children and careers

Is It Possible We’re Childless by Ambivalence?

Sue Fagalde Lick baby craving, children and careers, giving up children for a career, unmarried and childless , , , , , ,
Photo by Olya Kobruseva on Pexels.com

Katherine Baldwin says she is childless by ambivalence. A former journalist turned relationship coach and author of the book How to Fall in Love, she says she was always of two minds about having children. Growing up, she got a negative view of motherhood. For her single mother, having children seemed to be a terrible burden that took away all her dreams. 

Baldwin chose her career instead. “For the first, say, 34 years of my life, I wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in having children. I didn’t feel a yearning. I didn’t make a space in my life to think about them or plan for them. I was too busy traveling and focusing on my career.” 

It wasn’t until she found herself in a good relationship with a man that she began to think about settling down with a husband and children. That relationship ended, but she was now ambivalent about motherhood. Some days she wanted it, other days not so much. Does that sound familiar to any of you?. 

Ambivalence is a big word. My Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines it as “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings” or “continual fluctuation between one thing and its opposite.” In plain English, you keep changing your mind. You have two choices and don’t want to let go of either one.

In her book, Baldwin describes how she was ambivalent about everything in life, and that’s one of the reasons she was in her 40s before she found a relationship she could stick with. She broke up with that man several times before making a commitment to live with him and then to marry him. What was scaring her away? He did not want to have children. And she was . . . ambivalent.They kept coming back together. At 42, she decided to set aside her baby dreams. She was getting a bit old and had never been certain about motherhood anyway. She chose the relationship, knowing it meant remaining childless. And they are happy together.

That’s that, right? No. In a recent interview on the One in Five podcast, she said she still grieves the loss of children. “When in my stages of grief, I wish that we had tried.” She wonders if they might have had kids if they had met 10 years earlier. But most days, she accepts things as they are. “I try to live by the idea that I want what I have.” She urges her clients to do the same. Make a choice and learn to accept what we have, knowing that we did the best we could at the time. 

Baldwin goes into her story in more detail in her book and in a post at her blog, From Forty with Love. The post is quite long, but I encourage you to read it. 

At this blog, we talk about being childless by marriage, but I wonder if many of us are, like  Baldwin, childless by ambivalence. If I’m being totally honest, I know that I am. I was fairly broody during my first marriage, back when I had this idyllic picture of being a stay-at-home mom who writes books. But by the time I met Fred, work had become a major factor in my life. Asked to give up my writing or my music, I would have responded with a solid “Hell no.” But asked to give up babies? I was never directly asked, but my answer would have been, “I don’t know.” Maybe I assumed the step-children would be enough. But instead of devoting myself to them, I kept working, kept singing and playing,  and enrolled in graduate school. When would I have had time to raise children? Yet I wept and ranted about the unfairness of not being a mother. I was, and still am, ambivalent.

It would seem that if a person was absolutely sure they wanted children, they wouldn’t commit to a partner who refuses to have them or who won’t give a straight answer about it, who keeps them hoping they will change their mind. The kids/no kids question would be a deal-breaker. And yet, who wants to be alone? Who wants to leave an otherwise perfect relationship because of this one thing?  

Maybe we’re all ambivalent. 

What do you think? Are you of two minds about motherhood or fatherhood? What is keeping you from making one definite choice? Please comment. I’d love to know what you think.

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Can you have meaningful work and babies, too?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, children and careers, Poets and Writers, Rochelle Spencer, work vs. babies, working mothers
An article titled “Books and Babies” in one of my writing magazines, Poets & Writers (March-April 2013), caught my attention for a number of reasons. I’ve never seen anything like it in a publication for writers. Usually the articles are about things like plot and characters and how to sell your writing. They never talk about babies. But here it was, the cover story in Poets & Writers, with photos of couples with their toddlers and their baby bumps.
Part of me thought: oh God, they’re everywhere now. Just like in all the restaurants where I try to eat in this tourist town in the summer. Babies every-freaking-where. And I thought, oh, the childfree crowd is going to hate this.
But part of me thought: Good. This is important. The question Rochelle Spencer, the article’s author, was asking was: What does having babies do to your writing life? She got the answer even before she had a chance to interview the three featured couples. Just scheduling the interviews proved difficult. Having babies clearly changes their working lives. Suddenly their attention is focused on the children, and finding time to write is a challenge. However, in all three of these couples, the husband and wife are both writers and they support each other in ways we might not see in other couples with different kinds of jobs, or in single-parent situations. They both take care of the children, and they give each other time off to write. It’s not as much time as they used to have, and they’re sleep-deprived and distracted, but they’re still writing.
I always thought I would have children AND write. I saw no problem with being a stay-at-home mom who wrote books, stories and poems. Sure, the baby and toddler years would be intense, but soon the kids would be in school for a big chunk of the day and I could write. Basically I would trade my mother’s knitting and needlework for word-work. I did not envision going to an office every day or traveling around the country for whatever job I had. I was never interested in a job. I just wanted to stay home and write.
Of course that’s not what happened. I got divorced, remarried, widowed. I did not have babies, although I did have a live-in stepson for eight years AND I worked all day. The stress of home life plus work was huge. Even when I worked at home, I was literally running between computer and stove, meetings and Boy Scouts, interviews and school functions. When Michael moved in, I was going to grad school; I had to drop out. No way could I add homework to the mix. I get tired just thinking about it—and he was already pushing 12 when he came to live with us.
I admire these couples in Poets & Writers who are having families and continuing their writing careers. I suspect one could find other couples who have given up on their creative work, at least while their kids are small.
I have often thought God wanted me to do my writing and music and knew I couldn’t do it all. When I was interviewing childless women for my Childless by Marriage book, many said they could not do the work they felt drawn to if they had kids. What do you think? Is it possible to combine career and children? Does not having kids allow you to do things you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise?
Let’s talk about it in the comments.