But I Don't Have Any Children

I was feeling down the other day when I read on Facebook about this Blog called Daily Signs of Hope, so I went there. Right away, the blogger started talking about the greatest joys of his life: his children and grandchildren. Not helpful. I sat there talking back to the computer, saying, but I don't have any children or grandchildren. I just have Annie, my dog.

Sigh. I went back to Daily Signs of Hope this morning and discovered that once you get past the bit about the author's beloved children and grandchildren, he offers some wonderful advice for everyone about how we influence the generations that follow us. His other recent posts do not even mention the kids. Sometimes we childless folks are blinded by our own emotions and freak out unnecessarily.

However, many people who have children, who have a so-called normal life, don't even begin to understand what it's like for those of us who have no children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Their lives revolve around their kids. How many times have we heard people say things like, "I never understood what life was all about until I had children" or, "I never really grew up until my son/daughter was born" or, "Having children changes everything"?

I believe them. I know there are lots of voluntarily childless people out there who feel they don't need to have kids to fully experience everything they want out of life. I disagree. We ARE missing something. As we age, and the older people in our lives die, it sure would be nice to turn around and see someone younger coming up behind us. But if I open my eyes to it, there are young wonderful people in my life, even if I didn't give birth to them. I think my two favorite words are "Aunt Sue."

Both parents and non-parents need to work harder at understanding each other. The numbers of people without children, for whatever reason, are growing. Perhaps future generations will be more understanding about how some people have children and some don’t.

Are You a 'Career Girl'?

At a party last weekend, four of us women got to talking. We were all over 50. Two of us were childless and two were mothers of grown children. O. is 60-something. She had a difficult childhood and felt she would not be a good mother. Her husband didn't want children. She went to work at a young age, eventually making a wonderful career designing movie sets in Hollywood. As she moved through her childbearing years, those around her said, "Oh, she's a career girl." The mothers would shake their heads, implying that there was something sinful about choosing career over children.

T. and D. both had kids, but they both worked, too. After their divorces, they had no choice. T. noted, "Does anyone really think I grew up wanting to be a single mom to two boys and work my fingers to the bone sewing costumes? Come on."

I sighed. I had no kids, but I too was divorced at a young age and grateful I had a job to turn to. After I remarried, I kept working. "I would love to have my mother's life. I'd love to be a housewife," I said. We all laughed. None of us had that option. We always needed to work. Even when my stepson lived with us and my husband had a good job, I worked outside the home, struggling to juggle everything at once.

Am I a career gal? Are you? Did you choose work over children? I didn't. I just ended up with one and not the other. Whether we have children or not, why shouldn't our work be something we love to do? And why don't people look down on men who are devoted to their jobs?
What do you think?

Evelyn R's childless story

Although Evelyn had always loved children and wanted to have her own so badly she hoped she would get pregnant on her honeymoon, somehow it didn't happen.
By the time she got married at age 24, she had a job she loved. Her husband, Leonard, had just gotten out of the military and was struggling to find himself. The time wasn't right and they didn't even discuss having children.
As the years went by, she still liked her job, her nice home and their unfettered lifestyle and wondered if she wanted to give it all up to be a mother. They had been married 10 years when she decided to stop using birth control and see what happened. What happened was: nothing. She never went to a doctor to find out why they didn't conceive, nor did she urge her husband to get himself checked. That way neither one of them could blame the other for their failure to have children, she said.
Once, in the days before people could buy home pregnancy tests, she thought she might be pregnant. At first she felt annoyed, she said. "Then I got kind of happy about it." She was shopping for maternity clothes when she felt a pain in her stomach and discovered that her period had started. "So that was that."
Free from the burden of parenthood, they traveled, socialized, bought new cars regularly, and lived in expensive houses, enjoying the fruits of their earnings. Most of their friends were also childless. The only time she felt out of place, Evelyn said, was when they moved into a housing tract full of young couples just starting their families. They had nothing in common. "We couldn't even hold a conversation."
During her 42-year career with a Bay Area school district, Evelyn was surrounded by children. When she started as a principal's secretary in 1941, the year after she graduated from Heald Business College, she wasn't much older than the students she met. She soon became secretary to the district superintendent and spent the rest of her career in that position. She met co-workers and students who became lifelong friends. Friends half her age took her out and watched over her. She planned to leave her possessions to them when she died.
When we talked, years ago, Evelyn was 77 years old. She said she was too busy to even have a dog or a cat. She went to water aerobics classes four times a week and loved to golf, bowl, shop and visit friends. "I have more real close girlfriends than anyone I know," she said. She also had several young gay friends she considered her best friends. She was going to a friend's house in the wine country for Thanksgiving and was planning a winter trip to Cabo San Lucas. "I'm having a hell of a time," she said.
What did she say when people asked if she had children? "I say, 'No, I don't. I don’t have any children, and I'm an only child, but I've got a lot of friends.' If you say, 'Gee, I wish I had children,' you're dead."

At age 88, Evelyn was honored as the grand marshal of the city of Fremont's annual Fourth of July parade. Interviewed in the local paper, she talked about how she met former students every day, and they're all her "kids." She didn't say a word about the biological children she never had.

Those of us who mope about our childless state and worry about old age might follow Evelyn's example. Grieve if you need to, but don't let the lack of children ruin the rest of your life.

Can a childless actress portray a mother?

British Actress Anne Reid was quoted recently in the Telegraph as saying that childless actresses cannot portray mothers because they don't really know what it's like. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/8279466/Actresses-without-children-cant-play-mothers.html)What do you think? Can we not use what we have seen and experienced in our lives to imagine what it's like to be a mom? Should we flip it and say that women who have children cannot play characters who are childless--or childfree?

I wonder about this as a writer, too. Can I really write accurately about what it's like to give birth and to be a parent when I have not experienced these things for myself? But writers write about a lot of things that they haven't personally experienced, right?

What do you think?

Complete Without Kids author interview

Ellen L. Walker, a psychologist practicing in Bellingham, Washington, is the author of Compete Without Kids, an Insider's Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or By Chance, which came out last month from Greenleaf Press. We talked by phone yesterday about life without children and about the book that was born from her experiences.

Walker, 50, has not had children. During her first marriage, her husband kept saying it was not the right time. They were going to school, working, too busy, etc. "He also said the same thing about getting a dog," Walker said. A lot of women get pregnant "by accident" but she didn't feel that was the right thing to do. However, she did get herself a dog, assuring him that she would take care of it.

After the marriage ended, she was resigned to being childless. But then she married Chris, who had grown children from his first marriage. Seeing him interact with his kids, she began to want her own children. Chris didn't want any more kids. Then 45, she consulted her doctor, who said she probably could still have children and referred her to a doctor who specialized in older women's pregnancies.

After many tearful talks with her husband, she began to think about all the ramifications of having a child at her age and realized it was not going to work for her and Chris. She thought about all the things she had been able to do in her life because she didn't have children: her fulltime psychology practice, travel, writing a book. Life was good,she decided, and she would have to accept that it was not going to include children.

"If I had married a different person, I probably would have ended up having kids," she said. "But it was never my top priority." Plus, she adds, "I seem to have been drawn to men who didn't want to have babies with me."

Walker calls herself childfree, not childless. "For me, it's really important to use the term childfree. It describes a lifestyle, not a loss. The term childless has such a negative connotation." It's important to focus on the things we are able to do because we don't have children and accept that no one can do everything in this life, she says.

Walker admires people who have taken serious time to think about their decision. She didn't do that, and it has been difficult finding peace. Now her friends are going into the grandmother stage, and she is beginning to realize "this is going to be with me my whole life."

Lots of couples these days find themselves disagreeing about whether to have children. It's no longer assumed that after marriage comes babies. Walker recommends they see a marriage counselor to help them work it out. "It's a huge life decision. To me, it could be a deal-breaker." A therapist knows how to process all the feelings that come up and help people find closure.

Seeking closure was one of the reasons Walker wrote her book. "I wanted to find some peace of mind." She started journaling, then started getting other people to tell their stories. She found that the childfree people she met were eager to talk about it, and she began doing interviews. "I realized that a lot of people had a lot of unfinished business with it."

She admits she had a hard time disclosing so much of her own personal information in the book, but she hopes it will help others who are trying to figure out whether or not to have children. She wants young women to see role models who aren't mothers and to take their decision as seriously as any other big decision in their lives.

"You're not a loser if you decide not to be a parent," she stresses.

***
Walker's book is available at Amazon.com and other retail outlets as well as through Greenleaf BookGroup Press. Visit Walker's website and read her blog at www.completewithoutkids.com.

Today I'm interviewing Ellen L. Walker, Ph.D., author of the new book Complete Without Kids: An Insider's Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or By Chance. I'll publish the results tomorrow, but meanwhile, you might want to check out her website and blog at http://completewithoutkids.com. You'll find some interesting reading there.

Oh Jo, Say It Ain't So

When I was growing up, Jo March in Little Women was my heroine. I wanted to be a free-spirited writer like her, right down to the boyish haircut. I assumed that Jo, like author Louisa May Alcott, never had children and devoted her life to her career.

How our memories play tricks on us.

I recently took another look at the last pages of Little Women and discovered that, in addition to raising her husband Fritz's orphaned nephews, Jo actually had two sons, Robin and Teddy, and that once she became a mother, she dumped her writing career. Horrors. Toward the end of the book, she says, "The life I wanted then seems selfish, lonely and cold to me now. I haven't given up the hope that I may write a good book yet, but I can wait, and I'm sure it will be all the better for such experiences and illustrations as these."

Jo points to her sons, her mother, her sisters and her children. They are talking about the dreams they once had. She isn't saying "never" but she's looking at the bigger picture and saying the life she has now as wife and mother is worth altering her dreams.

Oh, Jo.

But then again, I never had children. Maybe if I did, I too would have set my pen down and said it could wait. This is precisely the question that many of the women I interviewed have raised. If they had children, they feared they would never be able to do the things that were most important to them. People who have children might argue that the children have to be the most important things in one's life. I'm stubborn enough or enough of a dreamer to believe I could be both a mother and a writer at the same time.

Jo March was a product of her times. Rumor has it that the Alcott's editor insisted that Jo be married. Children were no doubt a necessary part of the equation.

What about you? Are there things you could not do in your lives if you had children? Would you be willing to sacrifice one or the other if you had a choice?