Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Talking About Not Having Children

No talking.previewAs all of you know, it takes an awful lot of courage to talk about not having children. I know you’ve all been met with looks of confusion, dealt with inaccurate assumptions and unhelpful suggestions, and watched as people have broken eye contact to look almost anywhere else than at the “woman who doesn’t have children.” And those of you who’ve dealt with infertility know that most people can’t even bring themselves to say the word, let alone have an open conversation about it.

Nobody really wants to talk about this topic, least of all us. But a group of courageous women and men are about to do that in a very public forum—a New York City theater—in The Cycle: Living a Taboo. 

The aim of this live forum is to pull back the curtain on a taboo topic that affects millions of men and women, and to change the conversation about the realities of infertility, reproductive medicine, and living a life without children.

The Cycle: Living a Taboo forum will take place on September 27 at 8:00 pm at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City. You can get all the details and tickets to attend in person at the event website. If you’d like to go, but don’t want to go alone, please think about using the community pages to find a friend to go with.

The wonderful Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos is one of the women behind this event and, if you can’t make it in person, you can add your voice virtually at her site, Silent Sorority.

We’ll also be hosting our own virtual forum on the community pages. Please jump in and make it your own forum for saying what goes unsaid.

If you have a blog, Facebook, or Twitter, please consider stepping out and spreading the word.

It’s time we had a different conversation about infertility and living without children, and we are the ones to change it.

Nobody Puts Fur Baby in a Corner

Maybe BabyBy Maybe Lady Liz

For those of us without kids, our pets are our children. For those of us who are also insane, our best friends’ animals are essentially our nieces and nephews. We sometimes send them Christmas cards from “Auntie Lizard”, or even draw paw prints as signatures for “Cousin Jacques & Cousin Olivia”. I’m not describing all this to frighten you (though I can only assume I have). I’m merely trying to set the stage for my level of emotional attachment to my best friend’s two cats. And my shock and sadness when she told me she’s getting rid of them because she’s afraid they might not be good around her not-yet-one-year-old daughter.

Before she had a child, her cats received an embarrassing amount of attention. Cuddling and smooching sessions that would have prompted passersby to suggest they get a room. She freely referred to them as her babies and we talked about what wrecks we’d be when our cats eventually passed away. She was the only person in my life who was also considering not having kids, and I assumed we’d grow into crazy old cat ladies together. So imagine my surprise when I went to visit her earlier this year to meet the (unexpected) baby and see the new house, only to find that the cats had been relegated to little more than a nuisance. If they hopped on her lap, they were swiftly brushed off. If they did something she formerly found quirky, it was now supremely annoying.

I knew things had changed, but I can’t say I wasn’t still completely blown away to find out in an email last week that she was getting rid of them. In addition to being afraid they would scratch the baby (though nothing of the sort had yet happened), her main reason was simply that they weren’t getting the attention they deserved. Which, silly me, seemed like a rather easily remedied problem. She was a stay-at-home-mom and spent far more time in proximity to the cats than most pet owners who left every day for work. Was there truly not enough love to go around? Not enough energy to extend an arm and give them a nice scratch under the chin? No room on the couch to let them curl up on your lap during a movie? A spare two minutes for a rousing game of Red Dot?

I know parents will tell me that I just don’t get it since I don’t have kids. And I guess…they’d be right.

Maybe Lady Liz is blogging her way through the decision of whether to create her own Cheerio-encrusted ankle-biters, or remain Childfree. You can follow her through the ups and downs at MaybeBabyMaybeNot.com.