If you are a woman in your 30s, chances are you have had conversations about whether or not to have children. These conversations may have been with friends, a partner or even just in your own head. Of course, some women may have already begun a family and some may have always been clear that they would have children, but for many women there is still a choice to be made.
For past generations, having children was a given. There was no real choice about it. Instead, it was assumed that if you were a woman, you would become a mother. It’s only very recently that there has been a choice about whether to procreate or not. Most women still choose motherhood, but an increasing number do not. And for others choice is a moot point: their life circumstances may choose for them.
The decision not to have children, however, is not culturally sanctioned. There are still religious judgements, cultural biases and media stereotypes that prevent a woman from feeling completely free to choose. It can take courage to remain childless while surrounded by such negativity and judgement.
The statistics
The Australian Institute of Family Studies recently conducted research into people’s choices about having children. They found that only about 5 per cent of childless couples said they didn’t want children. The rest were still planning or still trying to have babies. So those women deciding not to have children are definitely in the minority. The research found, though, that these women did not have any regrets about their choice later on.
Interestingly, many of the women who didn’t want children said they had always felt they wouldn’t really want kids. The role of parenting never appealed. Other women’s reasons weren’t completely clear. There was mention of uncertainty about finances or jobs, or worry about the effect on their relationship or the fitness of their partner for the role of parent. Sometimes there was a fear of future world circumstances and concern about bringing a child into such a place.
The media love to stereotype childless women as power-hungry and career-driven, but this is just not the reality. Only a small percentage of women said the choice was because of their career. Some women just weren’t convinced enough that the role was for them, so they didn’t want to go ahead for fear of regretting it. And, unlike many decisions in life, the choice to have a baby is definitely something you can’t change your mind about once the child is there.
The judgements
In our culture, motherhood is a very loaded concept. It has spiritual and primeval connotations. Women choosing not to take on the role have to navigate a landscape of incomprehension, judgement and even condemnation. We see a word like “barren” thrown about in the media, damning a woman who dares to have a career and no child. Some people believe it is “unnatural” not to have children. I recently heard a man say that’s what people are here for: to procreate. If it is seen as the purpose of life, then childlessness will seem senseless and strange.
For religious people, not having children can actually be viewed as spiritually wrong, especially for Catholics. Parenthood is not seen as a choice but rather as a spiritual duty. There’s a pretty heavy judgement there, as a woman without children is defying the “word” of God!
Even for those without the religious baggage, not having children may be seen as morally wrong. Women are supposed to structure their life around motherhood. In older people’s minds, especially, the only reason a woman shouldn’t have children is if she can’t. Such thinking leads to the unfortunate assumption that everyone should be a parent whether they are fit to be or not.
Despite being misinformed, the media still tend to portray childless women as corporate types who are cold-hearted and career-driven. The other stereotype is that of the woman who can’t find a partner and who will therefore remain tragically unfulfilled in life. Childlessness as a choice is rarely validated.
Being selfish
One of the main judgements made about childless women is that they are selfish. I have read countless letters in newspaper opinion pages where it is glibly assumed that a person who doesn’t have children is making this decision for selfish reasons. Such writers insist that a person’s life must be dedicated to parenting and any other choice about where to use your creative energies is not legitimate.
Notions about the selfishness of childless people do not match with reality. I have spoken with women deciding not to have children and their reasons are never selfish and never made lightly. The irony is that in speaking to countless young couples about becoming parents, one of the most common reasons cited for having children is “so we are not alone and have someone to look after us when we are old”. Surely that’s a self-serving motivation!
I have spoken to other prospective mothers who say they want to be loved and that a child would be the source of this love. While it is true that a child will love its parents, such motivation seems to come more from what will be received than from what is given. How many people have ended up on therapists’ couches through a compulsion to fulfil parents’ unhealthy expectations! The decision to have a child needs to come from a bountiful place, not one of deficit.
Some parents see a child as a reflection of themselves. They live their lives out via the child. Other parents play out their personal issues on the child. Some women who decide not to have children do so because they have seen the results of such unhealthy parenting. Women with this insight may be wary of passing on negative patterns to the next generation, so they forgo having children altogether.
The consequences
Suzanne*, who did not have children, was in her early 40s and very successful in her work in social welfare. She worked incredibly hard, aiming to make a positive difference in the world. She also did volunteer work on weekends and was running herself so thin that her health was beginning to suffer.
Suzanne revealed that guilt was the motivation driving her relentless activity schedule. She burst into tears as she spoke about her feelings around not being a mother: “Other women have children and they have jobs. How dare I not do extra to make up for not having children. I’ve got time that other women don’t have. I have to make a contribution.”
The media stories and complaints from working mothers about having to be superwomen had left their mark on Suzanne. Even though she was already making a contribution through her weekday job, it wasn’t enough to counter the guilt created by the stereotype of “selfish childless women”. In her bid to “redeem” herself she was compromising her health more than the working mothers with whom she compared herself.
As Moira, another woman without children, put it: “Your time and your life are minimised. I can never say to other women that I am tired or busy because you get back, ‘Huh! Busy … you don’t know what busy is. Try squeezing two kids into the work day.’” Moira felt that her efforts were never legitimate enough to measure up to the role of working mothers. As a result she felt invisible and undervalued.
Sarah is a chiropractor in her late 30s. She also had issues with being childless. Her decision not to have children had always been clear to her, but nevertheless she nursed a secret fear about it inside herself. “I don’t get to be in the ‘mothers’ club’. I’m not normal. I’m on the outer.” Sarah wasn’t referring to any literal mothers’ club, just the territory a woman enters when she becomes a mother. “I will never know what it is like. Maybe I am not a real woman.”
Sarah was not the only childless woman to feel this way. Womanhood is often equated with motherhood. Women who are not mothers therefore have to carve out their own sense of legitimacy and value since it will not be automatically conferred on them, as happens when a woman becomes a mother. With few role models around, this can be daunting for some women.
Making the decision
The assumptions about a women’s necessary role as a mother leave little free space for women to explore the possibility of declining the “invitation” to motherhood. It may be experienced as a demand instead of a choice. Women say there is a pressure they experience from others when they are deciding whether or not to have children.
Lisa had just turned 40 and was deciding that she probably wouldn’t have children. She desperately wanted to talk to other women about the issues but found it very difficult to have a reasonable conversation. When she raised the issue with friends who already had children, the response would be, “Oooh, how lovely if you were to have a little one.”
“People don’t understand if you have weighed it up and still decide no,” she said. They glibly say, “Oh, just go ahead and have one”, even though I am over 40 and feel like it’s too late.
For some women the decision not to have children is out of their hands. Suzanne had a relationship with a man much older than herself and he didn’t want to have children. It would have come down to a choice between her relationship and becoming a single mum, which for her was not an option. On the other hand, Moira, whom I mentioned earlier, had not met her partner until she was in her 40s and by then she felt she was too old to begin a family.
Sometimes the “choice” not to have children is related to other life circumstances. Lisa had been working through difficult life issues that had taken her energy and attention for some years. By the time she was through it all, she felt she had little left to give to a child. Had it been otherwise, she would have had a family. Now she was left with the grief about how her life had worked out.
Mourning
It can be difficult to manage the grief that comes from being childless, especially if the choice was made for you. There is no obvious mourning process, no event and no ritual. There has been no death and there is no body. Just the death of potential, the end of possibility. As Lisa said, “I feel invisible. There is nowhere to express my pain. I don’t get support from the community. There is no bereavement leave and no casseroles on the doorstep.”
Lisa had to construct her own ritual or mourning. I asked her to buy some things that she would have bought if she were to have a baby. In doing so she was brought face to face with what she was missing. It became more real. Lisa carefully and lovingly chose the clothes and toys she would have liked to have given her newborn. It was a tearful and challenging process. Gathering the items represented the potential child she might have had.
Lisa put the items in a baby bag and I suggested she keep this out in view at home as she went through the grieving process. For a while she found herself jealously and sorrowfully looking at mothers pushing prams in the street or playing with their children at a café. She intended to keep the bag out until she had passed through the active grief phase.
Once Lisa had come to terms with her situation she would then keep one item from the basket and pass the rest of the baby items on to a friend who would want them. As she did so, she would say something like: “Here are some things I bought for a baby if I had been able to have one. I haven’t, so I would like you to have them.”
As she gave up the baby clothes, so she gave up the possibility of becoming a mother. At the completion of the process after some months, Lisa felt she had come to terms with her loss. She was no longer drawn to stare at mothers with babies and was able to move more peacefully into the next phase of her life.
Connection and meaning
Given that most couples’ lives are organised around child raising, those without children have to construct an alternative vision or purpose for their lives. Empty nesters face this prospect when their children leave home. They may feel at a loss when child rearing has been completed. Childless couples face this issue much earlier.
As a couple, it may take active work to create a sense of joint purpose that would otherwise come from sharing the parenting of a child. It may come from sharing in and supporting each other’s endeavours. It could be a common interest in something outside of work. Either way, the couple need to make sure they spend time together feeding this joint purpose so the relationship remains creative and alive.
For a woman without children it is the contribution she makes to the world via work that can bring satisfaction and meaning. I know childless women who work variously in the areas of social welfare, politics and the arts who are all passionate and committed to what they do. Each feels fulfilled by her endeavours. Some have mourned the lack of children, but for others it was never an issue.
Connection is another factor for those without children. Family brings a sense of belonging, of having a place in the world. Those without children may find they lack a sense of family and may mourn this loss. Given that the definition of family has changed so much in recent decades, though, it’s possible to construct a sense of family in alternative ways. You don’t have to birth one.
Some people find they end up gathering a small group of close friends around them. These friendship groups may be even more intimate than families because they are free of the emotional politics that plague many families. As Janine, a public servant in her late 40s, described: “It is my friends who turn up to the important events in my life. They send flowers to mark significant occasions. I know they hold me in their hearts.”
Alternatively, some childless people find themselves adopting or being adopted by some unrelated family. They may become uncle or aunt to a friend or colleague’s children. Still others may find satisfaction in the bonds created by the shared vision of a team or community group. If there is time, commitment and love given, these alternative connections can be just as satisfying as genetic families.
Choice
Historically, motherhood has been revered because it guaranteed the continuation of the species. It was an evolutionary imperative that then became socially and culturally enshrined as a virtue. But humanity is way past the stage where we need everyone to procreate to continue the species. We could do with going in the opposite direction. Perhaps those who decide not to procreate are at the leading edge of a healthy evolutionary trend.
It might be useful to begin to regard parenting not as a right and a duty but as a privilege and a choice. It is not healthy for people to become parents just because that’s what you do. If it were culturally validated that having children was an option and not a demand, maybe some would choose more wisely. Those who decide to direct their energies towards a vocation other than parenting could be affirmed in their decision.
Whether you are making a contribution to society by becoming a parent or by some social, cultural or vocational role, you deserve to be valued for your efforts. Everyone’s destiny is unique and needs to be honoured as such, regardless of whether or not it involves having children. And as birth rates decline, perhaps our culture will embrace this more inclusive and freeing attitude towards alternative life choices.
* Names have been changed to protect confidentiality.
Cynthia Hickman is a psychologist working in private practice in Melbourne, Australia. T: 0417 103 018, W: www.cynthiahickman.net
