message of gender equality.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.

Mary Cassatt

By Kathleen Guthrie

Mary Cassatt is one of my mother’s favorite Impressionists. She loves the tender portrayals of the mother gently bathing her toddler, gazing fondly as she nurses her beloved infant, or otherwise sharing precious and serene moments in daily life.

I have always wondered why there were no portraits of the tantrum, the lacy collar covered in barf, or the at-her-wits-end parent dealing with an explosive diaper as appalled diners look down from their stools in the snooty café. Maybe these images are missing from Mary’s portfolio because she idealized motherhood, because she fantasized about what it would be like, because she herself was childfree.

Not being privy to her private thoughts and longings, I can’t pose an answer to why she chose her subjects, but I can celebrate her enormous success as an artist.

Born into privilege in America in 1844, Mary traveled extensively as a child, then spent many of her working years in France. There were many obstacles. At times, her father, who objected her choice of career, paid for her basic living expenses, but refused to cover her painting supplies. One custom of the day was that women painters were not allowed to use live models. Nonetheless, she persevered and created an extraordinary career. Her first notable success came when her Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival was purchased at the 1872 Salon. Then she seemed to hit her stride, starting in 1879 when she displayed 11 works at the Impressionists exhibit—alongside Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Paul Cézanne—and turned a profit. Her paintings have since sold for as much as $2.9 million.

In her later years, Mary advised major art collectors and encouraged them to donate their purchases to American art museums. For her many contributions to the art world, France awarded her with the Légion d’honneur in 1904. She championed women’s rights and, in 1915, included eighteen paintings in an exhibition that supported the women’s suffrage movement. Today her work is shown in prestigious museums around the world.

Maybe in her day she also heard, “You’re not a mother, how would you know?” But she sure knew what would appeal to generations of art lovers and collectors.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.