filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
It’s Whiny Wednesday and this week we have another hot button topic suggested by a reader:
The men who wasted our fertile years
Whether it’s the relationship you fought hard to make work, the “perfect” man who never quite grew up, or the spouse who suddenly decided fatherhood wasn’t for him.
If you have one, you can whine about it here. If not, the floor is open, as always, to all topics in whinification.
Thanks to everyone who has contacted me with Whiny Wednesday post ideas. I have a good list now, but keep them coming. You can send topic ideas through the Contact page.
This week’s topic is another tender subject:
The constant struggle of feeling my life is imperfect because of not having children.
How do you feel about this? Has that feeling changed with the passing of time?
As always, the floor is open for any other whines and rants you need to get off your chest.
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
Lee is in a painful phase of her journey. She always wanted children, but was never able to conceive. Now 49, she describes her current feelings as somewhere “between sad and depressed.” Read on for more details, then, if you’ve been in her shoes and have made some progress toward acceptance of a life without children, please take a few minutes to offer her encouragement in the Comments.
LWB: Please briefly describe your dream of motherhood.
Lee: I was the oldest of five children, and we had many foster children in our home over the years. I always knew I’d have children, most likely a combination of through birth and adoption.
LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?
Lee: By chance, I was never able to get pregnant. We [she’s married] did not pursue any fertility interventions.
LWB: Where are you on your journey now?
Lee: I’d say I vary between sad and depressed, but resigned, angry, and attempting to embrace Plan B.
LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?
Lee: There are so many facets to the sadness I feel. Sometimes it is things like not getting to feel a child growing inside of me, never getting to take those lovely baby bump photos, not having a baby shower. At other times it is things like missing the chance to raise children the way I think is the best, breastfeeding, baby wearing, co-sleeping, teaching my children to be confident and independent, compassionate and caring.
LWB: How do you answer “Do you have kids?”
Lee: I was never able to have children. I do have a foster daughter who started living with us when she was 17. She is now 25.
LWB: What’s the best part about not having children?
Lee: The freedom to get up and go whenever and wherever we want, not having to worry about children in this changing and often scary world.
LWB: What’s one thing you want other people (moms, younger women, men, grandmothers, teachers, strangers) to know about your being childfree?
Lee: The fact that I did not bear children does not mean that I do not have knowledge about children. I babysat from the time I was 13 years old, and I have spent 28 years as a pediatric physical therapist. I have a lot of knowledge to offer.
LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?
Lee: To get my house and life in order so that I can do my crafts and have people over without stressing over my house!
Won’t you share your story with us? Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
This hot-button whine was sent in from one of our readers:
When you read an interview of some celebrity or hear someone say
“I never knew what love was until I had a child.”
So…is she saying that because I’m childfree I’m not capable or “real” love, or because I’m childfree I will be denied the experience of the highest expression of love?
Whether this makes your blood boil or cuts you to the core, whine away, sisters!
And if you have another great whine you need to get off your chest this week, here’s the place to let it rip.
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
I stumbled upon this fantastic interview of Gloria Steinem in which she addresses—among other thought-provoking topics—how she felt about being single and childfree during a time when “women weren’t seen as much as a voice but more barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.”
I don’t want to print any spoilers, so I hope you’ll read it for yourself. Let me just say she inspires and empowers me and, like her, I am a “hope-aholic.”
Ms. Steinem is someone we would call a chero here, a hero who happens to be childfree. She is one of many included in the PBS documentary MAKERS: Women Who Make America. You can learn more about the Makers initiative and the documentaries here.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
Graduation season is upon us and social media has been abuzz with snapshots of proud parents and their offspring. So it seems like a good time for this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:
Feelings of jealousy when friends and relatives celebrate the milestones of being parents and grandparents.
As always, your other whines are always welcome.
By Paula Coston
Image courtesy of Ideago/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I’m 59 now, and over those close-on six decades I have mapped out in my mind an entire web of paths untaken. Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve. And for that reason, Chapter 7 of Jody Day’s book Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Life without Children chimes with me. (Jody is the founder of Gateway Women, a British-based website for women childless by circumstance.)
The chapter’s first two sections are headed “The shadow of the life unlived” and “The dark side of daydreams.” She shares her own experience with searing frankness:
“For many years I’d been living two lives: one in which I was hoping for a baby and making the best of things till then, the other in which I had succeeded and had become a mother….
“At no point in that time… did I fully and completely embrace the life I was actually living—that of a childless woman….
“I think of the ‘shadow life’ as the life you dreamt about while your ‘real’ life was happening and … which … depleted the life you were actually living.”
We all have our path forks. A few of mine happened when:
– Somewhere in my childhood, I believed my family was encouraging me in the single, career-driven life, not a life of love and family.
– Over the years a couple of men proposed to me, both in fun. Friends laughed too, hearing about it.
– It became clear to me that one special lover had serious issues about parenthood, so when the option came up for us, I knew I had to forgo it.
– Neighbors and colleagues at work became grandmothers, and, like a photograph gradually developing, I soon saw that I never would.
Slowly, I’m coming to terms with these losses. These days, what fascinates me more is the way we persist in tracing and re-tracing these ghosts of roads untaken.
I wonder whether, once we surmount the pain, their rehearsal can bring us comfort. Why not trust that we’re living our shadow lives somewhere else close by, if it helps? Maybe the psyche is instinctively drawn to the idea of alternative realities. And if you’re a writer—like me—well, it’s unavoidable.
In 1964, a TV soap, Another World, started on NBC, set in the fictional town of Bay City. It was so popular that it ran till 1999! The co-creator Irna Phillips explained the idea behind it: “We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds.” Bay City and its happenings represented to her the difference between “the world of events we live in, and the world of feelings and dreams that we strive for.”
Over the last four years, my best therapy has been to struggle with, and beat, writing a novel. It just came out on June 27, entitled On the Far Side, There’s a Boy. It tells the tale of a woman who doesn’t know that she even contemplates having children until she begins to dream—of one particular boy in Sri Lanka, whom she has known only through letters, so only half-known—and to see that he is what she wanted: even, what she may still want. It’s a kind of fantasy experience, parallel to her real life.
Aptly, her story echoes much that has happened to me. So these days, I’m learning to live with my shadow lives, to let them be and wend their ways, sometimes even to enjoy them.
I think I’ll term myself an AMo. Meaning “I love” in Latin, it also suggests that I’m a kind of Alternative Mother, somehow living both lives, the one I have and the one I didn’t, in harmony.
Paula Coston’s On the Far Side, There’s a Boy is available in paperback and e-book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/paulacoston
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
Serious back problems (including surgeries and a year spent in a body cast) in her youth caused Justine to never be able to carry a pregnancy, so she didn’t think much about becoming a mother. Then the gestational surrogacy option became a media darling, and she started to think about new possibilities for creating a family. Justine and her husband endured two rounds of IVF, two transfers, and the loss of three potential babies. She’s 34 now. They have stopped all treatments, know that adoption is not an option, and are actively working to accept a childfree life together. Here’s some of her story.
LWB: What’s the hardest part about not having children?
Justine: Always fighting this feeling of not belonging. In every sense of the traditional woman my age, I will not belong because I am not a mother. However, I have learned that I will always belong, even when I do not feel I fit in, because that is my right and worthiness.
LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Justine: That I will always be a mother. I mother and parent my dogs. I mother and parent my clients as a therapist. I mother and parent all the children in my life. I just mother and parent in a different way, and in a lot of ways, I have a bigger audience than I would have if I’d had my own children. I also get to have different—not necessarily better, but just different—relationships with all of the children in my life because I am not their actual parent.
LWB: What have you learned about yourself?
Justine: I’m a lot stronger and braver than I thought I was, especially in owning my story with courage.
LWB: What’s one thing you want other people (moms, younger women, men, grandmothers, teachers, strangers) to know about your being childfree?
Justine: I think a lot of times we are considered to be sad and bitter women, or people feel major pity for us. I think after we do our work of recovering from struggles we can actually have better and happier lives. It took major work to get to this side. My sad and bitter moments are few and far between, but I have to stay on top of my recovery.
LWB: How do you answer “Do you have kids?”
Justine: I hit people with the truth and take the teaching moment. I usually say something to the effect that we tried to have our own children but can’t. I might say that we are learning to accept a childfree life, but we have a lot of children in our lives through our friends and family.
LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?
Justine: Continue my recovery, especially getting stronger in it. I will continue to work on my blog, Ever Upward [see below]. I hope that it can reach more and more women and continue to open up the conversation to the other side of infertility.
On Ever Upward, Justine shares more of her story and addresses how we can “really own” our own stories. Learn more about Justine—and about her upcoming book—here.
Won’t you share your story with us? Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
After a first marriage to a man who was “never stable enough for us to have kids,” Kay* met her current husband when she was almost 42. They got busy trying to create their family, but three pregnancies were lost early, and adoption didn’t work (they weren’t against it, but the reasons it didn’t work were “complicated”). Now 52, Kay still struggles with being childfree by chance and circumstance. After reading her story below, I hope you’ll take a moment to offer her some encouragement in the Comments.
LWB: Please briefly describe your dream of motherhood.
Kay: Oh, the Waltons. I wanted a big family with lots of children, maybe with foster kids as well.
LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?
Kay: My parents didn’t have a clue how to show love and fought a lot, and we children felt truly unloved and unwanted. From a very young age, all I wanted in life was to be a mama. That I will never have that is crushing. We are not close to any of our nieces and nephews. We have tried, but we live too far away from them to be very involved.
LWB: What’s the best part about not having children?
Kay: I don’t have to discover that I am just like my parents in parenting, in spite of my best intentions.
LWB: How do you answer “Do you have kids?”
Kay: I really, really struggle with this because I so want/wanted to be a mama, and I want to relate to other people. Trying to explain, however, becomes complicated. I frequently get, “You could always just adopt,” which is a more complicated conversation. I’ve found it best to just answer, “No.”
LWB: What’s your Plan B?
Kay: I still very much want children in my life, and it doesn’t matter to me now that they won’t be my own. We unofficially mentored a family for a while. We called them our “Rent-a-Kids” and they liked that. But they moved away, so now I’m looking for something similar. I would like to find a way to connect “aged out” foster kids with people who would be family for them, to give them someone to care about them and a place to go for holidays and other momentous occasions. I don’t quite know how to get this started, but I’ve recently come across a couple of possibilities.
LWB: Where are you on your journey now?
Kay: I still struggle with hearing pregnancy announcements, and frequently give a big sigh when I read stuff on Facebook about friends’ kids/grandkids or their parenting stuff. Early on I told myself, “This is not how your life will turn out. You will not have this.” It was an attempt to work for acceptance, but I eventually gave it up as it was turning into a self-pitying whine instead of acceptance. Sometimes I’m angry, more often I’m wistful. I frequently quote Agatha Christie: “Life is badly arranged.”
*To protect respondents’ privacy, we allow each to choose a name for her profile. It may or may not be fictitious.
Won’t you share your story with us? Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
By Paulina Grace Hay
One thing I’ve felt and heard many times is about being locked out of the “Mommy Club”—a club we felt we had a natural right to join, no special requirements necessary. Then infertility, illness, age, or time black-balled us. We stand wistfully outside trying to get a peek of the mothers inside living their ideal lives. We imagine all the judgment about our “child-free” lives will be washed away once we walk through those golden Mommy gates.
I live in an odd situation where my life straddles having no kids and having one kid. I have a teenage stepson. He was a toddler when I started dating his father. I am not a full-time stepmother and my son’s mother is very active in his life. Due to this unexpected loophole, I have been granted a “special guest pass” into the Mommy Club. But with restricted privileges. I’ve been outright ignored, given the once over, and warmly greeted. Sometimes by the same person.
I found my place at the club in the fly-on-the-wall seat. I’ve done my share of listening and observing over the years from this post. From the moment a woman is pregnant, people have lots of opinions to share in front of her face and behind her back. I’ve watched the awkward “Congratulations” and subsequently more awkward baby shower for the 19-year-old who got admitted too soon. I’ve watched one mother look down her nose at another for paying for lunch milk rather than packing it. I’ve heard one mother refer to another’s young child as “homely”. In return came an insult about their son’s need for a haircut. I’ve watched smiling faces drop like lead balloons after having an unexpected insult directed their way. I’ve heard the voices lower and eyes begin shifting as a group insult gains momentum.
If anything, admittance into the Mommy Club only ramps up your potential areas of judgment. Some are the old stand-bys. Your age. Your weight. Your hair. Your outfit. Your car. Your house. Your husband. Your ex-husband. Your job. Your decision to stay home. Then multiply all of those things by your child and husband. Possibly your parents and your dog, too. How you raise your kids has the highest potential for conflict of all.
The Mommy Club is not for the faint of heart. Often I saw these women enter with full armor on, even if it looked like yoga clothes, in the chance a battle may begin at any time. Very different to the rose-colored version I imagined, where a new mother would be greeted with open arms and loving support once inside the club walls.
My biggest lesson from access into the Mommy Club is this: Being a mother does not make you automatically connect with another person. I’ve found the same holds true for infertility. It just might give you something to talk about for a few minutes or a few get-togethers. We are more complex and interesting than our children. Or lack of them. I choose to instead consider that we are all part of the Human Club. And for that, there is no special admittance required.
Paulina Grace walked away from the infertility roller coaster six years ago. She hopes to help other women let themselves grieve and then let themselves live. Outside of running her own business, Paulina fulfills her need to nurture by being an involved aunt and caring for her aging parents.
~ "a raw, transparent account of the gut-wrenching journey of infertility."
~ "a welcome sanity check for women left to wonder how society became so fixated on motherhood."
