Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Childless in the Workplace

A friend of mine was recently offered a “promotion.” The job came with more prestige and opportunity, but also a significant increase in stress and responsibility, and no increase in pay. My friend wanted the job, but politically, she knew she had to take it. Declining the offer would have been a mark against her for future opportunities, so she accepted the position (and is now working crazy hours, weekends, and also had her planned vacation cancelled.) She later came to find out that someone else had been offered the job, but had turned it down because he has children. My friend, with no children, had no legitimate excuse for not taking the job. If she’d refused because she wanted to spend more time with her fiancé, she doesn’t think she would have a job at all today. Yes, my friend was able to take that opportunity, and yes, it will serve her well in her future career, but it seems that more is expected of childless employees.

Have you found this in your workplace?

Mom Clothes? No Thanks!

I just received a new clothing catalog in the mail from a company I’ve never heard of before. (How do I get on these lists?) Thumbing through, I realized that every other model was posing in a scene of family bliss—staggeringly good looking husband and adorable cherub-like child, faithful family dog and adorable cherub-like child, or idyllic home and (you guessed it) adorable cherub-like child. AND the models were all tiny skinny things who didn’t look old enough to have a brood of cherub-like kids. It was like playing Where’s Waldo? looking for myself in there.

The good news in all this is that I hated the clothes. There wasn’t one thing I even remotely liked in the catalog. They were mom clothes and as I am not a mom I don’t feel the need to wear gaudy print smocks and modest necked sweaters. Another perk of being a non-mom.

Now to get myself off this mailing list.

Thank Goodness I Don’t Have Kids

Right now, my life feels like a hot mess (this is the reason I wrote this post for Tuesday and then forgot to hit the button to actually post it, so am posting it today instead!) It’s nothing serious, thank goodness, but everything around me is in chaos. Work is crazy busy, with fires flaring up faster than I can put them out, and new projects starting while deadlines for other keep getting pushed. My school stint has started up again, my house looks as if a tornado swept through, my garden is in its death throes due to lack of care, my husband, when he’s not traveling,  is feeling neglected, and my mum is here for her annual 6-week visit. Oh and my cat won’t come out from under the bed as long as my husband is in the room. Like I say, nothing serious, but I’m finding myself waking up in the night with my task list racing through my head and spending my days careening from job to job with my hair on fire. And one thought keeps popping into my head: Thank goodness I don’t have kids.

Oh sure, if I had kids, I’d probably work less, take on less, let more slide by the wayside, but the truth is, I don’t want that. I love my work, all my crazy jobs. I love being my own boss and calling my own shots. I love pulling an all-nighter (all-nighter meaning working until 10 pm these days, but you know what I mean) and delivering a project on time, knowing I went the extra mile. And I love being able to sit in bed in the early hours, drinking my morning coffee in peace, and tapping out the blog post that I didn’t have time to write the day before.

There’d be so many sacrifices to make if I had kids, and perhaps they’d be worth making, but right now I’m glad I don’t have to.

27 More Days ‘Til Halloween

Is it really October already? My goodness this year has flown. Back in May, during our discussions about that holiday, someone mentioned Halloween as being their second least favorite holiday as a non-mom. I must say I vacillate between loathing and loving Halloween. In years past I have gone out of town, or at least out of the house, to avoid all the impish cherubs begging for candy on my doorstep. Sometimes the cute factor is just too much to bear. Other years I’ve stocked up on candy and joyously given handfuls to every sized kid in the neighborhood. Hey, I never claimed to be logical or rational about my childlessness.

This year, the jury is still out. Maybe I’ll pull out my skull lights and Marcus the Carcass, my glow in the dark lawn ornament, and show some enthusiasm…or maybe I’ll turn out all the lights and pretend I’m not home. As I don’t have kids, the prerogative is mine.

What about you? Do you love or hate Halloween? Is it a holiday for kids or is it a better holiday without kids in tow?

My Spare Room

My mum arrived last week for her annual 6-week-long visit. This means I spent the prior two weeks tearing my house apart and reassembling it to accommodate a guest. We have two bedrooms in our house, the second room being my fulltime office. It usually contains my desk, computer, files, papers, office supplies—basically everything I need to do my job on a daily basis. But right now it contains a bed and a couple of suitcases, with my desk and computer squeezed into one corner.

While clearing out the room, I started thinking about a book I recently read—Kathryn Stockett’s The Help (an excellent book that I can recommend highly.) One of the characters in the book has a series of spare rooms in her large house, at least one of which is set up to receive the children she expects or is expected to have (the mystery is revealed later in the book, but I’m not about to blow it now.) I realized that I had never envisioned my spare room as a nursery. I think that in my mind, we would make do in our little place and once children came along, we’d figure out how to move to a larger house, maybe in a different town. But a part of me can’t help wondering what had really been going on in my subconscious mind that I never planned for a place for a child to live, despite planning, or at least thinking about, all kinds of details involved in being a mother.

What about you? Did you ever make solid plans that included actions, rather than simply daydreams?

Finding Her Place After Infertility

Several months ago, one of our sisters, Wendy, was in crisis. She had been working as a child development specialist, but after her infertility diagnosis she realized she could no longer stand to work in that environment. She quit her job and then found herself, in her words, “trying to find out who the hell I am and what to do with my life.”

Well, she found out. A couple of weeks ago she got a call out-of-the-blue, and last week she left for Bangladesh to take a position with UNICEF as a pre-primary education consultant.

I’ve never met Wendy, but I’ve been following her journey on the forum, and I’m so inspired by her accomplishments. Here’s a woman who was knocked sideways by her unplanned childlessness, and yet she’s found her way.

She told me:

I have spent a lot of time thinking, and the only way I can make sense of my infertility is that maybe [it] means I can and should continue development work. Rather than focus only on the children who might be living with me under my roof, I can impact so many more children. Indirectly, yes, but many more. Working in international development, I can work to improve their schools, their home life, their health and sanitation, their nutrition, their families’ lives.

Congratulations, Wendy. Good luck in your new endeavor.

Think Before You Reproduce

I found this article on More.com recently. It’s one of those that really makes you scratch your head at first read, and I think the author gives some sound advice.

This woman wants children badly and is wondering if she should marry and reproduce with a man whose “jealousy and insecurity issues” as well his drug-use history are giving her cause for concern. Even as I was reading the article I was yelling, “No!!!!” at my computer. But when I read it again today, I see it slightly differently. The woman is 44, watching her window of fertility close, and looking at this man as her last hope for motherhood. I’m still yelling “No!” but I’m no longer adding, “Are you insane?”

I think it’s fairly safe to say that every one reading this blog has given a lot of thought to the reproduction decision. There are those of us who made firm decisions that we didn’t want children, and those of us who wanted children and either weren’t able or weren’t in a situation into which we wanted to bring children. Whatever our situation, we’ve given a lot of consideration to what being a parent entails, and probably a lot more than many people who bring children into the world.

Surprisingly enough I understand why this woman is even considering this option of bringing a child into what is, at best, a rocky relationship. That fertility window is like the old sash windows in my house: it stays open of its own accord for a good long time, but once it starts to close, it comes crashing down like a guillotine. I can understand why she’s grabbing at the nearest sperm-producing straw. But you can see the disaster written all over this scenario, can’t you? The only saving grace is that she too is questioning the wisdom of this move. Hurray for that, at least.

Guest Blog: Advice

This morning, a close friend sent me Kyran Pittman’s blog posting “Advice for a Teenage Daughter I Will Never Have.” It got me thinking.

I used to fantasize about how I’d raise my children to be good humans. Along with my DNA, I’d share with them my passion for reading and love of team sports. I’d encourage them to invest a portion of each check from their summer life-guarding and part-time retail jobs, so that after college they’d already have a nest egg that would allow them to pursue careers in the arts, backpack through Asia, get into the housing market, or at least not starve while toiling away as a junior executive’s junior assistant.

I’m a font of wisdom earned from 44 years of life experience. Now, it seems, because I’m not a mother, no one is interested in hearing from me. Do you feel that way? If you had children, what advice would you give them? And since you don’t, what advice are you now taking to heart for yourself?



Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. Her articles have appeared in AAA’s Westways, GRIT, Real Simple, and 805 Living magazines. Read “How to Be the World’s Best Aunt Ever” on eHow.com.

The Jealous Child: Me

The problem with emotions is that they never behave themselves. Just as you get one set all sorted out and under control, another set bubbles up and catches you off guard. And so it was this past weekend when that evil emotion jealousy crept up on me when I least expected it.

My hubby and I were at a local fair, and of course, had to find a present for our granddaughter (yes, although I don’t have children, I do have a granddaughter by marriage.) Let it be said that I love my granddaughter to bits, but being a childless grandmother is not without its challenges. I’ve got to the point where I can shop for baby clothes, baby furniture, diapers, and toys, and keep it all pretty much together, but this weekend I didn’t. While deciding on a dress for her, I snapped at my husband; I grumbled; I yelled, and basically pouted like a two-year-old. And then my husband called me on it.

“You’re not jealous of her are you?”

“Of course not!” I said, and then shuffled off to have a little talk with myself.

Oh, sisters, I must tell you that it’s pretty horrible having to admit to yourself that you’re jealous of an 18-month-old. My logical, adult mind is talking through it and saying all the right things, but some little voice deep inside me is throwing a tantrum. Maybe it’s because I’m the baby of my family (by 11 years) with two older brothers, and I’m used to being indulged, maybe even a little spoiled. That’s okay; I turned out all right in spite of it. Maybe I don’t like having to share my husband. Or maybe somewhere I’m still bitter that I don’t have a baby of my own and that it’s my child who should be the one being spoiled.

I’ve been mulling my reaction for a couple of days now and it finally dawned on me. There’s a natural progression in life: child becomes parent, becomes grandparent, and sometimes becomes child again. I’ve never made it out of Stage I. I’ve never experienced that moment of knowing that I am now wholly responsible for another human life. I am still, at some level, the child.

I love that I am still somewhat childlike, that I’m willing to take on an adventure, try something new, not worry too much what others think of me, but am I still childish? Well, that just won’t do; I’m a grandmother, for Pete’s sake!

I think this is going to require a little more soul-searching. Any thoughts?