books about childlessness

Can You Live with Your Decision Not to Have Children?

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When you want Chinese food and he wants pizza, how do you decide which to get? Settle on KFC instead? If he gets his pizza, will you still be wishing for Chinese or decide pizza’s not so bad after all? Will you not really care because it didn’t matter that much to you? Or will you hold it over his head. “I gave up moo shu pork and egg rolls for you, and I’ve got heartburn from eating your stupid pizza.” Will he give in and have Chinese but insist it was the worst Chinese food he ever tasted?

Deciding whether or not to have children is not the same as deciding on takeout food, of course. Years later, will you remember whether you ate moo shu or pizza? No, but whether or not you have children will affect your entire life.

Relationships are full of decisions. Where will you live? Where will you work? Will you paint the living room blue or white, go to his parents’ or yours for the holidays? But next to getting married, whether or not to have children is the biggest decision you will ever make.

If you’re lucky, you and your sweetheart agree on most things most of the time. It sure makes life a lot easier. It’s like, “Let’s have . . .” and you both say “Chinese!” at the same time. But we wouldn’t be here at the Childless by Marriage blog if life were that easy.

It would be nice if we were all saints, too. “I will sacrifice what I want because I love you. And I’ll never bring it up again.”

That’s how it goes in fairy tales.

In real life, when someone gives up what they want, they may not be able to let it go. When you disagree about having children, someone is going to be unhappy and that unhappiness might never go away.

If you’re the one who wants children and you do somehow convince your partner to make a baby—or adopt or pursue fertility treatments, he or she might decide that like the pizza, yes, this is good and they’re glad they changed their mind. But it is quite possible they will carry some resentment and bring it up whenever things get difficult. I never wanted kids. See, now we can’t take a vacation because your son needs braces.

If you didn’t get the children you wanted, you might cry about it in secret or yell about it out loud. Because of you, I’ll never be a mother or a father. Because of your selfishness. It doesn’t help that the world makes you feel less-than because you’re not a mom or dad like everyone else seems to be.

Maybe it’s not just a matter of want but can’t. Your partner can’t have children so you decide you will give them up too because you love them. You want to be together. Wonderful. Again, saintly. But there are going to be those moments when you think I screwed up. I shouldn’t have just given up like that. It wasn’t fair of him to ask me to.

In Jordan Davidson’s book So When are You Having Kids?, which I wrote about in my April 5 post, she cited a UK study that showed many couples decide whether or not to have children after only one discussion. Each person usually comes to that one discussion already knowing what they want. Ideally, we bond with people who think like we do, but when we disagree on something so important, it gets tricky.

Davidson says the one who feels strongest about what they want will usually prevail. The other gives in out of love or simply to save the relationship. “Those who felt comfortable with their ultimate decision said they never felt manipulated or forced into deciding, whereas those who expressed some level of regret or dissatisfaction with parenthood felt rushed or coerced.”

“If you convince your partner to align with your decision, you may feel guilty, like you decided their future for them. Your partner may also harbor some resentment if they feel like their desires weren’t fairly considered.”

What am I trying to say? Only that there’s no easy answer here. If you nag and cry and make your partner crazy until they give in just to get some peace, you might get what you want, but at what price to your relationship? If you quietly give in but can’t really accept the decision, it will fester inside. All you can do is make your desires known. Talk it through thoroughly—and not just once. Then decide whether you can live with the results.

As my mother always told me about boyfriends, there are more fish in the sea, but if this is the only fish for you, one of you is going to have adapt to the other fish’s speed.

What do you think about this? Can you compromise on the baby question and still be happy together? I welcome your comments.

Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh on Pexels.com

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The Question: So When are You Going to Have Kids?

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That’s a question many of us have heard a lot. Even if we answer “We’re not having children,” no one believes us and we keep meeting other people who can’t resist asking the question, especially if you’re married and under 40 years old.

When I found this book, titled So When are You Having Kids? by Jordan Davidson on the new-books shelf at my local library, I had to bring it home. I thought people might giggle if they saw an old lady like me reading this book. That ship has sailed, hasn’t it? Yes. I’m not contemplating getting pregnant, but the book is still full of information that everybody should have, whether or not they ever plan to procreate.

With the subtitle “The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren’t Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents,” it provides answers to every question a person could have about the making of babies. It’s the only book I have read on the subject that includes LGBTQ readers every step of the way. Davidson offers the reasons why people decide to have children or not, details on how sperm meets egg and what happens then, the straight facts on fertility treatments and odds of success, the inside story on surrogacy and adoption, details on contraception and sterilization, and so much more. All this, and it is not boring. Davidson intersperses personal stories of people with and without children throughout. Even though I’m well past menopause way past menopause, I found it fascinating. Here is everything you did not get in The Talk with your parents or in sex education classes.

“When are you going to have kids?” God, I hated that question. When I was with my first husband, everyone assumed as I attended my cousins’ baby showers, that “Susie” would be next. I would mumble something like, “maybe,” even though I knew my husband wasn’t up for it, not then, maybe never. When I married Fred, I was a little older, but they still assumed babies were coming, and if they didn’t, well, at least I had Fred’s kids and could be a stepmom. I tried to avoid the question as much as possible because another question always followed: Why not?

Well, we’ve got the other three, there are health problems (his vasectomy), I’m prone to diabetes, etc. I never just said, “Fred doesn’t want to have any more kids.” I didn’t quite believe myself that it would never happen, plus I didn’t want to make my husband look bad. So, I just mumbled something and changed the subject.

The author shares an interesting quote from Ethicist Christine Overall, author of Why Have Children: The Ethical Debate: “In contemporary Western culture, it ironically appears that one needs to have reasons not to have children, but no reasons are required to have them.”

She is so right.

I will be returning to this book in future posts because it’s so packed with relevant topics, but this week, I’d like to hear your comments. What do you say when someone asks, “Hey, when are you going to have kids?”

Happy Easter, dear readers. Don’t let all the child-oriented Easter Bunny stuff get you down.

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New Book Shows Us Childlessness is Nothing New

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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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Can I Declare Myself Happy without Children? Can You?

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That question makes me squirm.

I happened upon a podcast from a couple years ago that was titled “Childfree by Circumstance and Happy.” It’s not uncommon to hear people who are childfree by choice say they are happy, delighted even, with their choice. No regrets, just loving their freedom. But what if it wasn’t your choice, what if it just happened due to medical problems, infertility, bad timing, or lack of a willing partner, and you decided to be happy about it? Can you do that?

Jackie Shannon Hollis and Shirley Wang, the two guests on the show, said they could.

Hollis is author of a fantastic book titled This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story. Her first marriage ended in divorce without children. Her second husband, who was older than she was, declared he absolutely did not want children. She wanted to spend her life with him, so she made a conscious choice to live without children and embrace a childfree life.

Rather than mope about it, Hollis added being a parent to the list of things she would never be in her life, the parallel lives she might have lived, just as she would never be a doctor or an Olympic athlete or a hundred other things. Hollis asked herself “Am I happy right now?” She was, so why not continue living the life she had?

Wang, an opera singer, pianist, and author, said she had never met the right man to be her life partner and father of her children. A medical issue at age 38 forced her to decide whether or not she really wanted to have children. She realized she didn’t need to have children of her own to be happy. She enjoyed her life of traveling and performing. With her students and nieces and nephews, she had plenty of kids in her life. “I felt free,” she said.

How emotionally healthy these women sound. Wang says she rarely thinks about the fact that she doesn’t have children. She just enjoys her freedom. In fact, the slogan on her website is “freedom to create.”

I am a creative person, too, and I appreciate the time and freedom to do my writing and music, but I can’t let go of my childless grief. I really wish I was a mother and grandmother. It hurts that I’m not. I envy people my age with big families. My marital life was very similar to Hollis’s, except that I didn’t make a conscious choice to be “childfree.” I thought my stepchildren would fill the gap, and I somehow thought that at some point I would have my own babies. That didn’t happen. Now that my husband is gone, I’m living with a dog in the woods far away from my family, and I’m lonely.

“Let it go,” says a voice in my head, possibly my former therapist. “Move on.” You wanted to be thinner, a concert pianist, and have curly hair, too. You wanted to sing in a band. Let it go. Let it all go. But you know what? It’s my grief. I’ll weep if I want to.

This is getting pretty heavy. How about you? Can you stop torturing yourself about not having kids? Can you let go of being childless and celebrate being childfree? What would it take to do that?

As always, I welcome your comments and really appreciate you being here.

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When You Take Away Your Partner’s Parenthood Dream

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Two weeks ago on the blog, I wrote about Steph Penny’s situation. She has lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues. The risk of trying to have a baby was so great she and her husband were forced to choose a life without children. In her book Surviving Childlessness: Faith and Furbabies, she wrote about her choice and many other aspects of childlessness.

One of the many passages that struck me in this book talked about how it feels to watch your partner go without children because of your problem. Steph describes that on page 12:

“It hit my husband, too. He had wanted children even more than me, so it affected him greatly. I felt an enormous amount of guilt about that. I still do. I had always thought my husband would make a superb father. Not being able to give him this gift was almost more than I could bear.”

She adds that it was her husband’s idea to dedicate her book to the two children they named but never had.

Guilt. Imagine you have an illness, a fertility problem, a children-from-a-previous-marriage problem or can’t for whatever reason give your partner the children he or she longs for. You hear them weeping when they think you don’t notice. You see them flinch when someone announces they’re having a baby. You see them turning red as they remain seated when all the mothers or fathers are invited to stand for a blessing at church on Mother’s or Father’s Day. You watch them fumble for an answer when strangers ask, “How many children do you have?” or “Hey, when are we going to hear the pitter-patter of little feet at your house?” You see the pain in their eyes when their parents play with their siblings’ children and they will never play with theirs.

Maybe you can’t help the situation. Your physical or emotional problems are not going to go away. You can’t produce sperm or eggs where there are none. All you can offer is to step aside and let your loved one find someone else who can give them children, but if you truly love each other, isn’t that asking too much? Maybe all you can offer is sympathy, a shoulder to cry on, and an explanation to those nosy people who press for answers as to why there are no babies at your house.

I know my husband felt bad. He saw me see-saw between anger and grief and knew it was his fault. He heard me trying to deflect the questions about when I was going to have a baby. He saw me trying so hard to bond with his kids. After his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, before he went deep into dementia, he probably worried about me being alone.

But none of that changed the fact that he had had a vasectomy and was so much older than me that he didn’t want to start over with a baby. Nor did it change the fact that he and his wife had so much trouble conceiving that they adopted their first two children, finally having a bio child after 17 years of marriage. Mostly likely we would have had trouble, too. He couldn’t help it.

He loved me, and he saw how much it hurt. In marrying me, he took away my dream of being a mother. The guilt must have been tremendous. As was my grief. Just yesterday, watching a baby born on a TV show, I sobbed so hard it hurt. After all these years.

We stayed together because the love was greater than the grief or the guilt.

How about you and your partner? Does the one who didn’t want or couldn’t have children feel bad about it? Do you talk about it? What can you do to make it feel better? Is the love strong enough to overcome the other feelings?

I welcome your comments.

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Novels’ Main Character is Childless Like Us

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When I started writing my novel Up Beaver Creek, I did not intentionally make my heroine childless. She just came out that way, probably because I don’t have children. Her non-Mom status has not changed in the sequel, Seal Rock Sound, which has just been published.

Book cover for the novel Seal Rock Sound features an ocean scene with black rocks and fluffy white clouds tinged with orange.

I don’t automatically give my characters the full family package because I have never had that. A writer whose main identity is Mom might create people who either have children or are planning to. Often the happy ending includes a pregnancy announcement. My girl PD Soares will never be pregnant. In her case, she suffered through a bad childless first marriage, infertility with her second husband, and then widowhood when he died. Now 43, she’s sure she’ll never be a mother. But the question keeps coming up, as in these excerpts from Seal Rock Sound:

On a date:

Arlo delivers a basket of warm bread. Donovan grabs a slice and slides the basket over to me. “Did you ever want to have kids, PD?”

Yikes. I should have known this question would come up. Everyone expects a woman my age to have children. I nudge the breadbasket away, trying to resist the temptation. “Yes, we tried to have children. My husband and I could not seem to get pregnant. His sperm and my eggs just wouldn’t do the job. We were starting to look into adoption when he got sick.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Yeah, I think it is. I’m 43 and single. That ship has sailed.” Change the subject before you stress-eat all the bread in that basket. “How about you? Any children?”

“Well . . .”

Talking to a friend:

Cover for the novel Up Beaver Creek shows a peaceful river running through green trees and bushes. The sky is blue with a little white cloud in the upper right corner.

“It all washed away in one night. Now I have to support my family. Maybe in 20 or 30 years, I can paint again.”

I picture her in a bright room overlooking the ocean, painting on silk with delicate brushes. Her painting was like my music. Because I have no husband or children, I’m free to keep doing it.

“Helen, I’m so—”

She holds up her hand. “Don’t say sorry again. I know you are. But you don’t know how it is when you have a family to take care of.”

Ouch. But it’s true. “Can I buy you a blueberry scone and another cup of tea?”

She checks her watch. “Yes. Thank you.”

I return to the counter, order and top off my coffee. It’s time to change the subject.

Car-shopping:

I sink onto the black leather. I’m up higher than in my old car, but this one is considerably smaller than the rental I’ve been driving. I study the dash.

“They went for the whole package. It’s got Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, backup warning system, the whole shot. Plus four-wheel drive. The back seat folds down if you need to haul stuff. Do you have kids?”

I look at this cookie-cutter white guy in a suit. “No. It’s just me.”

“It’s great for dogs, too. I’ll bet you have a dog.”

 I’m not in the mood to tell him the story of my life.

At work helping a frightened teen who just got her first period:

I escorted her to the restroom and closed us up in the handicapped stall. It was crazy intimate for someone I had just met, but I got her “bandaged” up with a maxi pad and retied her sweatshirt around her waist so no one could see the drying blood on her pants.

As we washed our hands, she smiled at me. “I guess I remember some of my friends talking about this.”

“Sure. We all get our periods. Even me. It’s normal. You’re just becoming a woman. Soon your breasts will grow, and you won’t be a little girl anymore. It’s actually pretty cool.”

“Thanks, PD.”

“You’re welcome.” I hugged her and returned to my desk.

I couldn’t help thinking about how I could have had a girl that age if nature had cooperated. An ache bloomed inside me. I was never going to be the mom giving her daughter “the talk.” I would never see my little girl grow into a woman. Never send her off to school dances, help her with her spelling, attend her graduation and her wedding, or cuddle her babies in my arms. I blinked back my tears. Not here, not now. Just do the job.

I forced a smile at an old woman in pink sweats. “Hi, what I can do for you?”

***

Will I ever write a novel about someone who has children? Probably. The majority of adults are parents. Just as I used to do when I was writing articles for parenting publications, I’ll do my research. All of my characters can’t be just like me. If I want them to be doctors, police officers, or truck drivers, I have to find out what that’s all about. Likewise, if I want to create fictional moms. Meanwhile, I have added my books to the limited number of stories about people who don’t have children.

Up Beaver Creek and Seal Rock Sound are both available at Amazon.com and by order everywhere books are sold. I am available for talks and book-signings, live on the West Coast, via Zoom everywhere.

Do you have some favorite childless heroines from books or movies? Do you think we’re seeing more characters without kids these days? As always, I welcome your comments.

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‘You can just adopt’ and other childless ‘bingos’

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I have just returned from the land of many babies, where I heard so many childless “bingos,” I need a new card. “Bingos,” if you haven’t heard, are the clueless comments people make about childlessness. If you’d like a good list of the typical ones, visit https://bingobaker.com/view/496736, where you will find a full bingo card of remarks such as “Don’t you like kids?” “Who will take care of you when you’re old?” and “Children are a woman’s greatest achievement.” We have heard a few of those, right?

Last weekend, I was in San Jose, California, for the Dia de Portugal festival, the first one since the pandemic began. I was there to see friends and family and sell books. It was incredibly hot, noisy, and crowded. The most popular booths were the ones selling beer and water.

At my table in the Portuguese authors section, I spread out my books: two on Portuguese Americans, two books of poetry, and my two books about childlessness, Childless by Marriage and Love or Children: When You Can’t Have Both.

People walked by. Some paused to flip through the pages of my Portuguese books, then walked on. Some bought copies. Some said, “Oh, I have that book. It’s good.”

We traded a few words in my limited Portuguese. “Bom dia” (Good day), “Obrigada” (Thank you), “Faz calor.” (It’s hot). A parade circled the plaza at the History Park San Jose where the festival was held. Singers sang, and folkloric dancers in red, green and yellow costumes danced. People passed by wearing the Portuguese flag design on shirts, scarves, hats, and even Covid masks. I said hello to Portuguese people I hadn’t seen in years.

Here’s the thing. I knew it was a Portuguese festival and most interest would be in the Portuguese books, but I didn’t expect some of the reactions I got to my childless books. Most who looked at them didn’t understand the concept of being childless by marriage. When I tried to explain, a woman early on responded, “Well, that’s no problem. You just adopt.”

“It’s not that easy,” I began, but she was gone.

A couple of the men snickered at my Love or Children title. “I choose love,” said one well into his beer ration. “Children?” He made a disgusted face.

The younger women all seemed to have children and/or be pregnant. The woman sharing my table, Higina da Guia, a nice writer originally from the Portuguese island of Madeira, was selling children’s books. Most of the books were bilingual, in Portuguese and English, intended for parents wanting to teach their little ones whichever language they didn’t know. Swell. But time after time, a woman would be looking at my books, and then her husband or friend would nudge her to look at the children’s books. They totally forgot about my grownup books.

I should note they showed no interest in my poetry either. Oh well. When I try to sell my Portuguese books in Oregon, people pass right by them. It’s all about context.

Higina’s daughter and granddaughter joined her. I watched as Higina wrapped the little girl in a red, white and black costume from Madeira. She was so excited to see the little girl in the skirt and vest passed through the generations of her family. “She will remember this forever,” she told me as the child posed for pictures. It was sweet, but it made me sad. I will never get to do that.

My brother came with his daughter and granddaughter, my niece and great-niece. I was so glad to see them and to have the validation of family sitting with me for a while. I love being Aunt Sue. It’s not the same as being a mom, but it helps. I don’t see them often enough. I shed a few tears when they left.

Helping me in my booth was my sister-friend Pat, a mother and grandmother whose claims to anything Portuguese are that she grew up in Massachusetts with lots of Portuguese people and that she once dated a Portuguese guy. She had a great time talking to everyone and people-watching. I noticed she reacts to children the way I react to dogs, as if they are magic and she has a special connection with them. It’s one of many things I love about her.

But I learned a lesson. When I take my childlessness and my childless books out into the world, I can expect many bingos, especially in an old-country culture where not having children does not seem to be a “thing.”

Living in a retirement community where I don’t see many kids, I forget how it might be for you where you live, especially if you’re at an age where your friends and family are busy with babies and growing children.

Where do you hear the most bingos? Is there a situation where it’s especially hard to not have children? Let’s talk about it. I welcome your comments.

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What is the Price You Pay for Childlessness?

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Those of us in the United States and other “first world” countries who wanted children but don’t have them for whatever reason have our issues. We feel left out while our friends are busy with their children. We grieve the children we will never have. We are bombarded with nosy questions and suggestions from people who don’t understand our situation. But our lack of children does not endanger our physical safety or our status as full-fledged citizens. In some parts of the world, that is not true, particularly for women.

In her book Childless Voices, Lorna Gibb tells the stories of some of these women.

Khadiga, who lives in Qatar, near Saudi Arabia, is unable to have children. She does not feel worthy to marry, so she remains single, living with her parents and working as a banker. Her family, who lived near a school, had to move because the parents of the students would call her names whenever she passed by.

In India, it is worse. Gibb tells of childless women who are beaten by their husbands, shamed by their community, and made to feel so bad they commit suicide. In New Delhi, a 28-year-old woman who was depressed by her inability to conceive jumped out a window to her death. Another set herself on fire. Another hung herself.

In some cultures, the infertile wife is replaced by a second wife brought in to bear children. In Ghana, where infertility is seen as a curse, women without children may be branded as witches and forced to live apart from the rest of the community. In Yoruba, the childless woman is not considered a full-fledged adult and is not allowed to voice her opinion in public.

Although men may feel bad about their lack of children, the women are generally blamed, even if the husband is the one who is infertile. Often, the man refuses to be tested or even to consider that his lack of sperm may be the problem. Instead he lashes out at his wife. Writes Gibb: “The inability to have a child makes a man emasculated; he reasserts his dominant position by subjugating his wife through physical pain.”

Gibb writes about a small village near Delhi where “childless couples are regarded with suspicion, marked as cursed in a state known for its high birth rates, often forbidden from attending social and community events.” Some have resorted to human sacrifices in the hope of curing infertility.

The horror stories go on and on. In many parts of the world, having children is a requirement, not a choice. There is no dickering about husband or wife not wanting to have a baby, no right to choose career, art, freedom or whatever over parenthood. There is no choice. You must have children, and if you are unable to, there will be consequences.

For most readers here at the Childless by Marriage blog, we do have choices. They are difficult choices. We worry about grief, regrets, loneliness, and having no one to take care of us in old age, but whatever we choose, we can still have safety, love, work, and respect. Let’s count our blessings and pray for those who are treated badly for their lack of children.

Thank you, Lorna Gibb, for showing us what it’s like outside our bubble.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever suffered serious consequences for your childless state? Please share in the comments.

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The Nomo Crones—childless elderwomen—are chatting online again on September 15 as part of World Childless Week. It’s at noon Pacific time. Check the website for information on all the week’s activities happening on Zoom from all over the world. You’re sure to find something that grabs your interest. The sessions will be recorded so you can watch them at your convenience.

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The Mother of All Dilemmas: Have a Baby Alone or Not?

Sue Fagalde Lick books about childlessness, childless, getting pregnant in your 40s, single motherhood , , , , ,

The Mother of All Dilemmas: Dreams of Motherhood and the Internship That Changed Everything by Kathleen Guthrie Woods, Steel Rose Press, 2021. Woods is approaching 40 with no husband in sight. She wants to be a mother, but it will soon be too late. Should she get herself pregnant with donor sperm and become a single parent? In her quest to answer that question, Woods undertakes a two-week “internship,” caring full-time for her nephew Jake while his parents go on vacation. She comes out of it with more questions than answers. Can she bear to NOT have a child? What will happen to her career if she does? How does any woman work and care for young children at the same time? As Woods works it out, the reader learns a great deal about what it’s like to be childless when one in five women reach menopause without children, but motherhood is still the norm.

Dear readers, I posed some questions to Kathleen Guthrie Woods last week, and here are her answers.

SFL: At the beginning of the book, you are 40 years old. Clearly you need to move quickly if you are going to get pregnant before you run out of viable eggs. You don’t say much about your 20s and 30s. What was happening in those years? Were there really no suitable partners to be found? Did you worry, especially in your 30s, about your fertility passing by?  

KGW: For me, one of the most challenging parts of writing the book was the editing. In early drafts I had a lot more backstory, which covered those decades—which I then had to cut because they didn’t serve the final story. Painful!

In brief, I spent my 20s and 30s dating far too many Mr. Wrongs. I didn’t really feel the ticking of my biological clock, as I was so certain becoming a mother was something that would happen in my life. I was more frustrated that I hadn’t met someone who wanted to marry me, and who I wanted to marry. I spent that time building great friendships and an interesting career (one I thought of as temporary, because I assumed I would stop working to be a stay-at-home wife and mother). Around the age of 38 is when the clock started working against me. I knew I wanted a solid marriage, and that would take time. But if I really wanted kids, I maybe needed to bypass marriage and pursue motherhood on my own. And there began the journey that began the book.

SFL: How did you get to be such a good aunt? Have you always been great with children?

KGW: Nature plus one amazing role model. I started babysitting when I was around 11. I was the person who could pick up a fussy baby at a gathering and soothe them to sleep. Into adulthood, I was the neighbor who became friends with the kids next door. Loving and enjoying all those kids came—and still comes—easily to me.

My parents and their friends were really great about including the kids when they got together. We didn’t have a “kids’ table” at most dinner parties, and the grownups engaged in conversations with us; we all ate together then played games that could be enjoyed by all ages, like Charades. But the big influence in my life was my Gram. She listened and she valued what we had to say. She acted like a kid with us. For example, we would interview her (using a cassette tape recorder) and she’d make up characters with silly names and funny voices. I’m smiling just thinking about this. With her, we felt seen, loved, and never judged. I hope I do the same for the kids in my life today.

SFL: You were able to try out full-time motherhood for two weeks with 15-month-old Jake while your sister and her wife went to Europe. You seemed to know Jake quite well already, yet you seemed to be very anxious about it. Why were you so apprehensive? Have you considered how it would have been different if Jake were younger or older? Have you had any more extended babysitting experiences with Jake and his baby brother or with your nieces? How old is Jake now? Are you still close?

At the time, I was living in Los Angeles, and Jake and his moms were living in the San Francisco Bay Area. We got together several times a year, so I’d gotten to know him a bit, though with a child that young, it takes a few hours for them to remember you and re-warm up to you. Heading into the “mommy internship,” I was mostly worried that I wouldn’t be able to take care of him on my own, that I would be overwhelmed – or worse, that he would get hurt on my watch. I mean, I wasn’t borrowing a car or something that could be repaired if I damaged it by accident! I felt like he was completely dependent upon me, and this was a big shift from just being responsible for my own well-being. If he had been a little older, a little more independent, I would have felt somewhat differently, but I still would have been very cautious.

I’ll give an example: A few years ago I stayed with Jake and his brother while their moms were on vacation. The boys were pretty self-sufficient, but I still took my responsibilities as the grownup seriously. Jake came to me one afternoon and said oh-so-casually, “I’m going outside to play with the blowtorch!” Um, HECK NO! “But my moms let me!” No to the never, no way! He did know how to use it, he probably would have been fine, but I didn’t want to be the person “in charge” the one time he accidently burned down the garage.

Since the events of the book, I’ve had several kid-sitting adventures with the nephews or nieces for weekends or over a few days. Nothing to compare to the two weeks I had with Jake. The two older nieces are now college students, so our visits are more like friends reconnecting, and I am thoroughly enjoying this chapter with them too.

I should mention that this book took a long time to write because I had to live it all first. Many years and countless drafts passed before I knew what my message and my ending would be. That said, Jake, as of our last in-person get-together, is almost my height. He’ll be getting his driving permit soon! He’s handsome, smart, engaging, kind, and funny, and I’m grateful for how our relationship has evolved.

SFL: While you were Jake’s temporary mom, you seemed to enjoy those occasions when people assumed he was your child. I have experienced that with other people’s kids, too. What is that all about? Why do we want so badly to be seen as mothers?

KGW: Ego? Pride? Social conditioning? I don’t have a satisfactory answer, but I do know my heart swells when it happens. I longed to have a mini me, to have people compliment me with “S/he looks just like you!” Recently I was looking at family photos with my aunt and we were identifying traits passed through the generations: a grandmother’s high cheekbones, a great-aunt’s red hair, my father’s green eyes now mirrored in one of my nieces. Maybe seeing these traits is how we keep some of those loved ones alive for us, long after they’ve passed. 

SFL: Your comment about Fourth of July and how, as the childless one, you attended other people’s celebrations but were never the host hit home for me. Like you, I’m the one who either travels or spends the holidays alone. Now that you live close to your siblings and their children, do they spend the holidays at your place sometimes?

KGW: My husband and I are still the ones who travel for family holiday gatherings. In all fairness, he has a big job and we both usually work through December, so sometimes it’s nice to have some quiet times to ourselves. (Or, at least that’s what I tell myself.)

SFL: I don’t know if you want to spoil the suspense by sharing what you finally decided to do about having children. If so, feel free to tell us how you came to your decision. Do you want to talk about Braden? Surely having this man in your life eased a great deal of your need for human companionship. He sounds wonderful. Have you considered what your life would have been like if Braden hadn’t come along?

KGW: I’ve been writing about being childless for over a decade, so sharing my final decision won’t be too big of a spoiler. The story, I think, is more about how I came to it. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t linear. Time passed. I often felt like the decision was made for me because I aged out of being able to become a mother with my own eggs, and I knew I couldn’t adopt, use a surrogate, or pursue any of the other “fixes” people threw at me. I really beat myself up for maybe not wanting it “enough” to do whatever was necessary to make it happen. At the same time, as I weighed the pros and cons and considered what I would need to make a decent life for myself and a child, I knew I couldn’t do it – and I ultimately decided I didn’t want to do it. I still have moments of total baby lust, by the way. The desire to be a mom doesn’t just switch off because your brain has told you it’s not the best choice for your life.

What I got instead is a great marriage to a great man. He was worth the wait. Had we met 10 years earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready for him and he—well—he was married to someone else. I am incredibly grateful for him and the life we share.

There is a pivotal scene in the book when I wrestle with my role in possibly making him childless by marriage. I was prepared to sacrifice my happiness had he had his own dreams of being a father, something I couldn’t promise him at that time.

Your question about what my life might have been like had I not met him is interesting, and one I hadn’t really considered. As I think about it now, I might have hung on to the possibility of having a child on my own longer—probably longer than would have been healthy. I suspect I would have become bitter before I allowed myself to grieve my losses around not becoming a mother. Eventually I would have moved to be closer to my siblings and their families, though I would have missed out on a lot of fun years with them. I want to say that I would have pulled myself up by the bootstraps and made a good life for myself, but I’m not entirely convinced I would have succeeded. There was a real chance I would have grown lonelier and more isolated over time while silently licking my wounds and envying my friends. Or…maybe I would have gone on the road as a backup singer and written a book about those adventures!

SFL: Most readers of the Childless by Marriage blog are childless because their partners are unable or unwilling to have children. Many are struggling to decide whether to stay in that relationship or seek motherhood/fatherhood on their own. What is your advice for people in that situation?

KGW: My heart goes out to you. While this is part of my story (my husband never wanted kids), I was able to make the decision to remain childless for myself before we had the Big Talk. In the book, I share that I had reached the point where I was willing to let him go if having children was something he really wanted; I didn’t want to deny him that dream.

This is going to sound like such a cliché, but I think there’s truth to the saying “If you love someone, set them free.” I wanted Braden to live his best life, and if I couldn’t give him that, I was willing to let him go find it with someone else. (It still hurts to think about that happening, but I never wanted to him to have regrets and grow to resent me.)

The same holds for our dreams. Sometimes the best, healthiest way for us to love ourselves is to let go of those big dreams we’ve been carrying around for so long when they no longer serve us. Gosh, it’s hard. But we have to release and open up space in our hearts for new love to grow. Be true to yourself. If having children is what you want most, you have to open yourself up to the opportunity, and that may mean leaving the relationship you’re in to find the one that helps you create the life you want. You will be making hard choices, and you have to move forward with the one that will leave you with the least possibility for regrets, for those eat away at you.

My marriage did not replace my longing for children. Let’s be clear on that. But I will say that having a childless marriage has its advantages. We take care of each other. We enjoy each other’s company. We have a ridiculous amount of fun running errands together on weekends (versus going in different directions to attend to the needs of children). Our vacations and meals and cars and movies are all age-appropriate, and we get to choose how we spend our time. Every day I give thanks that I get to share my life with someone who respects, appreciates, and loves me. What a gift!

SFL: What would you like to share that I have not asked about?

KGW: I was incredibly fortunate to find lifelines in my journey toward healing. Writers and bloggers—including Sue—provided safe places for me to explore my feelings, discover that I was not in fact the only woman on the planet grieving the loss of my mommy dreams, and develop friendships with phenomenally compassionate woman. Find and build your community. Reach out to others through comments, chats, and forums. Let’s continue to lift each other up.

***

Kathleen Guthrie Woods wrote the “It Got Me Thinking…” and “Our Stories” columns for Life Without Baby, and she co-authored Life Without Baby: Holiday Companion with Lisa Manterfield. The Mother of All Dilemmas is available in Kindle ebook and paperback on Amazon.

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Do We Settle Because We’re Afraid of Being Alone?

Sue Fagalde Lick books about childlessness, childless and single, childless not by choice , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do we commit to less than perfect partners because we’re terrified of being alone?

A webinar about spinsterhood got me thinking about this over the weekend. On Sunday, Jody Day of Gateway Women led the discussion with Civilla Morgan, who hosts the Childless Not by Choice podcast; Shani Silver, host of A Single Serving podcast, and Donna Ward, author of She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster’s Meditations on Life. (Read my review of her book here.) Ward, who lives in Australia, has just released an American edition of her book.

Our world is not kind to women who for whatever reason, aside from becoming nuns, never marry or have children. The assumption that everyone has a partner is even stronger than the assumption that everyone has children. Have you noticed how the world is set up for couples? Two settings at the restaurant table. Win a trip for two. Here’s a two-for- one coupon.

The word “spinster” has ugly connotations. It implies that something’s wrong with you, that you failed to attract a man. You’re unattractive, weird, asexual, can’t get along with people. Then again, as Ward writes, maybe you attracted plenty of men, but none of them were good enough to spend your life with.

Bachelors are not quite as frowned on, but still we wonder: what’s wrong with you? Why don’t you have a wife and kids like everybody else?

Maybe, like Silver, you like being on your own. You don’t need to be married or have children. She complained that every resource she sees for single women focuses on dating: how to get a man and end your single state. But for some singles, that’s not the issue.

It’s like being alone is a fate worse than death.

I have been alone for 12 years now. I get lonely. I have my memories to keep me company, but memories don’t put their arms around you. Memories don’t help you move that fallen tree branch that weighs more than you do. Memories won’t watch your purse while you go to the restroom, drive you to the ER when you sprain your ankle, or listen when you really need to talk to someone.

But having been married, it’s like I get this check mark from society on the box that says, “Approved.”

The list of challenges living alone goes on for days, but I don’t want to get married again. I like my freedom. Most of my widowed friends feel the same way. We have found our solo power and we like it. When we need help, we call each other.

When I was younger, would I ever have considered a single life? It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it could have happened.

No one asked me out until I was in college. Too nerdy, too fat, not social enough, parents too strict? I don’t know. I was already wondering if I’d ever find anyone, if I’d be like my Barbie doll without a Ken. I was afraid no man would love me when everything in my world told me a woman needs to get married and have children. So when someone finally wanted to date me, I didn’t ponder whether I liked him; I said yes. And I continued to say yes through a first marriage that failed and a series of unsuitable boyfriends between marriages. When I think of all the garbage I put up with just to hold onto a man . . .

By the time I met Fred, I had come to believe I would be single for the rest of my life. What if he hadn’t come along? I hope I wouldn’t have married another dud just to have someone. I know people who have done that. Don’t you?

I can count on one hand the number of people I know who never married. People wonder about them. Are they gay, do they have autism, are they mentally ill, or are they just plain weird? What if they’re regular people who surveyed the choices and said, “I’m fine by myself”?

My dog follows me around all day. She’s afraid of being alone. Humans are afraid, too. Maybe it’s the herd mentality. The zebra that wanders off alone gets killed by the lion. But maybe we don’t need to partner up for safety anymore. We can just be part of the herd.

So how about you? Have you settled so you wouldn’t be alone? Do you think it’s better to make a life alone rather than to be with the wrong person? Does the idea of a solo life scare you so much you’re willing to put up with a less-than-perfect relationship to avoid it, even if that means giving up the chance to have children? Let’s talk about it.

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The Nomo Crones are meeting again for another Childless Elderwomen chat. On Sunday, June 20, noon PDT, I will join Jody Day, Donna Ward, Karen Kaufmann, Jackie Shannon Hollis, Maria Hill, Karen Malone Wright and Stella Duffy. We’ll talk about coming out of the COVID cocoon and the skills we’ve learned from our childless lives. No doubt, our talk will range all over the place. We’re a rowdy bunch. To register to listen live or receive the recording later, click here.

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