Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Guest Post: Terry Gross

Credit: Will Ryan

Guest Post written by Laura Nye

Recently I was excited to learn that my favorite radio show host, Terry Gross, is childfree.  She hosts the NPR interview show “Fresh Air”.  A couple of months ago, she interviewed Stephanie Coontz who wrote a book about Betty Friedan’s book “A Feminine Mystique”.  Toward the end of the interview Ms. Coontz says the Feminine Mystique has been replaced by the “Perfect Mother Mystique”.  Terry comments that many women who came of age during the first women’s movement rejected the idea of being a perfect homemaker and decided not to have children.

This made me wonder if Terry was one of us.

I looked her up on wikipedia and found that she is childfree by choice.   At the beginning of an interview with actor and author B.D. Wong, she says she and many of her friends have decided not to have children.  During an interview with John Waters, she asks if he worries about who will take care of him when he’s old because many people without children worry about this.  He advises to have young friends!

 

Thanks, Laura, for a great post! ~Lisa

Cameron Diaz: Happily Not Having It All

Here’s a refreshing celebrity point-of view–the idea that “having it all” just isn’t practical and that “giving life is easier than giving love.” Granted, for some of us, the latter isn’t exactly true, but if only everyone gave this much thought to the parenthood decision.

Cameron Diaz: Happily Not Having It All – Expertise – SavvyAuntie.com.

Would you have kids?

At some point in our lives, given a certain set of circumstances, we have all decided not to have children. The question is: If you had your life over again and you had the opportunity to have children, would you?

Post your response and leave a comment too if you have something more to add.

[polldaddy poll=3266291]

Find your tribe with “Groups”

I’ve been fascinated to meet the members of this site and hear everyone’s stories. Numerous times I’ve talked to someone and thought, “Oh, they should really talk to the person I met last week.” And now they can!

I’ve just added the “Groups” feature to the main site. You’ll find it on the left side of the homepage and also as a tab at the top. “Groups” allows members to create groups based on their situations, issues, or interests. To get things going, I’ve started a couple of groups. Please feel free to create your own, based on the people you’re most interested in meeting.

We’re all here with the same common interest—living child-free—but our childlessness doesn’t define us. I’ve chatted with gardeners, cooks, crafters, and entrepreneurs. I’ve met women who have dealt with infertility, or the loss of a child or spouse. I’ve met women who have never wanted children and those who are still trying to get to grips with this whole childless thing. Some of us have families that just don’t get it; some of us feel as if we’re surrounded by new babies and pregnant women. We all have something we want to talk about.

 

My goal has always been to create a community where we can meet and talk to like-minded women. I hope you’ll find your tribe out there.

Whiny Wednesday

When I tell people about my decision to not have children, and tell them the story of how I got here, a common response I hear is: “Don’t give up hope; it could still happen.” They don’t seem to understand that my situation isn’t hopeless; I’ve made an intelligent and considered decision and “hope” is no longer involved.

Here’s the reality: I have bum ovaries that kick out half-baked eggs. I’m 40 years old and am therefore well into the danger zone for birth defects. My husband is almost 55, meaning he’ll be well into his 70’s before our miracle baby makes it into college. We wrestled with the pros and cons of continuing a quest to have children and we’ve made an informed decision to stop. This is now what is best for us. So, if you’re thinking that I’m just saying I don’t want kids, but I’m secretly hoping I’ll get knocked up, I’m not. Please give me credit for my decision and for being strong enough to tell you the truth.

Oh, and Happy Cinco de Mayo.

The Decision

I was not one of those women who never wanted children–quite the opposite. For as long as I can remember I had a vision of a family that included children—four to begin with, but as time went on I adjusted that number based on various opinions on population growth, financial considerations, and the practical implications of trying to lug around four kids. Regardless, a family with children was always in the picture of my future.

My primary reason for not having children back then was that I just didn’t meet anyone I really wanted to go through that with. Even in my 20’s I think I had the foresight to look at the long-term consequences of breeding with each prospective partner and decide that the cons would eventually outweigh the pros. So I was in my mid-30s before I finally met someone I knew would be a reliable, committed, and fun father. Not long after that is when I discovered I couldn’t have children of my own without some serious medical intervention—something I wasn’t prepared to do.

So, my decision to not have children was a long time coming. It came out of weighing the pros and cons of continuing what had become a mad quest for children, biological or adopted, and finally deciding that most important thing for me was a loving relationship with my husband, one built from mutual respect for one another’s needs and wants, and realizing that a family of two was all we really needed. Once the decision was made, we were both happy with it.

But now, comes another decision: At 40, I am still within the window of conceiving naturally, and even though it would be virtually impossible because of my condition, I’m at an age where hormones do funny things. What if I got pregnant now? It’s an odd situation to be in, having hoped for so long for a baby, but I’ve made a decision that not having children would be the best thing for us now. So, my dilemma is this: after dealing with infertility for so long and finally being told I will never have children, do I now need to start using birth control again to make sure it doesn’t happen? The irony is too ridiculous, so for now, I’m doing something I never did in my younger years; I’m taking my chances that it could never happen to me.

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.

Life With a Book

Laura S. Scott is the founder of the Childless by Choice Project and wrote this book based on her findings.

Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice is the narrative of one woman’s quest to explore the motives and decision-making processes of the childless by choice in North America. Facing the end of her childbearing years in a childless by choice marriage, author Laura S. Scott surveyed 171 voluntarily childless individuals in United States and Canada to determine why and how they came to the decision to remain childfree.

It makes for interesting reading. She says:

I think we need to acknowledge that in a pronatalist society, child-free can sometimes be a loaded term. It can imply more than we intend, inviting people to assume motives—like dislike of children—which may not apply to some who are using the term as a way to communicate their well-being. Child-free also implies a type of lifestyle that may not be an accurate description of the lives of some of the childless by choice persons I have interviewed: teachers, childcare workers, and those who choose to welcome other people’s kids into their lives.

Have you read this book? Can you recommend other books for childless or child-free readers? Let us know.

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?