Childfree by Choice
By the time you are in your 40s, as I am, you have known many women who have had babies. I once told a woman who had children that I never planned to have kids and she said I should get to it quickly or I would kick myself later in life. I smiled and simply explained the way I felt. She looked at me with bemused incomprehension. I in turn have not really understood what the whole process has meant to those women and their lives, besides the obvious time, effort, annoyance and enjoyment. When a friend tells me that she is pregnant, I am happy for her as I expect that she’ll have a lot of joy and fulfilment with a child. But I do not have a feeling well up in me that distinctively understands or is in accord with her expectant joy. I honestly in my soul don’t know the drive to become pregnant, the …. simply wanting a baby.
There has always been an unspoken, and sometimes spoken, range of emotions towards this deviation from the statistical norm. As with the woman above, it seems people are comfortable with what is familiar and with what does not require much thought outside of one’s own experience. I understand this and have patience with the occasional reaction to my choice, though I’m sure it is a lot easier now than say 30 years ago. Not having had children, I don’t stand out in the way I would have then because that norm has been changing and now, thankfully, other things are valued as well, or differently. This change, society’s slow acceptance of deviations in it’s midst, is an unburdening for women in general, supplemented by one’s single status possibly being a choice now rather than something to quickly escape from. I am grateful to live at this end of the chain of transformations.
So, having always been aware that I didn’t want children, by my early 20s I was comfortably certain of this. Strangely this seemed to upset some people; I thought, surely not wanting children occurred as naturally as wanting them. We all come to life with different desires and needs and in different degrees. And I don’t believe that there is some deep place within me that feels like I’m missing out or will live to regret it. It is just… as it is.
More than a decade ago, one of my sisters had a boy and then a girl, and though I felt the instinctive protectiveness for a blood relative, and maybe because I was younger, I did not feel enlightened as to the reason ‘why’ she had them. Then, this last year my identical twin had a baby girl. Well, to start off with, this baby has half my genes and I was in the delivery room when she was born. I have had the joy of living with them for the first year of her life and it has been a profound pleasure. I am honoured to have a comfortable intimacy with a little one, and to watch as she learns. And I also have the luxury of all the fun bits, without the sleep deprivation and added stress. For the first time, I have had a brief inkling as to why people have babies; they bring a lot of joy with them, and a sense of purpose. I love holding her and making her laugh, miss her and look forward to seeing her at the end of the day. I love her and take film and pictures of her all the time. Holding her a few months ago, a friend joked, was I jealous and wanting one now? No was the easy answer. I love this little baby, it’s lovely to have another person to love in your life, but that desire is not there.
Of course pressures can still exist to enter motherhood – from family and friends for example – but I am lucky in this, and grateful to feel the clarity and freedom of my own choices for such a huge, life changing decision; a decision I feel should be chosen with one’s own inner knowledge.
By Sue (suslocol)
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