birth control

New Book Shows Us Childlessness is Nothing New

Sue Fagalde Lick birth control, books about being childfree, books about childlessness, declining birth rate , , , , , ,

Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington, Seal Press, coming out April 18, 2023. [pre-publication copy sent by publicist]

Women didn’t start choosing not to have children in the late 20th century with the advent of legal abortion and The Pill. As historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington describes in this book, it has been happening throughout history. Women were using a variety of herbal concoctions and crazy methods to keep sperm from meeting egg long before birth control pills became widely available in the 1970s. What is new is the way families have separated themselves up into mom-dad-children units, each living in their own separate homes instead of the multi-generational communal living of earlier eras. In those times, mothers had aunts, grandparents and siblings to help. Now they’re expected to do all the childcare AND work outside the home, giving most of their income to daycare.

Other things have changed, too. Couples worry more about overpopulation, climate change, and the financial challenges of parenting. Women delay parenting to pursue education and careers, then struggle with infertility when it’s almost too late. It’s much less of a scandal these days if a couple decides not to reproduce, but there is still a strong belief that having children is the norm and if we’re not doing that we need to explain ourselves.

This book looks at the various reasons for not having children, including wanting more out of life, concerns about our overcrowded planet, the frustrations of infertility, and simply choosing not to have them. Heffington goes into great depth on each subject. We learn about early birth control, family organization, activists who fought for women’s right to control their own bodies, how fertility treatments work and the statistics on their effectiveness, and much more. The level of detail is incredible, but the facts never bog down the narrative. Don’t let the footnotes scare you away. I highly recommend it for anyone trying to decide whether or not to have children or dealing with the decision after it’s a done deal, as well as for the people who love them.

My only quibble is that she doesn’t say much about being childless by marriage. It’s sort of buried in the many ways we can wind up without children. I wish she had said more about that. Still, it’s full of fascinating facts. For example:

*Nearly half of millennial women have no children and an increasing number don’t ever plan to.

* Births have dropped dramatically since the 2008 recession because couples feel they just can’t afford it. Add in the pandemic, and even fewer are willing to jump into the parenting pool. The same thing happened during the Great Depression early in the 20th century.

* Contraception has only been legal in the United States for married women since 1965 and for all American women since 1972. (That’s the year I lost my virginity. That blows my mind. If I had started having sex one year earlier, I would not have been able to get The Pill. I would probably have been pregnant on my wedding day.)

* People have been using all kinds of methods to prevent or to end pregnancies throughout history. Among the possibilities: mixing a spermicide made of hydrated sodium carbonate with crocodile droppings, blocking the cervix with a disk made of acacia gum, and rubbing crushed juniper berries on the man’s penis. Some of the things described here actually worked.

* There’s a theory that humans live far beyond their reproductive years so they can care for their extended families and the children in their communities rather than having more or any children of their own.

* The choice not to have children may not feel like much of a choice at all when you factor in the challenges of establishing a career, finding the right partner, saving for a home, paying off student loans, or working multiple jobs to make ends meet. (I would add dealing with physical or emotional problems, marrying partners who already have children, who have had vasectomies or hysterectomies, or who just plain don’t want them. Is it really a choice when you can have this person you love OR children and might end up with neither?)

Heffington, who claims a husband and two pugs as family, writes from the point of view of a historian. A professor at the University of Chicago, she writes and teaches on the histories of gender, rights, and the environment. It all comes together in Without Children.

The book comes out next month, but you can preorder it now.

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Childless Thoughts About U.S. Elections and Thanksgiving

Sue Fagalde Lick abortion, birth control, childless during the holidays, feeling left out on the holidays, U.S. election , , , , , ,
Dark-haired little girl surrounded by her grandfathers, both in white shirts and ties. Table full of holiday food.

Last night, I stayed up late watching TV coverage of the mid-term election. As I type this in the morning, we are still awaiting results in many races, still waiting to find out whether Republicans or Democrats will rule.

Reproductive rights is one of the big issues this year, especially after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the decision that protected the right to abortion. Many states have since enacted anti-abortion laws that either prohibit terminating a pregnancy or make it nearly impossible. If the uber-conservative Republican Party dominates the government, more states will follow.

What does this have to do with childlessness? Well, more oops pregnancies would be carried to term, babies that might not otherwise have been born. We hear threats that if the Republicans rule, they will go after contraception next. What if you didn’t have easy access to the pill or other contraceptive of your choice? How would that affect the choice to have children with a spouse who doesn’t really want to?

At 8 a.m. on the Oregon coast, frost covers the lawns. It’s 33 degrees out, darned cold for this area, and my neighbors across the street have already turned on their Christmas lights. Too soon? It is for me, but Thanksgiving is only two weeks away. Normally I spend the holiday with my brother’s family, but he and his wife are going to Hawaii this year. Bravo for them, but I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving alone.

The other day at church, I got to thinking about the circle of life. Traditionally, when the old die, young people are born to take their seats at the Thanksgiving table, so the numbers remain about the same. I have fond memories of sitting at my parents’ dining room table surrounded by grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins (see photo). As the years passed, the grandparents died and my brother and I moved up a generation as young newlyweds. While I remained childless, my brother had two children. Now he has three grandchildren who climb into his lap and play with his white beard. Our parents and the aunts and uncles are gone, but his table in California is still full. At my house, 700 miles away in Oregon, it’s just me. I’m hoping to get together with friends from church, but it’s not the same.

If I look more closely at the old photos, I see the cousin who never married or had children. I see the childless aunt and uncle who never talked about why they didn’t have kids. But they all had a place at the table. In every generation, there are some who do not have children. In my generation, that would be me. And you.

This post meanders a bit, but I wonder if it sparks any thoughts or comments from you. If you’re in the United States, how do you feel about this election and the way reproductive rights seem to be going? (Be nice. I know these issues engender strong feelings). How are you feeling about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday? Do you have a place at the family table?

I look forward to hearing from you.

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How Young is Too Young for a Vasectomy?

Sue Fagalde Lick birth control, men who already have children, men who don't want children, vasectomy, vasectomy reversal , , , , , ,

Why are men as young as 18 trying to get vasectomies? They’re not even old enough to drink legally, at least in the U.S., yet they are already sure they don’t want children. What gives?

An article at sbs.com in Australia follows the case of Matthew, who underwent a vasectomy at age 21. He had been trying for three years to convince a doctor to perform the procedure. Wait until you’re older, he was told.

The Chicago Tribune offers a similar story of a tattoo artist who got his vasectomy at 27. The thought of getting a woman pregnant was “the scariest thing in the world.” He said he’s long known he doesn’t want to be a father, and he didn’t want to take any chances.

“[Between 2020 and 2021,] there’s been close to a 20 percent increase in the number of childless men under 30 requesting vasectomies . . . it’s getting to the point where once or twice a year we have a list where half the men getting vasectomies are childless,” reported Dr. Justin Low from Australia.

While most commonly, vasectomies are done on men who have had all the children they want, doctors are getting more and more requests from men in their 20s who are childless and want to stay that way.

In the U.S., as in Australia, any male age 18 or older can legally obtain a vasectomy, but doctors will try to talk them into waiting. They are reluctant to operate on people under 30 because of the high rate of reversal requests in this group. Men have just as much of a right to choose as women do, but no one can predict the future. They may change their minds or meet someone who wants to have children and discover that the vasectomy is a deal breaker.

Even for men who have already fathered children, the future could bring divorce and remarriage to a woman who is still waiting for her chance to be a mother (my situation and many of yours).

Five years after his vasectomy, Matthew has a woman in his life, and they want to have children. He is hoping to have his vasectomy reversed. There’s no guarantee it will work. The longer it has been, the worse the odds, 76 percent after three years, going down to 30 percent after 15 years.

Sperm is still available in the testes. In theory, it could be directly retrieved and used in artificial insemination, although that is a tricky and costly procedure.

But men shouldn’t count on being able to change their minds. “We want men to look at vasectomy as a permanent solution,” said Dr. Chris Gonzalez, a urologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Why are such young men so anxious to be “snipped”? All the usual reasons we hear from partners who don’t want children: work, money, freedom, the effect on their relationship, fear, worry about passing on physical or mental problems, concern about the planet and overpopulation. Or they just don’t like kids. They don’t want any babies, and they don’t want to deal with birth control.

Men aren’t the only ones. Young women who are sure they don’t want children seek tubal ligation surgery to end the possibility of pregnancy. As with the young men, their doctors urge them to wait a while before taking this step which will affect their entire lives and the lives of their future partners.

Those of us who have lived a few more years look back and realize how little we knew and understood about life when we were in our teens and 20s.

It bothers me that people would want to be permanently sterilized at such a young age. Why does my midnight mind keep wandering to dogs and cats and the way we get them “fixed,” as if they were broken, to avoid being overrun with puppies and kittens? But with young people, it’s their bodies and they have a right to do what they want with them.

As someone who married a father of three who’d had a vasectomy in his 40s, unwittingly ending my chance at motherhood, I want to scream, “No! Wait. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

We have certainly heard from women here in that situation, including some who learned about the vasectomy after they were married. Oh, by the way . . . [see “What If the Man Has Had a Vasectomy?” and “He Forgot to Mention His Vasectomy”.]

But I’m an older woman and also Catholic, so I admit I’m biased. Readers, what do you think about this? Are you dealing with a vasectomy situation? Did you know early in your relationship? Men, if you have had a vasectomy, when and why did you do it? Any regrets? Do you think an 18-year-old or a 25-year-old is mature enough to make this decision?

A little more reading on the subject: https://www.socalurologyinstitute.com/blog/Vasectomy-Age-Requirements-Am-I-Too-Young.html

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Forgive my tardiness this week. Mix Holy Week church music, events I’m running for National Poetry Month, and a new weekly physical therapy appointment on Wednesdays, and the blog may well be delayed for the next few weeks, but it will come.

*************

This Sunday is Easter. For me, it’s about Jesus rising from the dead and the end of my Lenten cookie fast, but for parents, it seems to be all about bunnies, Easter baskets, and Easter egg hunts. Kid stuff. You may be roped into some of that this weekend. Try to find whatever fun you can out in it. Don’t drive yourself crazy comparing your life to that of friends and family with kids.

You can also excuse yourself and do your own thing. My plan is to go to church, then come home and bake cookies, walk and read in the sun if the weather cooperates, watch a movie if it rains, and make myself some enchiladas for dinner. Do what works for you.  

Happy Easter and Happy Spring to all of you.

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Conflict: Using Birth Control When You Want Kids

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Are the new abortion restrictions being passed in some U.S. states relevant for us here at Childless by Marriage? As you probably know, Texas recently passed a law prohibiting abortion, for any reason, after the sixth week of pregnancy, about the time a heartbeat can be detected. At that point, many women don’t even know they are pregnant. Even if they do, by the time they make arrangements, it may be beyond the six weeks. In practical terms, most abortions are therefore illegal. At the moment, the Texas ban has been blocked while it goes through court challenges, but there does seem to be a trend toward more restrictive abortion laws.

I’m not going to argue pro-life vs. pro-choice here. I’m Catholic; you can guess how I feel, but I also realize that many women are going to seek abortions no matter what the law says, so why not make it safe for them to do it?

What does this have to do with being childless by marriage?

While researching my Childless by Marriage book, I discovered that far more women had had abortions than I ever suspected. For some, the abortion ended their only chance at motherhood; later circumstances kept them from having children. Some had abortions because their partners insisted that they did not want them to have a baby, at least not then.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there are 189 abortions per 1,000 live births and 11.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years. More than half of those women are in their 20s, and most of those abortions are performed at around the 13th week of pregnancy.

Abortion is sometimes used as a method of birth control for those willing to take a chance that they will not get pregnant and that they can abort if they do. Now the women in Texas and other states where regulations are being tightened to the point of prohibiting most abortions may be feeling there is no way out.

Most of us have used other forms of birth control, including contraceptive pills and patches, IUDs, diaphragms, and condoms. These methods require at least one partner to take responsibility. Ideally, they should both agree that they want to use birth control. Diaphragms and condoms require the cooperation of both parties. The pill and the IUD may have negative effects on the woman’s health. They can also be discontinued without the male partner knowing. How many of us whose partners have been hesitant to make babies have been told by well-meaning friends or relatives to just stop taking the pill and have an “oops” baby? Most of us, I’ll bet.

We’re far from the days when our ancestors could only prevent pregnancy by giving up sex, but it can still be a touchy situation, especially when we want to have children and know that pill we’re taking every morning or that condom we’re using every time we have sex is making it impossible.

So I ask you:

1. How do you feel about conservative politicians eliminating abortion as a birth control method? Does that have anything to do with your situation?

2. If you’re using birth control, how do you feel about it? Do resent that pill, hate that condom? Does your partner insist you use them or just assume that it’s “take care of”? Are you able to discuss it freely with them?

Please share in the comments. You can be completely anonymous. This blog does not work without your input.

Thank you all for being here.

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On an unrelated note, having Facebook and Instagram go down earlier this week made it clear that I can’t count on reaching you there. To make sure you always know when there’s a new post, please use the subscribe button to the right of this post.

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Childlessness is Not a New Thing

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Childlessness is not a 21st-century aberration. It turns out couples and single women have gone without children for as long as anyone has been keeping track. The Baby Boom was an anomaly that made us all think the way our parents did it was the standard by which all things should be judged.

Oh Lord, you’re thinking. Sue has lost it now. Big words, history lessons. Bear with me. I am reading a new book titled How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children by historian Rachel Chrastil. As you might guess, it’s the kind of book that’s slow reading, with lots of charts, footnotes and a source list that goes on for days. But I am learning so much.

As early as the 1500s, Chrastil writes, women delayed marriage for varying reasons. Some were trying to save up for a sufficient dowry to attract a husband. By putting off marriage and childbirth, women then, like now, could work, save money, and claim a place in society. Of course, if they waited too long, they might end up childless. Some decided they did not ever want the constraints of marriage. In those days, married women gave up all their rights to own property or manage their finances to their husbands. So-called “singlewomen” had more independence.

In the early 20th century, wars, the great flu epidemic, depressions, and other problems also caused couples to bear fewer children. Couples who suffered from infertility did not have the options available now. But those were not the only reasons. Women were claiming more rights, more autonomy. Remember, the suffragettes were marching for the right to vote.

Chrastil charts a drop in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Like now, one in five women did not have children. Why have we not heard about this? The answer is simple: They had no children or grandchildren to pass on their stories. “They fade out of our family history,” she says.

Even those who did have children were having fewer because they wanted more out of life than motherhood. But people didn’t discuss any of this in public. Even as recently as the 1960s, when I hit puberty, folks didn’t talk about pregnancy or periods or why “Aunt Jo” never had any children.

What about being childless by marriage? I’m halfway through the book. In the parts I have read so far, Chrastil doesn’t address the subject head-on, but she does note that there are “many gradations of voluntary childlessness.” Among fertile couples, she classifies couples as those who agree to have children, who agree to postpone having children, or who do not agree on the subject. I assume most of us here fall into that third category. I hope she writes more directly about this in the later pages.

Meanwhile, did you know birth control did not start with “the pill?” It might not have been as easy, but people had ways to prevent conception–besides pulling out before ejaculation or the ever-popular “Sorry, not tonight.” In the early times, women also used various herbs and prolonged breastfeeding to space out their children.

In the 1800s, couples used soapy douches, dried gut condoms, diaphragms, vaginal sponges and pessaries (a device that blocks access to the cervix). They were illegal in some places, but people used them and didn’t talk about it. Check out this website for more on early birth control. 

None of these methods were as reliable as today’s birth control pills, but they did slow the process, especially when combined with the “rhythm” method of timing intercourse with the woman’s least fertile periods. If those failed, there was abortion, not legal but definitely done. Chrastil writes, “In the United States in the early twentieth century, estimates range between 250,000 and 1 million illegal abortions a year.”

The baby boom, which happened in a period of economic growth and post-war happiness, was not the norm.  Looking back on those “Leave It to Beaver” years, we’re likely to think that’s how it always was. June and Ward got married young, bore their standard two children, and raised them in a big house with a white picket fence. Ward never said, “I don’t think I want children,” and June certainly didn’t rip off her apron and declare she’d rather have a career than bake cookies for their sons. But that’s not the way it always was, and it’s certainly not the way it is now.

We have more factors to consider these days. We have reliable birth control, and abortion is legal. Far more couples divorce and remarry, creating blended families and situations where one spouse has children and the other does not. Women have more career options. Both men and women are inclined to delay marriage and childbirth until they have finished their education and gotten their careers established. It’s a new world, but it’s also an old one.

We’re not the first childless generation after all.

So, what do you think about that? Your comments are welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank God My Children Won’t Read This

Sue Fagalde Lick birth control, childless writer, sex , , , , , ,

CNF71 CVRIf I had children, they would be mortified. An essay I wrote about sex with my late husband is included in the new issue of Creative Nonfiction Magazine. It’s pretty graphic. I talk about his problems maintaining an erection after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and about my problems with menopausal dryness and the need for lubrication. I even talk about offering him a blow job. OMG. Thank God my parents will never read this. I hope my stepchildren never see it.

Not that the general public reads Creative Nonfiction. Most people can’t even define creative nonfiction: true stories told using the techniques of fiction, such as characters, dialogue, setting, plot, etc. Making it into Creative Nonfiction has been a life goal since I earned my master of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction 16 years ago. So career-wise, this is great, but oh my God, do I really want people to know this much about me?

But then you readers here at Childless by Marriage already know so much. If you’ve read my Childless by Marriage book, you already know things I would not want my family to know, things I have never told anyone else.

Editor Lee Gutkind points to my story as an example of things they couldn’t have published even 10 years ago. He’s right. Not in a public journal like CNF. But here at the blog, we’ve always been pretty honest. It’s part of the story.

We are childless by marriage. How does one create a child? Sex. So if we’re not getting pregnant, something involved with sex is preventing it, whether it’s birth control, impotence, infertility, or abortion. In my Creative Nonfiction piece, I talk about stopping coitus to find some lube. When I was younger and with other men, it was about running to the bathroom to insert my diaphragm or grabbing a condom. If we had just kept going, I might be a mother now, but we didn’t. Somebody always stopped the proceedings, said, “We’d better . . .” and we did. Or we switched to an activity that did not include placing penis in vagina.

Now my church, Catholic, says sex is only for making babies. But most Catholics I know use birth control. It’s one of those things we don’t talk about–and probably should.

When you decide to sleep with someone, you immediately need to figure out what you’re doing about birth control, not just to prevent pregnancy but to prevent STDs. If you’re on the pill, you can choose whether or not to mention it, but if you’re using another method, you’ll have to discuss it. You will know whether, at least at that moment, your partner is interested in creating a baby. Which may lead to more long-term choices.

Sex is such a vital part of life, but until recently we didn’t talk about it much, and we certainly didn’t write about it. I’m both embarrassed and proud of my essay. When I wrote it, I thought it was funny. I still think people will get some laughs out of it. But it also shows the realities of middle-aged sex and dementia. Why keep it a secret? Everybody deals with this stuff.

I haven’t read the other pieces in the magazine yet. This is a print publication, not online, and copies haven’t arrived yet. The link will show where you can order a copy.

Some of you have confided that your partners refused to have sex with you. So hurtful! I wonder how many dare to mention their desire for babies while they’re making love. What are those conversations like, when you’re lying together naked and happy? Or are you afraid to mention it for fear of ruining the mood?

I don’t want to turn this into a porn site, and I sure hope I don’t get a lot of filthy responses, but we can be honest here. I’m honestly glad I don’t have children and grandchildren reading about Grandma and Grandpa having sex. Ew, gross.

One of the advantages of being childless, I guess.

I just realized the magazine never asked and I never mentioned whether or not I had children. Interesting.

Thanks for being here.

Birth control decision not so simple

Sue Fagalde Lick birth control, Catholics and contraception, childlessness, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

As most of you know, I’m Catholic. I’m not only a parishioner but an employee, so what I’m about to write might get me in trouble, but I woke up this morning knowing I needed to say something.

Basically what I want to say is that too many people and too many institutions, especially churches, don’t even try to understand that some people who would like to have children do not have them, for various reasons, and that our lives do not fit into their neat little boxes. And that it hurts.

Tucked into last week’s church bulletin was a handout about the evils and dangers of birth control. It discusses the physical risks of oral contraceptives, contraceptive patches and IUDs: cancer, blood clots, heart attacks, septic shock . . . scary stuff. Plus, the handout, produced by the U.S. Conference of Bishops (all men), says these methods are actually forms of abortion because they kill the embryo before implantation in the uterus. It doesn’t mention “barrier methods,” such as condoms and diaphragms, but those are also forbidden.

The bishops blame “the pill” for women having sex outside of marriage, out-of-wedlock births, and single mothers living in poverty.

In contrast to these horrors, they offer the “fertility awareness” method, whereby couples abstain from sex when the woman is most fertile. This, of course, takes total cooperation by two horny people and assumes the woman has regular, predictable cycles. As I mention in my Childless by Marriage book, one of my friends named her “surprise” son after the priest who prescribed this method for her and her husband.

All of this assumes that we can avoid sex outside of marriage and that within marriage we have husbands or wives who will follow the rules. I don’t know about you, but my partners inside and outside of marriage, including the Catholic ones, would not have gone along with either abstaining or having a bunch of babies. I used birth control—pills, condoms, diaphragms–right up until I married a man who’d had a vasectomy. A vasectomy is also considered a sin.

Despite the church’s mandate, a majority of Catholics use artificial birth control. Numbers vary, with sources offering from 72 to 98 percent of American women. Honestly, the church puts us between a rock and a hard place. How many of us are lucky enough to marry someone who will agree to take a chance on the “natural” method? How many people here at Childless by Marriage are with partners who do not want any children, period? How many are not sure about it so they aren’t willing to take any chances? How many of us would be delighted to throw away our birth control and have a baby, but we fear we’d lose the man or woman we love if we did?

Being alone and past menopause, I no longer have to worry about this, but I know most of you do. I’m not going to preach for or against. Just be aware of the risks and make your own decision.

I don’t want to be excommunicated or lose my job, but I worry about the lack of understanding shown in documents such as this. For some of us, life cannot be boiled down to being alone and chaste or being married and happily making babies. It’s just not that simple.

For more on the Catholic viewpoint, visit www.usccb.org/respectlife.

It’s not just the Catholic Church that doesn’t seem to understand the variables in our life situations. We see it in our government, in our society, and around the dinner table.

What do you think? Have I ruffled some feathers? How do you feel about this? Please share (and don’t tell my pastor).

Motherhood didn’t used to be a choice

Sue Fagalde Lick abortion, birth control, childlessness, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Prescribing birth control for unmarried women was not legal in the United States until 1972, the year I lost my virginity and started taking birth control pills. It only became legal for married couples as I was entering high school in 1965. When Roe V. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, I was 21.

A lot of things were different when I was growing up. In 1974, the year I married my first husband, Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Before that, it was difficult for women to secure credit cards or loans or buy their own homes. Can you imagine that now? What do you mean I can’t have a credit card in my own name?

I know most readers here are considerably younger than I am. In your lives, birth control and abortion have always been legal. As for women being able to run their own financial lives, how could it be any other way? But it was. Consider this: We weren’t even allowed to wear slacks or jeans when I was in school, only skirts. With pantyhose.

I’m reading a new book titled All the Single Ladies. Author Rebecca Traister takes us through the history of the women’s movement and the stories of a persistent percentage of women who choose independence rather than be bound by marriage. It’s heavy reading but fascinating. I will tell you more about it when I finish the book. I want to talk about people who prefer independent lives over married life, but what I have read so far sure makes me think about how things have changed.

Through most of history, women have not been considered equal to men, and they have not had the same rights as men. Traister quotes so-called experts from the 19th century who maintained our brains were not as big as men’s brains and who also said that if we stressed our brains doing jobs not suited to women we would damage our reproductive organs. Craziness, right? But women as recently as my mother’s generation truly saw few other choices in life besides being wives and mothers. Even when I came of age, I expected every relationship to turn into marriage and that would lead to having children. That’s what everybody did. I just wanted to be a writer, too. I’d do it while the kids were at school.

When women found themselves pregnant before marriage, it was a scandal. They had to get married in a hurry or go off somewhere to give birth in secret and give the baby up for adoption. Abortion was rare, dangerous and illegal until 1974, four years after I graduated from high school, four years after several of my classmates found themselves “in trouble.” Being a nerd with no social life and hyper-protective parents probably saved me from that.

I got married two weeks after I graduated from college. If my ex hadn’t put a monkey-wrench into the baby plan, I’d be a grandmother now. Early in our dating life, he hustled me to the student medical center for birth control pills. Those pills were a disaster. They made me sick, fat and depressed. I tried various types of pills. On some, I bled almost all month long. Others caused giant painful bumps to break out on my legs. I experienced the mother of all yeast infections because I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t dare tell anyone I was having sex before marriage. But I didn’t get pregnant. What if I had been born just a few years earlier?

Shortly before the wedding, I switched to a diaphragm. Every time I bought the contraceptive jelly for it, I felt like everyone in the store was looking and judging. Even after I got married.

And yet, I had so many more options than my mother did. I don’t know if she had sex before marriage. I don’t want to know. I do know she and my dad used condoms to stop having children after they had my brother and me. My snoopy brother found them in a drawer, but we never discussed it. God no. For us, The Talk about sex consisted of one word: Don’t.

Birth control took away the fear of pregnancy, both in and out of marriage. Plus, because the times were changing, I was able to work as a newspaper reporter, doing work that men used to do. I was always in debt, but I could manage my own affairs. My mother, perhaps your grandmother, did not have that freedom. She lived in a world where men controlled women’s lives and women’s destiny was motherhood.

Things have changed so much. It’s good, right?

We have so many choices now. Sometimes that makes it more difficult, especially when we find partners who don’t feel the same way as we do about having children. It used to take some doing to prevent the babies from coming. Now we have to fight for the right to have them. It doesn’t seem fair. Or is it more fair than it ever was before?

What do you think about all this? How have things changed in your lifetime? How has the availability of birth control and abortion affected your situation? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

 

 

Wanting babies but using birth control

Sue Fagalde Lick birth control, childless , , , , , , , , , ,

Shortly after my boyfriend introduced me to sex, I found myself in the stirrups at the college health center getting my first prescription for birth control pills. I was still living at home, so I couldn’t possibly tell my parents about having sex or needing contraception. When my first prescription led to my first yeast infection, I had no idea what was going on and let it go way too long. That was the first of three different pills and some terrible side effects. It turned out The Pill and I were not compatible, so I switched to condoms and diaphragms, those rubber disks you fill with spermicidal jelly and slip up your vagina just before intercourse.

I wanted babies, but I didn’t want to be an “unwed mother,” as they were called in the days when it was a scandal. When I was married, my first husband kept saying not yet, not yet, not yet, until he just said no. He made sure I had my diaphragm in before we had sex. No accidental babies allowed. Divorce followed, for other reasons. Single again, I put that diaphragm to good use with other men. On my first date with Fred, who became my second husband, we were doubly covered because I used my diaphragm and he had his vasectomy, which I didn’t know about yet.

I wanted babies but avoided the chance of having them, except for a couple slips with one boyfriend, after which I prayed for my period to start. Birth control wasn’t so easy in my early days of adulthood. A lot of things we can buy over the counter now required getting a prescription and facing a certain amount of disapproval. Now they sell condoms at the grocery store.

Looking back, It seems crazy. All those years of pills, condoms and jelly to prevent something I really wanted and expected to have in my life. It was also against my religion, but I didn’t even know that then. Nobody spelled out the rules, and even if they had, religion did not speak as loudly as the parents who told me my life would be ruined if I got pregnant outside of marriage and the men who wanted to have sex but not babies.

I got to thinking about this because my subscription to wedmd.com recently brought a fascinating link to my attention. It’s a slide show that looks at birth control through the ages. This is all back before most modern methods existed. They seem kind of crazy now. Take a look.

I would love to know about your relationships with birth control. What have you used? How faithfully have you used it? Have you ever tried to sneak in some unprotected sex in the hope of getting pregnant? Men are welcome to offer their point of view, too. You can be anonymous. Your mother will never know.

Should she stand by her man who doesn’t want kids?

Sue Fagalde Lick advising childless women, birth control, changing their minds about kids, divorce, men who don't want children, should you stand by your man, women who want babies
 What is this, 1914?

 A reader asked me that the other day after I advised a childless woman to stick with the man she had rather than get divorced in her 40s in the hope of finding another guy with whom she could have children. I tried to explain that at her age, the odds of finding another Mr. Right and getting pregnant were lousy. She was not happy with my advice. 
I flip-flopped with the next commenter, who was in her early 30s. I told her to go for it.
 Today, I received a comment from a woman whose fiance of 13 years just told her he has decided he doesn’t want kids. I told her to keep talking.
You can read about all of this in “If You Disagree About Children, is Your Relationship Doomed?”
Nearly every day, I receive comments from people, mostly women, who don’t know what to do. Their mate is unable or unwilling to have children with them. They may have said they would be happy to have babies before, but now they don’t want to. Often there are stepchildren who make things more complicated. The couple either fights about it all the time or they can’t talk about it. What should they do?
Dear God, I wish I knew.
My friends, I am not the goddess of all wisdom. I wish I could solve your problems, but I’m human. My views are necessarily tainted by my own experiences and by the fact that I’m Catholic, white and was raised in California by traditional parents of western European heritage in the 1950s and ‘60s. I’m also very practical. I don’t believe in diving out of a boat where you might be unhappy but at least you won’t drown in the hope that another, more beautiful boat will happen along. I also believe that most of us are lucky to meet one perfect life partner in a lifetime. If this is old-fashioned, so be it.
When I was a kid, back in the pre-birth control days, couples who were unable to have children stuck together. Often they adopted, but not always. People who simply didn’t want children either didn’t get married or they sucked it up and had them anyway because if you were having sex it was a lot harder to avoid. It was also more difficult to get a divorce. Things seemed simpler. You fell in love, you got married, and you had babies. Were some people brutally unhappy, feeling totally trapped? I’m sure they were.
But it is not 1914 or even 1954. It’s a new century in which nearly anything is possible. With so many choices, it’s hard to know what to do. I need your help. Feel free to respond to comments at any of the posts here with your own advice and experiences. Together we’ll figure it out.