filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
I had to take a break from the news and social media recently. It just seemed as if nothing good was happening in the world. Amid all the wars, politics, tragedies, and deadly diseases was story after story that prompted this week’s topic:
People who shouldn’t be allowed to have kids
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s making you furious this week?
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
When I was growing up in the 1970s and early ’80s, “choice” referred to being able to have a legal, doctor-performed abortion for any reason. You were “pro-choice” or you were “pro-life,” and in some areas of our world, there is still no common ground.
So I’m finding it interesting that I’m now hearing about another choice for women, specifically whether or not we choose to have children. Recently Erin Tatum wrote “5 Things You Shouldn’t Say to Women Who Don’t Want Children” for Everyday Feminism magazine. Read the full article here. I am encouraged that this topic is getting some mainstream attention, that insensitive people are being educated. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that it doesn’t hurt any less when comments like the ones she lists are lobbed our direction. “You’ll regret it when you’re older” is #1 on her list, and whether you’re childfree by choice, circumstance, chance, or a combination, that one line has the potential to pour salt into new wounds and reopen old wounds.
Take a look at the article and let me know what else would be on your list of things that should never be said to a childfree woman. And in case you don’t feel like reading to the end, I want to be sure you see what she says in closing:
It can be difficult to defend your decisions when faced with so much ignorance, but always remind yourself that your life is your own and you don’t need anyone else’s validation to justify how you live it.
Embrace childfree living and start exploring all the opportunities that await you.
Yes!
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
Tonight is Bonfire Night in the U.K. As a child, it was one of my favorite nights of the year, second only to Christmas Eve.
We’d have a bonfire in the backyard, and my dad would bring home a box of fireworks to set off and a couple of packets of sparklers. We’d have baked potatoes and roast chestnuts, and my mum would make parkin and gooey, delicious bonfire toffee. It was an evening spent outdoors, clustered around the fire. It was about friends and food and a little bit of danger.
It’s one of the many things I miss about my homeland, and it’s one of the traditions I would have enjoyed sharing with my children. And that’s the topic for this week’s Whiny Wednesday:
Traditions you won’t get to share with your children
Happy Bonfire Night and happy whining.
By Lisa Manterfield
If you’ve been hanging around the childless-not-by-choice community for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly come across the wonderful Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos. Author of the groundbreaking book Silent Sorority, Pamela has long been a steady and articulate voice for our community.
More recently, she’s turned her attention and her voice to the fertility industry. After the recent announcements from both Apple and Facebook that they would include egg-freezing coverage as part of their employee benefit packages, Pamela wrote articles for two renowned publications on the realities of that procedure. You can read what she has to say in Fortune and Wired.
As always, when I hear first-hand accounts and well-researched data on fertility treatments, I find the statistics shocking, sobering, and infuriating. I think about all the people who told me to “just do IVF”, often based on nothing more than the fact that such-and-such celebrity had done it and had been successful, but with no knowledge of what the procedure actually involves, what the odds of success might be, or whether it was even a viable option for my situation (which it wasn’t).
Even the medical professionals I met during my journey offered little in-depth information about what was ahead for me. My first experience was an almost flippant referral from a primary care physician, basically “Go see this guy. He’ll get you pregnant.” And my first visit to a fertility clinic involved a calendar of procedures and a chart of costs, with no discussion about the physical or psychological effects of what I was about to go through, or honest and realistic statistics of what the chances of success really were.
I’ll admit I was naïve going in, but I don’t consider myself to be an ignorant person. I did my research, but I still wasn’t prepared. I was given glossy brochures filled with terms I didn’t understand and procedures that seemed more invasive than what I felt I needed. And they all included pictures of adorable babies and joyous parents, but never hard information—the kind I needed to make a life-changing decision. I received a stellar sales pitch, but never felt guided by a trusted professional who had my welfare and best interests at heart. Even though I’m wiser now, I continue to be educated by people like Pamela.
If you’ve been through fertility treatments, how do you feel about the process? Has your view changed? Do you feel you went in prepared? What do you think should change for women facing this in the future?
Please leave your comments below and also consider stopping by Pamela’s blog to offer support for the work she’s doing.
This Friday is Halloween, which for many of us means streams of cute children knocking on our front doors.
Love it or hate it; it’s hard to avoid it. So the discussion topic for this week is:
How do you handle this difficult holiday?
As it’s Whiny Wednesday, there’s room for your gripes here, too.
It’s Whiny Wednesday, your chance to gripe about the issues you’re dealing with this week. This week’s suggested topic is one we’ve all had to deal with:
An over-abundance of work pregnancies
I can relate to this one. When I was trying to conceive, I managed a small department of about eight people. One year we had three simultaneous pregnancies…and none of them was mine.
Whine away!
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
Henriette Mantel was first introduced to me as the editor of No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Motherhood. In this collection of essays, some very funny women—including Margaret Cho, Wendy Liebman, Laurie Graff, and Nora Dunn—tackle the mostly serious topic of why they opted out of having children. Their stories are in turns hilarious and raw, inspiring and heartbreaking, and they all give voice to women who are traditionally shamed for their choices.
An Emmy Award–winning writer, a documentary film producer, an actor—Henriette’s résumé is impressive. Shortly after I spoke with her I learned she has portrayed one of the most beloved childfree characters of all time: Alice in The Brady Bunch movies. (Read Henriette’s lovely tribute to Ann B. Davis, the original Alice, here.)
For those of you who are new to Life Without Baby, we have a tradition of honoring “cheroes,” i.e., heroes who happen to be childfree. Henriette is one of my cheroes, for being her authentic self and for speaking up for childfree by choice women everywhere. Even if you are childfree not by choice, I think you will find inspiration and support in her perspective. Let me introduce you….
LWB: What was your inspiration for the book?
Henriette: Watching endless interviews with authors about how to deal with/live with/not kill/brag about your kids. Seriously, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to hear the other side of the story.
LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?
Henriette: I have pushed a lot of things in my life, but I never pushed having children. Partly because I could never imagine raising a child alone and partly because my choices in men have always been just this side of serial killers. But most of all, I have never had that gotta-have-a-baby visceral craving that ruled so many of my friends. I like kids. I LOVE kids. I love my nieces and my lone nephew more than life itself. My reason for not having kids wasn’t that I hate the little buggers, it was that I always felt fate would let me know if I was supposed to be a mom or not. Fate never brought me a man I would love to get pregnant with, fate never called me to raise a child alone, and fate never knocked me up, so here I am, childless.
LWB: Where are you on your journey now?
Henriette: To be honest, sometimes when I hold my new great-niece I wonder what my kid would have looked like. But that is ego. Of course I wonder what my kid would have looked like, but is that enough to have a kid? I don’t think so. When I think of all the work/heartache/rewards that a child can bring, I still don’t seem to crave having one.
LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?
Henriette: Not cleaning up bodily fluids? Not racing to the hospital when they have a fever of 104? Not worrying about them shooting up heroin? Oh, yea… wanting to talk endlessly and boringly about my kid when all the indulgent, tedious moms talk about their kids. That’s the hard part.
LWB: What’s the best part about not having children?
Henriette: My time is my own.
LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received about living a happy childfree life?
Henriette: No one ever really talked about it to me until I edited No Kidding. It’s like a non-subject. That’s what I love about the book. At least people now talk about it.
LWB: What’s the best advice you’d offer someone else like you?
Henriette: Follow your heart. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with not having/wanting/craving kids. And there’s nothing wrong with having them either. Do what you do.
LWB: What advice do you wish you could have given your younger self?
Henriette: Try not to date psyco-men. Oh wait, that’s not about kids. I guess just go with the flow, baby.
LWB: What’s one thing you want other people (moms, younger women, men, grandmothers, strangers) to know about childfree women?
Henriette: There is nothing wrong with us. Stop feeling sorry for us. And for god’s sake, stop assuming we wanted them! Open your mind up a little and know there are choices and some of us are brave enough to make the choices that aren’t mainstream (boring) thinking.
The other day, my friends were dealing with their teen-age girl (nightmare) and after I gave some dumb advice, the father joked to me, “That’s coming from a person with no kids.” He knows I wrote the book, he knows my life, he just said it teasingly. Well, the other woman in the room, who didn’t know me, had such a look of pity when she looked at me, that I actually felt sorry for her to be so unevolved. Actually, I wanted to punch her in the nose. But as my mom used to say, “That wouldn’t be very ladylike, would it?”
LWB: At Life Without Baby, we talk a lot about “cheroes,” our heroines who happen to be childfree (Sally Ride, Oprah, the first female 4-star general). Who is your chero and what about her inspires you?
Henriette: I guess out of all the childless women it has to be Gloria Steinem because she said to Joan Rivers (who ooozed pity upon her childless soul), “If we all had kids, there wouldn’t be anyone here to tell you what it’s like not to have them.” Hearing that statement, at age 16, liberated me for the rest of my life.
No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood is available on Amazon. Henriette Mantel is currently adapting it into an Off-Broadway show. Visit her website for updates.
Earlier this week, the news feeds were a-twitter with the premature announcement of the next royal baby. “Here we go again,” I thought, knowing that next week’s magazine racks will be full of photograph’s of Kate’s barely discernible baby bump.
I must say that I don’t feel any envy towards Kate and her public pregnancy and I have to admit that Prince George is pretty cute, but the constant barrage of celebrity babies does grow old.
How about you? Do you dread the media onslaught of another royal birth?
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s on your mind today?
Hello and welcome back!
I don’t know about you, but for me this summer flew by. I had a great time with my visiting family and got to spend some really wonderful and long overdue time with my brother, niece, nephew, and their friends/partners. It was exhausting and fun, and I was very grateful to be able to take that time.
Despite allegedly taking the month off from Life Without Baby, a lot has been happening, so I’ll do a quick update and then we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming, as they say.
Last month I was invited to join a conversation for the Canadian radio show, Day 6, on CBC. I joined Otherhood’s Melanie Notkin and Laura Scott from the Childless-by-Choice Project to speak about the issues faced by childless women. We touched on many topics, including the growing trend of childlessness, social acceptance of childless women, and how each of us has made peace with our situations.
I am incredibly appreciative for the safe and non-judgmental environment that host Piya Chattopadhyay created. (I also got to geek out about getting a behind-the-scenes peek at the NPR studios here in L.A.
Anyway, you can hear a recording of the segment here.
My other big news is that, during my “vacation” I finally committed to writing the Life Without Baby book I’ve been talking about for about the past three years. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the thought of gathering all I’ve learned over the past five-plus years and writing an entire 250-300 page tome that I never managed to get past the first couple of chapters.
Then I hit on the idea of writing a series of mini eBooks covering each of the stages of the journey. Somehow, researching, writing, editing, and completing a short 40-50 page book felt so much more doable, and in fact, over the summer, I did just that.
Available for pre-order now
The first book in the series is Letting Go of the Dream of Motherhood and deals with the impossible decision of when it’s time to let go, how to create a meaningful ending to an indefinite journey, and how to begin making peace with a life without children.
This book is scheduled for release on October 6 and it’s already up on Amazon and available for pre-order.
It’s only available in eBook format at the moment, but my goal is (drumroll, please) to have all the books finished and compiled into a printed version by Mother’s Day 2015. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.
Here on the blog, look out for regular posts from me, as well as weekly posts from Kathleen, more Our Stories, some special guest bloggers, and of course, Whiny Wednesday. I’ll also be asking for your input on topics you’d like to see covered, so watch for that coming soon.
I hope you enjoyed your summer (or winter—Hi, Mali!) I look forward to catching up with here soon.
In the New Year, Kathleen shared this post about setting goals and intentions for her Plan B Life. How are you doing with your plans?
You can see the original post here.
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
As I get ready to embrace a fresh start this January—as I assemble my goals, state my intentions, dream, and plan for the months ahead—I’ve been thinking about how I might resolve some of my issues stemming from my journey to childfreeness, perhaps dissolve the last remnants of grief, and solve the mystery of what a beautiful Plan B might look like for me. Here are some of the tasks on my list:
There’s room on my list for other ideas, so I’d love to hear what you are planning for 2014.
Happy new year!
Freelance writer Kathleen Guthrie Woods feels humbled and privileged to be part of Life Without Baby’s community of extraordinary women.
~ "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."
