Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Seeing the World Through Childless Glasses

I saw this Cathy cartoon in this morning’s LA Times and at first it made me laugh with the intended joke, as well as the gentle dig at support groups. But then I whipped out my childless glasses and took another look. As Cathy would say, “Ack!”

I’m looking at the expression on Cathy’s face and wondering what’s going on in her mind. If you follow Cathy at all, you’ll know that she too is childless, although it’s never really mentioned, and it’s not clear (at least to me) if this is a choice or a circumstance for her. Either way, she discovers that she has even less in common with her newfound friend, and that she’s more alone than she thought she was.

Yes, it’s a cartoon, yes, I know I’m reading far too much into it, but childlessness is a filter I bring along with me in life now and, whether I like it or not, it tints everything I see.

Justifying the Decision to Remain Childless

After posting yesterday’s article about surrogates in India, I came across this Op-Ed piece about a study that looked at the emotional impact on children conceived through sperm and egg donation. Here’s what the researchers found:

“a population that’s at once grateful to the fertility industry and uneasy about the way they were conceived, supportive of assisted fertility but haunted by the feeling of being a bought-and-paid-for child.

Americans conceived through sperm donation also are more likely to feel alienated from their immediate family than either biological or adopted children. They’re twice as likely as adoptees to report envying peers who knew their biological parents, twice as likely to worry that their parents “might have lied to me about important matters” and three times as likely to report feeling “confused about who is a member of my family and who is not.”

And the realities of commercialized reproduction — in which desirable donors can father dozens of children by different mothers, creating far-flung networks of half-siblings who will never know each other — weigh heavily on them. They are more likely than adoptees to say that “when I see someone who resembles me, I often wonder if we are related,” for instance, and much more likely to worry about accidentally falling into a romantic relationship with a relative.”

I found this fascinating and wonder how many parents consider this, and if it’s just one of those issues that will need to be dealt with if and when it arises. I know that when I was faced with the possibility of first sperm and later egg donation, these findings didn’t occur to me. Something didn’t feel right to me, but that’s all that I really knew.

I think that now I am probably looking for justification of my decision to not have a baby by any possible means, but if so, I’m having no trouble finding evidence to support my case.

Would you have kids?

At some point in our lives, given a certain set of circumstances, we have all decided not to have children. The question is: If you had your life over again and you had the opportunity to have children, would you?

Post your response and leave a comment too if you have something more to add.

[polldaddy poll=3266291]

Not Exactly Lonely

 

My young nephew has no qualms about asking the most personal questions, and he’s so earnest and compassionate that usually I can’t help but give him an honest response. He’s asked why I don’t have any children, and also what happened to my first husband. I’ve told him the truth in both cases and he’s appreciated that, as far as I can tell.

Recently he asked, “Don’t you and Jose get lonely without any children.”

“No,” I told him. “We have lots of friends, and we have Felicity, our cat, plus we have lots of nieces and nephews.”

Somehow though, this response didn’t seem to satisfy him. Perhaps because it doesn’t satisfy me either. Do I get lonely because I don’t have children? Not really. Most of the time I wish I had more time alone with my own thoughts, rather than less, but do I feel a sense of loneliness sometimes, even when I’m around other people? I do. Sometimes.

Sometimes I feel that the connections I have with others are more tenuous than they would be with a child. My brothers have their own children and, while we’re still close, our connections have weakened as the bond with their children has grown. Somewhere inside me is a tiny empty hole that nothing can fill. Most of the time I’m not even aware of it, it’s so small. But every now and then I’ll experience a melancholy sensation that feels like loneliness and feels as if it could only be filled with children.

Guilty of Prejudice Against the Childless

A friend recently announced her engagement. At 44 she is getting married at last. I know this woman’s story intimately. She is someone who dreamed of motherhood, but never met the right man. She seriously considered having a baby alone using a sperm donor, but realized that it wouldn’t be the responsible thing to do in her situation. So she started making peace with her childlessness. Then she met a wonderful man—and realized that what she really wanted was a loving adult relationship and time with him, and that children were no longer her priority. And he didn’t want children anyway.

When she announced her engagement to me, she speculated as to how long it would be before some tactless bozo raised the subject of kids. To my absolute horror, I realized that during our entire conversation I was wondering if the engagement had changed their attitude about having children. The tactless bozo was very nearly me!!!

So, despite my thoroughly modern, feminist attitude to living child-free, deep inside of me lurks a traditionalist, who at some subconscious level still believes that first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage. Yikes!

Our natural instinct is to reproduce and continue the survival of the species, so it’s no wonder that so many people can’t get their heads around someone’s decision to not reproduce. Maybe we need to cut those people some slack after all.

Or maybe not. Because, while man cannot fight his natural instinct, evolved man can learn when to voice his opinions and when to keep his (or her) big mouth shut.

The Double-Edged Freedom of Childlessness

I’m writing this post from the airport terminal in Los Angeles. This will be my third trip in as many weeks. My husband and I went to New York for a weekend to celebrate my 40th birthday earlier in the month; next his job called him to Northern California and I tagged along with my traveling office. Now a family emergency means that I need to go home to England for a couple of weeks, so off I go again.

The thing is, if I had children, I couldn’t be doing this. If I had school schedules and missed classes to deal with, or frankly even if I had to find the money for three round-trip tickets instead of just one, it wouldn’t be feasible. Being childless not only allows me the do the fun things without worry, it leaves me free to take care of the other things that are important to me, namely my family—my mother and husband.

There’s a downside to this freedom, too. Although my geographically undesirable location means I’m usually the last person to be called in for family help, some of my friends are given more than their share of the responsibility because of their childlessness. Quite often I think that the sibling without children is given the responsibility for organizing family gatherings or taking care of aging relatives.

What do you think? How does your childlessness affect your role in your family?

When Choice is Not an Option

Last night I performed at a spoken word show here in Santa Monica. I got up in front of about 100 total strangers and told the story of how my husband, Jose, and I came to make the decision to give up on having children, and be a happy family of two. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was a very intimate story and I think I told it frankly, maybe even matter-of-factly, but I aired our dirty laundry all the same.

My husband was in the  audience and, as he’d never heard or read the story before, I was a little worried about his reaction, but he was 100% supportive. After the show, a number of people came up to me and thanked me for sharing my story. A couple of women told me how they had related to the story because of their own experiences. It was very touching and encouraging to know that I had reached people.

But more than one person came up to me during the post-show reception and asked the inevitable question, some version of: “So are you guys still thinking of adopting?” I want you to know that I was the model of composure. I answered calmly and politely, that no, we weren’t, and that we were lucky to have the kind of relationship that many people never have, and that was enough for us.

But I guess some people just can’t take, “No,” for an answer. People want a Hollywood ending to their stories,  and for many, the idea of choosing not to have children is, dare I say it, inconceivable.

Top 10 Reasons to Speak Up and Be Heard

10. Women without children are a growing percentage of the population

9. We are still misunderstood, even by our family and closest friends

8. Our opinion is a unique perspective that deserves to be heard

7. We need to show that the childless are not child-haters or parent-haters; we’ve just made an unconventional choice for reasons of our own

6. We might even start a revolution

5. The radicals are just beating their shields

4. People cannot walk a mile in our shoes, but we can tell them about our journeys

3. What we say may help another woman

2. Airing our opinions is therapeutic and can help reduce the risk of wrinkles

1. We all want to know that we’re not really alone.