Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About the Little Prince

Girl ThinkingBy Kathleen Guthrie Woods 

It’s official: I’m obsessed. I cannot get enough of the news and photos and stories and updates and video clips of England’s Prince George. He’s so cute! And he could have been mine…in my fantasy world.

Men have their fantasy football leagues, I have my fantasy royal life; and the little prince’s birth has pushed my imagination into overdrive. I daydream about life as a princess. I scroll through images of famous tiaras and pick the ones I think will be the most flattering on me. (I’m thinking the Girls of Gt. Britain and Ireland Tiara would be suitable for around the house.) I picture myself in fascinators and fabulous designer suits for events (wasn’t Duchess Kate’s cream dress for the christening gorgeous?) and skinny jeans–chunky sweater–riding boots combos for when the paparazzi catches me pushing my own cart at the market. I imagine how I would love my royal babies, how they would adore me, and how the BBC, TIME magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle would capture personal and iconic moments in my family’s life for posterity.

My dreams of being a mother crumbled in real life, and I know my butt won’t fit into skinny jeans. That’s reality. But deep in a secluded corner of my heart, where my fairytale lives on in my dreams, I still think about what might have been, and I think it might have ended happily ever after.

 

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is wrapping up her memoir about being a temporary single mommy and how it helped her come to terms with being childfree. 

It Got Me Thinking…About Being Forever Young

Girl ThinkingBy Kathleen Guthrie Woods 

My husband and I went to a fabulous wedding a few weeks ago. Gorgeous ceremony, lively cocktail party, mouth-watering dinner, heartwarming toasts. Then a weird thing started to happen. One by one, guests in our age group (late-30s to mid-40s) started to slip out. Babysitters needed to be relieved, teenagers needed to be checked on, babies needed to be fed, sleep-deprived adults needed to drive home while they could still keep their eyes open.

But not us. We danced till after midnight, alongside all the “young people.” It was awesome.

As one of the few childfree couples in our circle of acquaintances, I’m noticing that our circle of friends is starting to change. While we still make efforts to maintain ties with the friends we’ve grown up with, as their priorities shift to parenting duties and time schedules, the friends more in line with our way of life are the other childfree friends. With our late-20 and early-30-something friends, we linger over dinners at trendy new restaurants, sip cocktails at lunch, go on adventures with no time limit. It’s fun, active. And we feel fun and active.

We also laugh at ourselves when things like “’Sup?” slip out.

Granted, sometimes I worry about getting too attached because some day they might have babies and switch teams, leaving me to find new, younger, friends to hang with. You know what, that sounds pretty cool too.

 

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

 

And the Survey Says…

checkFirstly, an enormous “Thank you” to the 127 of you who took the time to complete the recent LWB survey. I’m truly blown away by the response.

I’m still sifting through the data and analyzing what it all means, and of course, there are questions I wish I’d asked, but for now I wanted to share a few insights:

  • Over half of you are in your 30s and another third in your 40s. The over 60s and the under 20s aren’t hanging around with us (or aren’t filling surveys.)
  • Many of you (60%) said you were either trying to come to terms or at the stage of accepting and making peace. More than 20% of you are still trying/hopeful for having children.
  • Over 90% of you said you’d used the blog and found it useful, so hurray for that, especially as no one said they’d used it and didn’t find it useful. J What surprised me was that for all the other areas of the site, more than half of you said you hadn’t used it but were interested. So what are you waiting for? Snoop around.
  • The most popular type of post on the blog was “Personal Journey Stories,” with 84.5% saying they enjoy these posts, with my personal experience stories and guest posts following closely behind. What this tells me is that we want to hear other people’s stories, so if you’ve been dancing around the idea of submitting a guest post, do it! We want to hear.
  • The most popular topics were: “Dealing with friends and family” (72.6%), with “What’s Next in Life?”, “Ups and down of childfree living”, and “Finding Fulfillment” all following close behind.
  • When it comes to resources, printed books, ebooks, and a regular newsletter are of most interest to you. This is good news for me, as all these things are either in the works or on my to-do list.
  • An overwhelming number of you said you wouldn’t use a support group, either via phone or in person, or attend an in-person workshop. So, what I’m hearing is that you love the community and knowing you’re not alone, but you don’t want to come out in public and talk about this topic. I’m with you on that.
  • Almost half of you expressed an interest in programs and course online, so I’ll be taking a look at those again soon. Stay tuned.
  • Perhaps the biggest surprise was how many of you (over 40%) said you’d like to support the site through the purchase of LWB merchandise. If you were one of those people, I’d love to hear more about what that means? Would you use a discreet LWB coffee mug or are you looking for t-shirt that says “Childfree and loving it!” (or something in between)?

As I let all this valuable information percolate, I’ll be thinking about what changes I need to make to the site and what I need to do more of. A quick to do list so might look like:

  • Sharing more of my own story and encouraging you to do the same.
  • Getting the ebooks I’ve been noodling out of my head and onto the page
  • Getting the resource page pulled together to include other books you might find useful.
  • Writing more posts addressing the topics that are of most interest to you.

If you have other ideas or suggestions, I’m always open, so please leave them in the comments below.

And finally, many of you added wonderful and generous comments at the end of the survey. I’d like to thank you for those and I let you know that I have printed them all out and stuck them above my desk for those days when I wonder why I keep talking about this topic.

Whiny Wednesday: All the News That’s Fit to Print?

Whiny_WednesdayStanding in line at the grocery store last week, I spotted the rack of gossip magazines.

There were four magazines on offer, and the headline of every single one was celebrity baby news.

Honestly, I think I’d rather have toe nail fungus updates.

It’s Whiny Wednesday; what’s under your skin (or toe nail) today?

Finally, Some Truth About Celebrity Infertility

hollywoodThere’s been a lot of hoopla lately about celebrities coming out and “admitting” to their struggles with infertility. While I applaud their courage for speaking up, I can’t fail to notice that these confessions always seem to come after the arrival of the miracle baby or the successful adoption. It perpetuates the myth that “it will happen if you only keep trying.”

So, what a breath of fresh air it was to learn that actress Aisha Tyler had opened up on “The Talk” about her struggle with infertility and her decision to “stop putting [herself] through the torture of the hormone injections.”

Instead of sugarcoating her story and giving the kind of canned upbeat response we’re used to hearing, she told some hard truths:

“A lot of women are going through [infertility], and I feel like sometimes they are made to feel badly or ashamed—like ‘Oh, you’re not being hopeful, or you’re not being positive,” she said, in an interview for Glamour. “I just wanted women that were also in this stage to feel like they’re not alone and they’re not the only ones going through this. But also know that if you feel like, ‘Maybe this isn’t for me,’ then that’s an OK choice to make too. And you’re not a bad woman if you don’t want to put your body through this or wreck your finances because of it.”

I think this is the very first time I’ve heard this said on such a public forum, so kudos to Aisha for her courage to speak up. (And Aisha, if you’re reading this, we’d love it if you’d write a guest post. Just saying.)

Of course, I have to add that Aisha’s revelation wasn’t known to the show’s hosts beforehand and they were completely caught off guard. “I swear I thought Aisha was going to say she was pregnant,” said host Sheryl Underwood.

It seems we still have a long way to go to change attitudes about infertility, but this conversation feels like a step in the right direction.

It Got Me Thinking…About Going Mainstream

Girl ThinkingBy Kathleen Guthrie Woods

People are talking about “The Childfree Life.”

If you missed it, the cover story of TIME magazine’s August 12 issue explored “When having it all means not having children.” (Read the full article by Lauren Sandler here.)

I stumbled upon the article in a waiting room, and it wasn’t long before my voicemail blew up with messages. “Did you see it?!?” “What did you think?”

I cheered the positive portrayals (finally!) of women who have made the choices to be childfree and are leading full and fulfilling lives. I am grateful that Ms. Sandler acknowledges that “if you’re a woman who’s not in the mommy trenches, more often than not you’re excluded from the discussion.” (Yup.) I am hopeful that “women who choose not to become mothers are finding new paths of acceptance.” (Something we address regularly here at LWB.)

Most of all, after years and years of being subjected to articles—if not whole publications—about parenting, I am happy about finally being included in a mainstream discussion.

Did you read the article? What do you think about it?

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with being childfree.