Recently a friend of mine posted a link to an article from Huffington Post on her Facebook page. The subject was things that childless women wanted other women to know. I immediately clicked on the link, started to read, and found my eyes welling up with tears as I could relate to so many things that were said in the article. (It's called 7 Things Women Without Children Want Moms To Know...I suggest you look it up) I won't quote the article or anything here, that's not what this blog is about. It got me thinking about my own childless state, how I got here, and where I see it going.
Let me backtrack a bit. In case you don't know, I am 36 years old. I will be 37 in August. I am single. I have no children. As I said on my Facebook when I reposted the article I mentioned, it is partly by choice and partly by my life situation. As a disclaimer, everything I am about to write pertains only to me and my situation. I do not speak for other women without children. We all have our own stories to tell, this happens to be mine.
As far back as I can remember I always wanted children. If you dig back through old pictures of me as a child you will see me taking care of my dolls, even "nursing" them. I envisioned that by the time I turned 26 I would be married and that after enjoying a few years of blissful married life my husband and I would start having kids before I turned 30. I wanted four and didn't care about the sex of the children (although I do still love the name Deveraux for a girl). I am the oldest of four so a big family seemed only natural to me. But the age of 26 came and went and there was no husband, no prospect of kids. Instead my sisters started having children. First one sister and then another. At one point, half joking, I said to a co-worker, "If my youngest sister has a kid before me I'll kill myself." (We're all so dramatic in our twenties, aren't we?) I'm sure you can guess what happened next: my youngest sister announced she was pregnant. I still distinctly remember sitting in my apartment and crying, not tears of joy either. I couldn't believe that something I had longed for my whole life wasn't happening to me, but to all three of my sisters instead. It didn't seem fair. I had so much love to give so why wasn't a husband and a family working out for me? Family events would find me coming home depressed because all I had was an empty apartment. At this time I wasn't allowed pets where I was living so I didn't even have the comfort of a cat. I felt left out of family conversations at holidays because it always seemed to center around being pregnant, giving birth, or raising children, things I couldn't relate to. I turned the dreaded 30. On those nights when I would feel particularly lonely I would find myself lying in bed at night crying, wondering what was so wrong with me that nobody wanted to marry me and have children with me. It may seem a bit much to some of you reading this, but when you've wanted something for practically your entire life and it wasn't even close to being in your grasp, bouts of depression and pity are to be expected. Any time I was around a niece or a nephew as a baby I would spend hours just holding them, telling everyone that since I wasn't likely to have one of my own I needed all the baby time I could get. I was only partly joking. I even remember at one point telling my mom that if I was still single at 35 I would look in to having a child on my own. (Clearly that didn't happen.)
So what changed? First, I lived with my youngest sister and her two small boys (at the time ages 1 and 2) for nine months. She worked a lot so I took over parenting tasks when she wasn't there. A lot of nights I fed them dinner, gave them their baths, and put them to bed. My youngest nephew had a tendency to spit out his binkie in the middle of the night and cry when he couldn't find it. Being a light sleeper I would often wake up, go in there, and find it for him. I would get them up in the morning and dressed for day care. If I was off on a weekend day and my sister was working I was taking care of them all day: breakfast, nap, lunch, TV shows, walk to the playground if it was nice. I did their laundry once a week when I did mine. I don't want to make it sound like my sister was a slacker parent. She wasn't and she's not. I'm just trying to explain that my eyes were opened to what day to day life with a small child was like. I started to wonder if I actually had the patience or unselfishness to become a parent. (I often joke with my sister that living with her and the boys is what made me decide I didn't want children. I'm still not sure five years later how serious that statement is).
Second, I got older. The reality for a woman is that the closer she gets to 40 the less fertile she becomes. I've sat down and done the math. Even if I meet the Future Mr. Summer Sattora tomorrow, when you factor in an average dating time of a year before getting engaged, another year or two of being engaged, and then even if we start trying right away, I would be 38 or 39 at the time of trying to have a child. While not impossible, the chances are a lot slimmer than when I was 28 or 29. And who's to say we would conceive right away? I could easily be in my early to mid-40's before a child is born. These are daunting odds for me. Also, I don't date often. It's not uncommon for me to go two or three years between boyfriends (and they don't usually stick around for long). Seeing as how I recently got out of a very brief relationship only a few months ago, then by my past history I won't even date anyone until I'm probably 39. So by my earlier math I would be 42 at the earliest before trying to get pregnant. Again, daunting odds. So maybe it's just easier to state I don't want kids when perhaps what I mean to say is that I don't see children as a likely part of my future. But you don't want to tell people that because then they immediately try to make you feel better and I don't want to hear how you never know what your future holds or if it's meant to be it will happen or lots of women have children in their 40's or whatever nonsense someone tells you when they're trying to not feel awkward around you.
So that's my story. I'm now at a point where 95-98% of the time I am more than happy to be a single childless woman in her mid-30's. I can watch what I want, eat what I want, be in my pajamas all day, go where I want when I want..... you get the idea. But yes, there is that 5-2% of the time when I wish children were an option for me. I know I would be a good mother. Maybe not a great one, but a good one. I still have a lot of love to give. I've been known to joke that if my soap opera future husband and I had children they would be beautiful blue eyed babies. But you learn to accept what you have in life. You learn to want what you have, not what you don't have. Maybe the dream hasn't completely died yet. Somewhere in the back of my mind is still the thought of you never know. If the right guy came along and the stars were aligned I wouldn't hate the idea of a child. But I also know that if the right guy came along and didn't want kids I would be okay with that too. I no longer feel like something in my life is lacking. I have my two cats and any time I spend with my nieces and nephews is bliss for me. I'm also lucky that I am surrounded by people who don't question my choice to not have children. They accept it and they accept me just the way I am. Your story may be different. Again, I encourage you to read the article from Huffington Post I mentioned at the start of the blog. A woman is not less of a woman if she doesn't have a child. Accept her childless state and if she wants to share her story, whether she is childless by choice, circumstance, or what have you, listen and still accept her. We all have our different paths to walk in this life.
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