Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Femmes Sans Enfant: Women Without Children

cat6-1060x460I’m very pleased to introduce you to my host for today’s blog tour stop.

Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle went through one of my workshops a couple of years ago and, after it was over, decided to start her own French-language support community.  Within two years her site, Femmes Sans Enfant, won a well-deserved Canadian Blog Award in the category of Activism and Social Justice.

Today she shares a video of a story I performed a number of years ago about my experience with infertility. It’s interesting to me to see the person I was then—still fighting to keep my emotions under control, but beginning to find the courage to speak—to the person I am today.

Even if your French is a little rusty, please hop over to Femmes Sans Enfant and lend your support to Catherine-Emmanuelle and her work.

It Got Me Thinking…About Tantrum-Free Vacations

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Bonjour! I am back from a bon voyage to the City of Light and I am here to report that it was lovely. I walked, cycled, toured, explored, drank wine, ate pastries, and people-watched till I almost missed my over-extended “real” life.

Among the people I watched were the children. Earlier this year a woman released a book about her observations that French children are better behaved than British (and American, I assume) children. French Children Don’t Throw Food claims the author. Oh, really? Now I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know what she observed, but based on my own completely unscientific research I can report: They most definitely do.

During our brief visit to Paris and a few surrounding cities, I witnessed red-faced, shoe-tossing, hair-pulling, sibling-hitting, throwing-themselves-on-the-ground-while screaming hissy fits in several languages. I watched German mothers, Chinese fathers, and French grandparents try to calm their foaming little monsters into submission, all while my husband and I blissfully enjoyed our childfree vacation.

And the best news is, once we returned stateside, we continued to enjoy the relative calm of our normal life because we are childfree. The only food throwing in this house happens when we’re making pizza dough from scratch.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. Her memoir about her journey to childfreeness is in the works.