Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

The Fairy Tale Ending

Continuing our topic of stereotypes, I came across this Salon article by Tracy Clark-Flory, about the pressure on single women to marry and settle down. She says:

… a new study has found that the “spinster” stigma is still alive and thriving — and it’s worst for women in their mid-20s to mid-30s. After reaching the age of 25, LiveScience explains, women begin to feel “scrutinized by friends, family members and others” — including themselves, of course — “for their singlehood.”

Ah yes, the old “When are you going to settle down?” question. Stick around all you 20- to 30- year olds, because not far behind that one is, “When are you going to have kids?” As Clark-Flory goes on to point out:

Decades later, that warning [that being too picky will lead to a life of spinsterhood] has been passed along fully intact and internalized even by supposedly enlightened young feminists like myself. It just goes to show how cunning and insidious that prince charming, fairy-tale ending is.

And the same goes for having children. While many women do think it through, weigh the pros and cons, and make the decision to have or to not have children, many more feel the pressure from society, family, peers, and just follow along with what’s expected of them, and some of them discover that the fairytale isn’t really what they wanted after all.

Meet the GINK

Meet Lisa Hymas. She’s the senior editor at Grist, the online environmental salon, and a self-proclaimed GINK: green inclinations, no kids. Hymas makes a strong case for child-free living, including reducing the impact of over-population on the environment. But even though her manifesto is environmentally-driven, she makes a strong statement about how we childless and child-free women often side-step the conversation about kids. Hymas says:

Parents talk all the time about the delights and challenges of raising kids, to other parents and to all the rest of us, and I don’t begrudge them that. We childfree people rarely discuss in public the upsides and downsides of life without kids—and that’s what needs to change.

I couldn’t agree more. For too long, being childless has been something that shouldn’t be discussed, something we should be embarrassed about, or something that isn’t a topic for polite conversation. We’re sending a message to young women that living child-free isn’t an acceptable option. And we all know that it is.

You can read Lisa Hymas’ GINK manifesto here. Tell us what you think.

The Myth of the Crazy Cat Lady

I like to tease my nieces and nephews by telling them that if they’re not nice to me, I’m going to leave my (u-hum) millions to a home for cats. But how far from reality is the stereotype of the childless woman filling her home with feline companions? Do we women really need some small helpless creature to nurture in order to satisfy our natural instincts? I’ve been told by more than one person that instead of having children I should just get a dog instead, and during my time cruising the infertility websites, I came across countless references to fur-babies, the pets we childless women supposedly use to substitute for our offspring.

I have a cat. There, I admit it, but I have a cat because I love cats and I never had a cat growing up, so as soon I had a stable place of my own, I adopted a kitten and I’ve always had one since. Do I treat my cat as a substitute for a child? Of course not; I would never let a child get away with the things my cat does. Carve up my new couch? Climb up on the table during dinner? Throw up on the carpet without making some effort to get to the bathroom? All these actions from a child would deserve some kind of response, ranging from a stiff talking to, to being grounded for a week. But punishing a cat is cruel and pointless. She’s a cat; she’d put back her ears, give me a dirty look, then just go and do it again. But do I talk to her? Do I hold her like a baby? Do I blow raspberries on her stomach? Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s a substitute for a child.

So, do we need to fulfill some in-built need to nurture? Can the need be satisfied with a relationship with an animal? Does nurturing a career or our creativity or a dream suffice? What do you think? Let us know.

Whiny Wednesday

“Why don’t you just adopt?”

People ask this question as if adoption is as simple as filling out a form and picking out a baby. But anyone who’s had a close friend or family member go through the process knows all about the drawn-out bureaucracy, the failed adoptions, the expense of going private, and the trauma of adopting from foster care.

So, don’t ask me why I don’t just adopt, unless you have plenty of time to hear my answer.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s your gripe?

From Easter Eggs to Donor Eggs: The Ethics Debate Rages On

The debate rages on about the ethics of buying and selling donor eggs for in-vitro fertilization. A recent study suggested that guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine regarding appropriate compensation for donors is largely ignored, and that ads appearing in student publications of more prestigious universities offered way in excess of the $10,000 recommended cap.

A Los Angeles Times article makes the case that with the soaring cost of higher education:

College women comprise the largest market for donor eggs, and students struggling to pay college bills may be more tempted than ever to part with their genetic material. I can imagine some women, down the road, may regret that exchange.

Slate argues that this is just a step away from designer babies, suggesting that:

The egg market shows us what lies ahead. Once it’s possible to upgrade your seed, people will do it. And that will shake the foundations of equality. Rich folks won’t just have the best health care, education, technology, and social networks. They’ll have the most talent, too. Meritocracy will become aristocracy. What then?

A Christian Science Monitor blogger suggests that capping the price of donor eggs will just push open the black market:

Price controls cause shortages, and force people to contract elsewhere, outside the regulators’ jurisdiction.

While majority of people would consider buying better babies unethical, the fact remains that Assisted Reproductive Technology is already an option only for the wealthy. With $10,000 for donor eggs, $10-15,000 per IVF cycle, plus the cost of medical and agency fees, most people just don’t have this as an option.

What do you think? Tell us how you feel about egg donation and designer babies.

Holiday Traditions

With Easter and Passover upon us, it’s a time of year for gathering with family and keeping up traditions. Maybe your traditions include a huge family dinner, a sunrise service, or a mad hunt for chocolate-filled plastic eggs. But when you don’t have children, many traditions are either impossible to maintain, or simply aren’t the same. Not that there’s anything wrong with decorating eggs for your own pleasure, or mounting a one-person egg hunt, but having your photo taken on the Easter bunny’s lap could present all manner of problems.

My family didn’t attend church and so our Easter day was almost always spent hiking in the nearby countryside. That’s a tradition I’m more than happy to keep up. If I had children, I would decorate hard-boiled eggs and make bunnies out of pom-poms. An Easter egg hunt would be a tradition I’d adopt for my children, too. But I don’t have children and so I won’t be doing those things.

Many holiday traditions revolve around activities for children, so those of us without children have to start our own traditions. Today I’ll cook lamb with fresh spring vegetables, such as fava beans, English peas, and baby potatoes. I’ll uphold my family tradition of getting outdoors by taking a walk or a bike ride with my husband. I might even go to the sunrise service at the beach.

Which child-oriented holiday traditions have you abandoned and which new traditions have you created in their place?

No Fooling: It’s Another Baby Movie, And Another

Coming soon to a theater near you: Two new baby movies. Oh joy.

The first is The Back-up Plan, starring Jennifer Lopez as a woman who decides to have a baby alone using artificial insemination, conceives twins, and then meets Mr. Wonderful (on the day she conceives, of course.) She then drags the poor guy through the usual array of baby-related gags—throwing up on their romantic date, passing out while watching another woman give birth—and ultimately, as the movie is slated as a romantic comedy, lives happily ever happy. It’s Baby Mama meets Knocked Up, as far as I can tell, and does the world really need to see this again?

Also coming soon is Bébé(s) (Babies), a French documentary about the first year in the lives of four babies from around the world. When I first saw this, I thought how refreshing it would be to see the difference in childbirth and childrearing in various cultures. I thought what a great opportunity it would be to highlight the difference in medical care between a country that schedules births for convenience and one where no medical help is available; to show the contrast between countries where a woman might remortgage her house to have a baby of her own, and one where a woman has no access to birth control and has no choice but to keep having babies she cannot afford to feed. This is a movie that could have a lot to say. But watching the trailer, it seems that this is a movie about how cute babies are, and how siblings squabble whether they’re sitting in designer onesies or naked in the African dirt.

Ah well, I guess life would be dull if every movie was made purely to convey a message. On the other hand, do they all have to be pure sap? And how about a positive movie about a woman who decides not to have children and has a happy and fulfilling life regardless? Perhaps Hollywood thinks that too fantastic a concept.

Prisoner applies to become first man to father child behind bars

From the Daily Telegraph in the UK:

A prisoner is hoping to become the first man in Britain to father a child from behind bars after officials allowed him to enrol on an artificial insemination program. Scott Hurford is serving a 30-year sentence at HMP Wandsworth in London after he was caught with 250 amphetamine tablets in Thailand in 2005.

But since his incarceration, the 34-year-old has remained in contact with his Thai girlfriend of six years and the couple now hope to have a baby.

I’m very sorry that this man was locked up for dealing drugs to pay off his gambling debt. It’s unfortunate he chose Thailand with it’s stiff drug laws and ended up serving 30 years (although not in a Thai prison, luckily for him.) Maybe this was his first and last offense. Maybe he’s seen the error of his criminal ways. Maybe he’ll rehabilitate and get out in 2035  and be a model father to his 25 year-old offspring.

Then again, maybe he won’t.

If some people really didn’t ought to bring children into the world, I think that this couple qualifies hands down. What do you think?

Blindsided

Not long after we decided that we wouldn’t have children together, my husband and I needed a nice relaxing evening out and headed for the movies. We decided to see Up.

For those of you who missed it, Up is a light, funny Disney/Pixar movie about an old man and a boy scout who tie balloons to a house and float away to find paradise—at least according to the trailers. So, there’s no reason that two grown people should ball like a couple of babies through the entire thing, but that’s what my husband and I did. For those of you who have seen the movie, I’m sure you understand. Turns out this “kid’s” movie is much deeper than that. It’s all about lost opportunities, misunderstandings, and what constitutes a life of adventure.

It’s also about a couple who were never able to have children together. We were blindsided. At that time we were far more vulnerable than we realized having just been through five years of infertility and we just weren’t ready to have our lives paraded in front of us in the form of animated characters.

Sometimes, movies turn a mirror on our lives; sometimes they make us face our demons; and sometimes they show us a life we’re glad we passed up. That year, we chose to see Knocked Up and left feeling resentful. We opted not to see Juno or the ludicrous Baby Mama. Reading books like Jodi Picoult’s 19 Minutes  makes me realize what a dicey game raising children can be and reconfirmed that I made a good decision. But Up caught me off guard and for a while it made me think that I could have had a different life and maybe it would have been good.

Which movies or books have made you question or reaffirm your decision to not have children? Leave a comment or hop onto a forum and let us know.