Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About Cravings

By Kathleen Guthrie

Chocolate, sushi, coffee, shellfish, swordfish, wine, deli meats, soft cheeses, cocktails, salad bars…conventional medical wisdom strongly recommends pregnant women cut out all these foods.

Fortunately, I’m not pregnant, and I have no plans to get pregnant. And because I am an adult of mostly sound mind, I can eat and drink anything I want. Therefore, I’d like to start with a lemon drop martini, a shrimp cocktail, and a side of raw chocolate chip cookie dough, please.

What are you craving today?

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is trying to embrace being childfree.

It Got Me Thinking…About Shotgun Weddings

By Kathleen Guthrie

We recently sent out save the date cards for our upcoming wedding and, in response, I’ve received several variations of “Didn’t know you were pregnant – har har!”

I’m not finding this the least bit humorous, although I’m sure this is what these Jim Carrey–­wannabes had intended. My fiancé and I have been together for four years, living together for two. We are getting married because we want to, not because we have to. And so what if I was pregnant? Would it make this occasion, our commitment to each other, any less solemn?

Of course, because I have finally (mostly) made peace with our decision to be childfree, this strikes a deeper, more painful chord. What I really want to do is reply back by saying, “No. Sadly, pregnancy is no longer an option for me.”

But that would be rude.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She finally met her Mr. Right in her 40s and looks forward marrying him this fall.

It Got Me Thinking…About Stevie Nicks

By Kathleen Guthrie

Sheryl Crow recently revealed that rock legend Stevie Nicks advised her “not to have babies, ’cause you’ll never write a great song again.” (Watch their amazing duet of “Landslide” on Oprah here.) Now, I don’t agree that mothers can’t also be great songwriters, but it is hard to argue with Ms. Nicks when you consider her legacy: more than 40 hits, over 140 albums sold, 8 Grammy Award nominations as a solo performer, 1 win for Album of the Year (for Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours), and 4 decades of success in the music industry. Plus, she looks damn hot at 62.

Tomorrow, May 3, Nicks’ latest album, In Your Dreams, will be released. In a parallel life, she might be helping out with the grandkids. Instead, in part because she’s childfree, she’s touring with Rod Stewart, promoting her album, and moving all of us with her extraordinary musical gifts.

So I say, Let’s support one of our own! Purchase the album, get tickets to her shows (visit her official Web site here for more information), and show the world that childfree women ROCK!

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s mostly at peace with her decision to be childfree.

Meeting Other Childfree People

I’m taking a short but much-needed vacation this week and, although I had planned to write a set up a full week’s worth of posts before I left, my dear friend Kathleen suggested that it might be more sensible to cut myself some slack, rather than tripling my workload! Thank goodness for clear-headed friends! So this week, I will be recycling some old favorite posts. I’ll be back next week, refreshed and ready to talk about National Infertility Awareness Week!

Recently, a reader posted this comment:

“Do you have any tips on how to find people without kids? I went to a RESOLVE meeting once and made friends with a fellow infertile… who got pregnant the next month.”

I suspect we’ve all had that feeling of being cheated on by someone we hoped would be an ally, while at the same time being glad the person got what she really wanted. So how do you find other childless people to spend time with?

Here are a few of the ways I’ve found kindred spirits:

Activities at non-kid-friendly times

I go to an early morning exercise boot camp three days a week. It starts at the ungodly hour of 6:00 a.m. which is a tough time for anyone, but especially for people with very young or school-age kids. Most of the people in the group don’t have children and I’ve been going for long enough that I’ve made a small circle of childless friends. What’s great is that our primary connection is exercise, not childlessness.

Stealing or borrowing other friends’ childless friends

Quite a few of my friendships have come about through mutual friends. I’ve been invited to a dinner or barbecue, made my way around the room, making polite conversation, until I’ve met someone I’ve clicked with and discovered they don’t have children either. I have several childless friends who were introduced to me by mutual friends with children. In some cases the original friend has drifted away and the new friend and I have grown closer.

Groups and clubs

Just getting out and meeting people in general is a really good way to ultimately meet other childless people. Joining a group or club relating to your interests or hobbies means you automatically have something in common. I’ve been in book clubs, running clubs, and various classes. Over time, I’ve attached to certain members of the group, and just because of schedules alone, the childless members have ultimately gravitated to one another.

Childless and child-free groups

I haven’t actually tried this yet, but I’ve considered it. No Kidding! is an international social network for people without children. They have chapters all over the country and arrange social events regularly. If there’s one near you, this seems like a great way to meet people.

Another idea is using Meetup.com. You can sign up and state your interest in meeting other childfree people in your area.

We also have a Groups page on this site. Try starting a group for your local area and see if other people join. Hopefully you’ll find at least one other person who lives close enough to meet in person, and our membership is growing daily.

If anyone else has ideas on how to meet other childless singles or couples, please post them. I know that there are several other members who would love to find people they can connect with in person as well as just here online.

Hope vs. Acceptance

In the past week two different people have made comments to me that have amounted to the same message: Don’t give up hope; there’s still a chance you could have a baby.

Whether you’re childless-by-choice, or by circumstance, I’m willing to bet you’ve had someone say something similar to you.

“It could still happen.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

“Don’t give up hope.”

The “don’t give up hope” type of comment is the one that hits me closest to the core. While I think that hope is key to human survival, I think it can be dangerous if it isn’t backed by action. Just hoping something will happen someday is how potential and lives get frittered away.

While I was trying to get pregnant, I was full of hope, but I was also doing everything I possibly could to make it happen. Now that I am no longer trying, I am no longer holding out hope.

But this doesn’t mean I feel hopeless. And this is what I want to be able to explain to people who still carry hope for me.

Losing hope of having children is very different from accepting and coming-to-terms with the fact that I won’t. I am not hopeless; I haven’t thrown in the towel; I haven’t rolled over and surrendered to my childlessness. I have made a conscious decision to stop my quest to conceive and for the past two years I’ve been working on coming-to-terms with that decision. I haven’t lost hope; I’ve just changed my outcome. I haven’t simply given up on the idea of having children; I’ve made a decision to live childfree.

I know that many of these comments are said with the best of intentions. People who care about us can’t bear to see us not get something we want, or not get something that they think we should want. There is still a pervading idea that people who don’t have children do, or eventually will, want them. But some of us just don’t, or won’t, or did once, but don’t anymore. For the latter group, it’s not about giving up hope; it’s about accepting what is and building a life from there.

It Got Me Thinking…Abouts Childfree PSAs

By Kathleen Guthrie

While on a treadmill at the gym this morning, I caught the tail end of a public service announcement (PSA) about forest fire prevention. PSAs encourage us to stop smoking, promote charities that support vital medical research, raise awareness about health and safety issues, and diminish the stigmas associated with victims of assault and people who suffer from mental illnesses. In the last category especially, they remind us we are all equally human. And it got me thinking….When do we, the Women of the World Who Are Childfree, get a PSA?

Our script might read something like this:

Music in background: instrumental of Bonnie Raitt’s* “Something to Talk About”

Voice #1, Kathleen Guthrie*: My name is Kathleen. I am a writer and I am childfree.

Voice #2, Oprah Winfrey*: My name is Oprah, and I don’t need to have children of my own to raise up humanity.

Voice #3, Lisa Manterfield*: My name is Lisa. Every day, women around the globe are rocking the world instead of rocking a cradle.

Voice #4, Ashley Judd*: My name is Ashley, and we are Women of the World Who Are Childfree. Join us today and get a free toaster!

*All of these rocking women are childfree.

Okay, I’m kidding about the free toaster part. But one day, in my lifetime, I’d like for women like us to be able to talk openly about being childfree without having to apologize or feel sorry for ourselves. Better yet, I’d like to see my childfree-ness become a nonissue when my value is measured in our society.

Ad Council: Are you hearing us?

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.

Talking About Infertility

Last night I was at a book signing event in San Francisco. It was really fun. I sat around with about ten women and we drank wine and talked about the craziness of infertility and how life doesn’t always give you what you want—and how sometimes that’s ok.

It was a mixed group, including women who were childfree by choice, not-by-choice, or not-exactly-by-choice, as well as a handful of mothers. Here are some of the most interesting highlights for me:

From one of the mothers: “My friend just told me that she’d been through infertility treatments. I had no idea.”

From another of the mothers: “Out of my circle had nine friends, seven had problems conceiving. I didn’t realize how common a problem this is.”

From a woman who was childfree (I think not-by-choice, but I’m not sure): This isn’t the life I’d planned for myself, but I feel like I’m just where I’m supposed to be.”

From a lovely softspoken woman, the oldest member of the group: “I can completely understand how you lost all logic and behaved the way you did, because it happened to me.”

Sometimes you feel as if you’re the only person in the world to go through infertility or to find yourself childfree when you hadn’t planned it that way, but what I’m seeing first-hand is that this touches so many people. And what I’m encouraged to learn is that those who haven’t experienced it themselves want to know more, so they can help the people they care about. I find myself heartened by this.

Whiny Wednesday: Feeling Old

Last year my milestone birthday (40, if you must know) passed without an ounce of angst. In fact I was glad to be 40. I felt that I had come of age at last, come into my own, reached my zenith. Now, as my milestone-birthday-plus-one approaches, I just feel old.

 

My feet hurt, my back hurts, my tooth broke, and my hair went thin. My GP says my blood sugar is high and my OB tells me I’m heading into menopause, oh, about 10 years ahead of schedule.

Yesterday was the topper, though.  I went to the health food store to buy vitamins and found myself checking out the cute guy behind the counter. He was clearly younger than me, but still within range had I been in the market for such a thing. Or so I thought. In a conversation about IDs, he mentioned that his mom still gets carded. “And she’s 45!”

I paid for my old lady vitamins and left.

Yes, I know that age is a state of mind, and that I will snap out of this, but today is Whiny Wednesday, so I’m feeling sorry for myself.

Whine on, sisters. What’s on your mind today?

It Got Me Thinking…About National Childfree Women’s History Month

By Kathleen Guthrie

The simplest things can be life-changing. I saw something in the news about March being National Women’s History Month, I mentioned to Lisa that we should profile some great women in history (who happen to be childfree), and a series was born.

Oh, if you could have been a fly on my wall during the research stage. Susan B. Anthony was childfree—yes! And So-n-so was this and that but…oh, wait, she adopted a child… Crap! It was not always pretty, but it was fun assembling what I consider an impressive list, and I hope you enjoyed getting to know more about our history.

The repercussions have been eye-opening and amazing. I told my sister and sister-in-law, both mommies, about the series, and got a conversation started about how we can be more compassionate when we listen to our childfree friends. I spoke to a female dentist who had never before heard of Lucy Hobbs Taylor, the trailblazing woman who made it possible for 45,000+ women to be dentists in the United States today. One friend e-mailed me to tell me about a conversation she had at a dinner party. Her husband informed the group that women can only be 1-star generals. “NOT SO!” my friend announced, nearly jumping out of her seat. “Ann Dunwoody is a FOUR-star general!” Just a little factoid she learned on LifeWithoutBaby.com.

I now feel “armed” with information about how childfree women have and do contribute to society in meaningful ways. And I’m inspired. The women we’ve met along the way are my “cheroes.” Let’s follow their examples and look forward to the day when we, too, are celebrated during National (Childfree) Women’s History Month.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s mostly at peace with her decision to be childfree.

Edith Wharton

As we wrap up National Women’s History Month, I’d just like to say a HUGE thank you to Kathleen. She sparked the idea for this series and has provide no fewer than TEN profiles this month (including one that we ran out of time to run!) So the only fitting way to close this month is to hand it over to Kathleen, and say, “Thank you. You are my Chero!”

By Kathleen Guthrie

Edith Wharton wrote 22 novels, at least 85 short stories, 9 nonfiction books, and 3 collections of poetry. As a highly regarded garden and interior designer, she was considered a tastemaker in the early 20th century. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and she was childfree.

A remarkable generation of female authors preceded the 1862 birth of Edith Newbold Jones, but they faced tremendous prejudice. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen* was first published with the anonymous byline “By a Lady.” The Brontë sisters used masculine pseudonyms to publish their poems and novels (Charlotte*, Emily*, and Anne* as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell). Mary Anne Evans* wrote as George Eliot so that her work would be taken seriously, not brushed aside as frivolous romances, all that contemporary society assumed women could write.

Edith arrived at the right time to make her mark as an insightful, witty, and respected critic of her times, and she wrote under her own name.

Edith came from a privileged background. The term “Keeping up with the Joneses” was apparently coined about her father’s well-to-do family, and she relied on her keen observations of New York’s upper-middle class for much of her work. While traveling extensively between her home in Massachusetts and Europe (she spent the last decade of her life in France), she produced a remarkable volume of work. She found early success as a designer with the publication of her first book, which she co-authored, 1897’s The Decoration of Houses. But it was as a novelist that she established her name in literary history, with classic titles including The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and the Pulitzer Prize­-winner, The Age of Innocence (1920).

I can’t imagine she would have had the time or creative energy to be so prolific, so successful, if her days had been filled with the duties of a mother. Instead of offspring, she produced enduring works of art. Instead of encouraging children to use their skills and talents to contribute to the world, she put pen to paper and created a legacy all her own.

She wasn’t the only woman to give birth to books instead of babies. All of the women authors noted above with asterisks were also childfree.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.