Year: 2011

What If Your Mate Says No to Kids?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, men who don't want children, talking about having kids

Last week, I wrote about how important it is to have The Conversation with our mates about whether or not we want to have children. It can be a tough conversation to have, especially for women. Sometimes men are like fish. We don’t want to speak too loudly for fear of scaring them away. I know that’s how it was with me. I lacked the self-esteem to say I wanted children and would do whatever it took to have them. With my first husband, by the time I found out he didn’t want to have children, our marriage was already going badly. It didn’t matter what I said; it wasn’t going to happen. But what if we had had that conversation before we got married? Maybe we would have avoided a troubled marriage.

With Fred, well, I suspect he was actually worth sacrificing children for. We had such a love, the kind they make movies about. He was the best husband a woman could want. He did not want to have more children, but I think if I really insisted that I had to have kids to be happy, he would have gone along with it. I didn’t insist. I just moped. I think part of me believed I had already lost my chance with my first marriage, and I was lucky just to have another husband. Also, to be honest, I wonder if my desire was not as strong as my desire to do other things in life, but I’ll never know. We avoided the conversation.

So what does one do if one’s mate says, “Absolutely not. I refuse to have children.” A lot of people who comment here are dealing with that problem right now. Do they push to the point of destroying the relationship? Do they risk abandoning the love they have in the hope of finding someone else who will welcome children? Do they give up their dream in order to stay together? How do you make such a decision?

I wish I had all the answers to these questions. We each have to find them for ourselves through soul-searching and prayer and being alert to those moments when everything becomes very clear.

What do you think? What do you do if he/she says, “No kids. No way.”

Have you had the "baby" conversation with your mate?

Sue Fagalde Lick does he want to have children?, talk about children before marriage

I didn’t know my first husband didn’t want children until we were well into our marriage. He seemed good with other people’s children. I assumed he’d be great with our own. But I was wrong. He kept wanting to put it off until he finally admitted he didn’t want kids at all. By then, our marriage was shot anyway so we didn’t talk much about it. We should have talked about it before we got married, but we never did.

With my second husband, we talked around the issue of having children but never addressed it head-on. He had had a vasectomy and he told me didn’t want to add any more kids to the three he already had, but did I believe him? No. Did I stand up for my right to be a mom? I did not.

All too often, we fail to have one of the most important conversations we should have with our mates. We might not agree on whether to have children, but at least we need to be honest about it. I think if I had really pushed, I might be a mother today. But I never straight out said, “I want children. This is important to me. I will be devastated if I never become a mother.”

Sometimes we’re afraid to push, for fear our partner will get angry and break up with us. But if you can’t talk about such an important topic, how good is that relationship anyway? Now, don’t bring it up on the first date, but if you’ve been together a while, it’s time to have the baby talk.

For this conversation to succeed, we have to know what we want. Is not having children a deal-breaker, or can you live with it? How strongly does your partner feel about it? Why does he think he doesn’t want kids?

All too often, I see couples who find themselves in a miserable place because they didn’t work this out before it was too late. I know it’s hard to bring it up. But try it. Maybe you could say something like, “I always wanted to have a little girl.” See what he says, then follow up. Make sure you both are clear on this all-too-important issue. Sooner or later, it will harm your relationship if you don’t.

Did you ever lie about not having children?

Sue Fagalde Lick lying about childlessness, pretending to be a mom

Once upon a time, I was a regular contributor to a parenting magazine. I wrote articles about nutrition, health, summer camp, the likelihood of having twins, the cost of having a baby, and other topics. I glommed ideas off my stepson. He wouldn’t eat vegetables? It became an article. He was color-blind? Another article.

When I interviewed parents and childcare experts, I did not tell them I had never had children. I let them assume that I was a mom, that Michael was my kid. At the time, I was immersed in the day-to-day challenges of life with an adolescent. I did the doctor runs, got the calls from the school, baked cookies for the Boy Scout troop. Didn’t that count?

I got busted a few times when people asked about my experiences with pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care. I had no such experiences. My parenting life began when Michael was almost 12, and it was only part-time. Then I would have to confess that I didn’t actually have any children of my own. But most of the time it was easier to pretend.

How about you? Have you ever lied about being a parent? Pretended your stepchild, niece or nephew or another kid was your own?

Did you expect to have children?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless but raised to be a mother

I’m a child of the ’50s. Born in 1952,I came of age at the peak of the women’s movement, devouring every issue of Ms. Magazine, proudly telling people I was a feminist. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But I also expected to be a mother. From the time I was a toddler, my parents had trained me to follow my stay-at-home mother’s example. Yes, writing and music were fine, as long as they didn’t interfere with a woman’s primary job: taking care of her home, husband and children. We’re glad you’re getting good grades in school, and it’s nice that you got your poem published, but can you bake a cake? Can you hem a skirt? Can you diaper a baby? TV shows and movies from the 1950s and ’60s formed me in the Doris Day mold. Whatever else I might want to do, I would get married and have children.

It didn’t turn out that way.

How about you? I know I’m older than many of my readers, so maybe your experiences were different. Were you raised to be a mom or was that just one of many options? I’d love to hear what you have to say on this.

Copyright Sue Fagalde Lick 2011

Childlessness in the Bible

Sue Fagalde Lick Childlessness in the Bible, patron saint childless women, St. Anne

Life was clear-cut in Biblical times. If you didn’t have a baby, it was because you couldn’t conceive or couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term. None of the husbands said, “I don’t want to have kids.” Maybe they thought it, but they wouldn’t dare say it. Couples needed children to help with the work and to carry on the family to future generations. Some poor woman on her 15th pregnancy might have wished for a condom, but we don’t hear about that.

I recently happened upon a website that lists all the women in the Bible who suffered from infertility. It’s important to note that all of these women eventually gave birth: “And she conceived and bare a son.”

We’ve got Sarah, wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac; Rebekah, wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob and Esau; Rachel, wife of Jacob, mother of Joseph and Benjamin; Manoah’s wife, the mother of Samson; Hannah, wife of Elkanah, mother of Samuel; Elizabeth, wife of Zacharias and mother of John the Baptist, and a Shunammite Woman, whose husband and son are unnamed.

We also read about St. Anne, patroness saint for childless people, who conceived the Virgin Mary in her old age. And, at another site, we read about this prophetess who was unable to conceive for a long time, but eventually became a mother of six “through devoted prayer to God.”

I would love for the Bible to tell us about women who were never able to conceive or whose husbands refused to give them children. There must have been some, but we don’t read about them in the Bible. The choices were much clearer in those days. If you could have children, you did. If you couldn’t, you prayed for divine intervention.

The issues are much more complicated now, but I suspect prayer wouldn’t hurt. If nothing else, pray for clarity and peace. Run through the Serenity Prayer. If you’re not religious . . . well, I welcome your suggestions.

Comforting words for the childless

Sue Fagalde Lick books about childlessness, comfort for the childless, count your blessings, mareymercy

One of many anonymous commenters sent me this: “Hi Sue, I’m the anon from Oct. 30th same age group…I wanted to share something that may help others. Tonight I was starting to feel depressed and anxious (after hearing about a friend’s children) and decided to speak with my husband about my feelings. He shared that he feels bad sometimes for us not having children or grandchildren but he chooses not to dwell on it. He doesn’t want to dwell on what we don’t have but what we do have. He takes a piece of paper and lists everything he can think of to be thankful for. Count your blessings. So I did the same. Then I worked out for an hour to rid myself of the negative energy. This was helpful, tonight, for me. Hoping this will help others…Thank you again for this site.”

Try it. I think it does help.

 

Mommy Training with Dolls

Sue Fagalde Lick childless women playing with dolls, mommy training, playing with dolls

I once had a hundred dolls. I lined them up on my dresser and counted them. My math was probably off, but they were my children. Every year at Christmas, there seemed to be a new doll I just had to have. If Santa didn’t bring her, I’d die. One year Santa brought a three-foot-tall walking doll I named Patty. My friend Sherri got one, too. We walked them down the street toward each other so they could be best friends, just like us. My dolls always had dark hair and eyes like me. Sherri’s dolls were blondes.

Each new doll I received spent the first night sleeping against the pillow next to me while the others slept with the stuffed animals at the foot of the bed. It’s a wonder there was any room left for me. I named the newcomer, kissed her and wrapped my body around hers to protect her from the night terrors.

The next morning, I dressed her, combed her hair and brought her to breakfast with me, setting her up against the milk bottle, pretending to feed her bits of toast and eggs. I took her to school with me, never wanting to leave her alone. I knew she was just a cloth or plastic doll, but she was a real person to me.

Back in the 1950s, the big innovation was baby dolls that drank and wet. You inserted the tip of a rubber bottle in the hole between their lips and squeezed the milk or water down their throats. Rather quickly, the liquid came out a hole on the other end. It was too messy to do in the house.

Sherri and I fed our “babies” outside in the patio. That was our house. It never seemed odd to us to be two mothers sharing the same house. Our husbands were nonexistent or off at imaginary jobs where they belonged. Like our mothers, we spent our days taking care of the house and our babies. We talked to our dolls all the time, telling them how sweet they were and how much we loved them. We taught them what we had learned about Jesus in catechism class, along with the ABCs, the times tables, and the capitals of all the states in the U.S.

Betsy Wetsy and Tiny Tears led to Chatty Cathy, who could talk when you pulled the string in her back. “I’m hungry.” “I’m thirsty.” “I love you,” she said. Then we got Barbie and her curvaceous friends. My black-haired Barbie had a best friend named Sandy, and they hung out with Sherri’s blonde Barbie and Ken. We invented boyfriends and careers for our dolls. Mine were always in show business. Sherri’s Barbie was a stay-at-home mom.

We watched our children grow up in that redwood patio with the cracked concrete floor. We cooked our pretend meals in the brick fireplace that my father and grandfather had built together, and washed the dishes in the sink Dad had made from scraps of wood and old pipes.

I was a good mother to my dolls, but all too soon I faced the empty nest.

When I was around 13, growing breasts and having my first periods, my mother decided I didn’t need dolls anymore. “You’re getting too old,” she said. “It’s time to give them to Goodwill.

“No,” I protested. “They’re mine.” My children. How could I give them up?

Mom was not one for sentiment or saving things. Most of my dolls went away. I kept only a few, the ones Mom couldn’t find. My favorite, Chatty Cathy, sits on top of my bookshelf right now, looking down with a goofy smile. I change her outfits to match the seasons, choosing from a red and white trunk full of clothing. Chatty Cathy gargle-talks like an old lady who’s had a stroke. One of her shoulders is cracked so her arm falls off if I’m not careful. She doesn’t have any teeth. But I love her anyway.

Mom ditched my dolls as a sign it was time for me to grow up, date, get married, and have flesh-and-blood babies.

Well, I did part of that. The invisible husband became real, and every now and then I got to play mommy with my stepchildren—until their real mother showed up.

But I never had babies. A little girl with a doll is a mommy in training. I guess I was training for the wrong career.

How about you? Did you play with dolls? Did you consider yourself their mother?

Copyright 2011 Sue Fagalde Lick

Free to Be Aunt Sue

Sue Fagalde Lick childless aunts, savvy aunties

Published in the Oregonian 12 years ago. William is an adult now. He’s going to law school. Although he loves his Aunt Sue, he is currently entranced by a girl named Andrea.

“Aunt Sue, Aunt Sue!” says the little boy in the man’s body, urgently seeking my attention. I seem to be the one person in the family who doesn’t answer his persistent attempts to join the conversation with an annoyed, “William, be quiet!” His words are the chorus of a sweet song to me.

I actually want to hear what William has to say. I enjoy listening to him fumble through questions and statements that fall easily from the lips of adults. He’s 17, heading for college next year. The world of grownups is just beginning to open up to him, and he is anxious to leap forward feet first, even though he doesn’t know where he might land. He resents not being able to taste beer, play Keno, or try a slot machine. He fantasizes about his first romance and his first apartment. He has his first car and his first job. He wants to try out all the other perks of adulthood. Now.

William, a giant at 6 foot 4, is impatient, hyperactive, always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Teenage girls enter the room and he gawks in a way that will cause them to laugh at him rather than date him. He eats four times as much as anyone else and still claims to be hungry. He mopes when he doesn’t get his way.

No matter. I love being Aunt Sue. I’m the one person who will let him play the same passage of “Fur Elise” on the piano 50 times and let 20 times go by before I make him correct the wrong note he keeps hitting.

William is full of questions, goofy ones and smart ones. “How come you look so much like my father?” I explain genetics. “How come it’s okay for Uncle Fred to be 15 years older than you but I can’t date a 25-year-old?” I tell him that the differences level out in middle age. “Why haven’t your novels been published? You’re a good writer.” I can’t answer that one.

In the pocket of my red jacket is a red plastic parachute man, a treasure. My nephew won it at the casino in Lincoln City. While his parents gambled, I accompanied him to the arcade. I dropped quarters in all sorts of machines, so baffled by the games that I often ran out of time before I figured out how to play. William confidently cashed a $5 bill and went from game to game, fighting monsters, driving a race car and a space ship, catching a bass. When it was time to go, he had a fistful of blue tickets to trade for little-kid prizes. He picked three parachute men, said the red one was his favorite and then gave it to me. Outside, we tossed our parachute men into the wind, running after them as they crashed into the dirt, then letting them fly again. For a few minutes, I was not 47; I was 17, playing with a friend.

It’s a special thing, this aunt-nephew bond. William is a kid with an insatiable need for love. Because I have no children of my own, I have plenty to give to him.

Perhaps someday he will find a wife who will love his dimpled face and smile at his idiosyncrasies, but just as his parents have standards they demand of their son, she will have unspoken rules for what a husband should be. Not me. All I need from William is to be himself and call me “Aunt Sue” once in a while. That’s enough.

Do you have a special relationship with a niece or nephew? Feel free to share.

Pregnant Dreams

Sue Fagalde Lick childless women dream of being pregnant, pregnancy dreams

Before menopause hit, I often dreamed about being pregnant. Here is a typical dream:

I dreamed I was six months pregnant last night. Another woman in our group was farther along and her big belly poked out under her green maternity blouse like a beach ball while mine was not as obvious. I held my big white shirt tight against me to emphasize my condition because I wanted everybody to know I was not fat; I was pregnant.

Pregnancy puts a woman into a special state of grace. It brings her acclaim and privileges. She’s “queen for a day” for nine months, the immature young woman turned Madonna. It’s the ultimate achievement. She has not only caught a fellow, but she’s having his baby.

Old people, priests and mothers see the swelling up front and nod; this woman is fulfilling her proper role, she is healthy and fertile, she is partnered with God in the miracle of giving birth. People bring her gifts, pink, blue, yellow, and green blankets and booties and bottles and all manner of baby carriers. They throw her baby showers, at which she sits in all her swollen glory receiving more presents, hearing baby stories, playing games, and eating chocolate cake.

The pregnant woman is eating for two. Barring doctor’s restrictions, she can eat whenever she is hungry and indulge in whatever sweet, fattening, sinful food she craves, be it pickles and ice cream or maple donuts with custard filling. She can get fat; she is supposed to get fat. When she gets so fat her rings don’t fit and her belly button pops out like the indicator on a Thanksgiving turkey, people just smile. After all, she is pregnant.

Pregnant. Blessed. Privileged. I want to be that. In my dream, I wanted to shine a spotlight on my belly so the whole world knew. Look at me! I’m pregnant!

In reality, I know it’s not all smiles and blessings. Some pregnancies are horrible from beginning to end, but this is the fantasy of a woman who dreams about being pregnant.

My period is coming. I’m swollen with water weight, achy and expectant, constantly checking for the first blood and the first cramps. That’s when the dream usually comes, when my subconscious plays what if. What if this were a baby instead of PMS, what if I had nine months of sanctified pregnancy instead of nine more periods? What if this buildup of blood and tissue in my uterus, this baby nest, wasn’t wasted this time?

I wake up rubbing my belly and feel it shrinking under my hand. No, I am not pregnant. Never will be.

Have you had dreams like this? I’d love to hear them.

Blame the childless adults?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless social workers, childlessness and the economy, Social Trends Institute, vdare

A couple recent articles have got my teeth gritting and may do the same for you.

First, apparently, the problems with the economy are partially our fault because we don’t have children. Say what? A recent article in the Washington Times titled “Modern Economies ‘Rise and Fall’ with Nuclear Families” talks about a study by the Social Trends Institute that implies we need more people to marry and have children to keep the economy going. Essentially what this study says is that married men work harder and earn more money and couples with children consume far more goods and services. The fact that so many people are not getting married or having children is hurting the economy. Therefore, governments should encourage marriage and procreation.

Unfortunately, the story has been removed from the Washington Times website. I wonder why. I also wonder whether the numbers are really that different or whether parents and non-parents just spend their money on different things. What do you think?

Another article, published at VDARE.com,is headlined “Childless Adults, Unsurprisingly, Don’t Understand Children.” The author calls her/himself Anonymous Attorney. She (I’m guessing) raves about how children are being diagnosed with ADHD or bipolar disorder and put on medication unnecessarily by psychologists, social workers and other professionals who don’t have children and therefore can’t understand them. If they did have children, they would know these kids are behaving normally. She concludes, “We don’t actually have an epidemic of mentally ill children. We have an epidemic of childless professionals.”

If that doesn’t make you grit your teeth, I don’t know what will. True, we don’t have children of our own, but we don’t live in isolation. We once were children, we have been around children, and the folks who work with kids have lots of training.

What do you think?