Maybe baby: the incalculable strangeness of not having children
Last week I was at a work conference when I was unexpectedly hit by a tsunami of baby grief. We were in the main hall ‘speed networking’ (which yes, was as awkward as it sounds). I was momentarily paired with a woman who is some hot shot at a big consultancy, and we were asked to share one thing we wanted to change in our lives this year. She was amazing, and opening shared how she wanted to work less and spend more time with her teenage girls, and how how tough that was going to be to do at her level in her industry. I told her she was amazing. She looked proud. Then, my turn.
For a moment I was stumped. But she had been honest, and so I decided to be too. So I said what was true: for the last 10 years I’ve been trying to work out how I could become a mother, when whoever the guy/girl is that’s supposed to be my partner just hasn’t shown up yet. I told her about the regular fertility tests, the solo motherhood deliberations, the unexpected surgeries, the forays into the new wild world of coparenting. And I told her how, at 40, I had finally decided it might be time to let this dream go. And I had absolutely no idea what to do next with my life, but I guess, the thing I needed to change was to try and find out.
To be fair, she did brilliantly given I had just massively overshared to a perfect stranger. “Do you have anyone supporting you with all this?” she said. Well, no, I said. Not really. I’ve got this. And it’s not something anyone talks about really. And most of my friends are either really busy with their own families or just don’t want kids at all, so it’s not always easy to find common ground. And honestly, how many friends would I have left if I called them every time I hit a grief spiral for something so abstract as grieving something I‘ve never actually had?
Now she was stumped. The bell rings. It’s time to speed network with someone else. So I grab my bag and rush to the toilets in the QEII conference centre, and cry for a solid hour.
I should say at this point that I did call friends that afternoon, and they were all amazing. Saying I’m doing this alone isn’t quite the truth, and I have amazing family and kind friends who always sit with me when I need them.
Although in another way, there is a truth in it. We don’t actually have a word for what is happening to me: this strange reality where you want to be a parent, but you can’t. Some call it childfree by circumstance. Some call it social infertility. Neither of those phrases feel right to me: I’m not infertile, and while my circumstances don’t seem to have resulted in me being a mum, that feels as much by my own making as it is by the hands of fate.
Because the other part to this strange non-mothering reality no one ever quite tells you about — ambivalence. The fact that my own feelings on motherhood are much more complex than this story might make out. That sometimes the only thing I want in the world is to be pregnant. Others, I can’t quite believe my luck that I get to be 40 and not have children. Sometimes, I look at the things I love in my life: my free time, travel, quiet, sleep, and I am very aware that having kids would mean giving many of these things up. Others, I would give it up in a heartbeat. See? Confusing. Even more so when no one talks about it.
Of course, I’m not alone. Fewer people are having children, and those that are are having less of them. Some of this is choice (and my god I’m envious of the people who just know they don’t want kids), and some of this is modern life. Dating culture is kind of broken these days, and the pandemic hasn’t helped. Go to the bulging Facebook groups on topics like Solo Mothers By Choice and The Single Supplement, and you quickly see there are thousands of women (and men) who have reached their 40s imagining they would have a family by this point in their lives, but for a whole host of complex and interrelated reasons, haven’t. My situation is just one of the many trends in modern culture that is only getting bigger, but which we have failed to find a way to talk about without descending into prejudicial pity, shame and awkwardness. In many real ways, un-familied men and women are still inadvertently ostracised, not ‘on purpose’, but simply by virtue of being in a minority. So we need to stop that, really.
There are many, many ways that living in this reality affects my life. There’s the baby ache, the unexpected grief tsunamis, the out-of-nowhere deep stomach punch that comes when you walk past a young family looking happy and proud. There are the facebook and instagram posts you have to mute, the events you sometimes need to dodge, the conversations you can’t quite participate in without lying through your teeth that ‘everything is fine’.
And there are the good things: the spontaneous adventures made on no one’s schedule but your own, the time to dedicate to the things you love, the fact the 99% of the time the conversations you have with other adults are about life and the world, not poo and mealtimes. The time when the grief and baby ache abates, and you get to hang out with mates and their brilliant kids, and experience a massive dollop of playful joy (while still being able to leave before the witching hour). And for me, an occasional feeling of pride. That women for centuries have fought for control of their bodies and futures, and maybe part of what women like me are here for is to role model good living that doesn’t rest on the usual traditions.
Still, it’s tough sometimes, right? Not having the thing that your DNA is telling you you need. Ignoring the gut feel voice that refuses to stop saying ‘you’re supposed to be a parent to a small army of kids by now.’ Women navigate this stuff every day (often with the help of amazing groups like Jody Day’s Gateway Women). I’m navigating it every day too. And writing helps, so I plan to write about it more, if that’s ok with you. Because writing about hard stuff is part of what I do. And let’s face it; someone needs to talk about it.
