Do you have anyone with whom you can comfortably share your thoughts and feelings about not having children?
I really didn’t have anyone to talk to when I was in the thick of it. My husband felt guilty. My therapist just didn’t get it. My best friends were having babies. My friends with older children thought my stepchildren were enough.
I met people who had chosen not to have children and were happy about it. Their attitude: What’s there to talk about? I met parents who said I was lucky and that they wished they had not had children.
In many situations, when I admitted I was not a mother, silence fell, followed by a quick change of subject.
None of which helped me. I’ll bet you know what I mean.
The graphic above is from the World Childless Week website. You can see that you’re not alone in needing someone to talk to.
Can you discuss your feelings about this with your partner? Do they sympathize, get angry, or simply refuse to talk about it? I know some readers have to read this blog in secret for fear of their partner’s reaction. Your feelings are never going to be the same when one of you has a uterus and the power to give birth and the other does not.
It’s not easy finding someone who truly understands the situation and lets you feel your feelings. People who have kids are busy and distracted. They may have gone through a childless period before, maybe not, but now it’s all about the kids. We can’t blame them.
Your own parents not only come from a different generation, but they have a vested interest in becoming grandparents. If your lack of children is physical, it may be easier to discuss than if your partner is unwilling, but they may still push you to adopt a child or get involved with other people’s children. Or to dump the unwilling or unable partner.
It’s so easy to toss off suggestions when you’re not in the situation. Just adopt. Freeze your eggs. Teach, mentor, do volunteer work with kids.
But who can you really talk to? Who is willing to ask you what happened and how you feel about it and maybe even say, “What can I do to help you with this?”
Do you have anyone like that? My best friend, mother of four, grandmother of many, comes close. She gets it, sort of. But most people don’t.
Outside the childless community, it’s just not easy to find someone who can listen and understand and not try to fix your situation. Or blame you. Or make a wisecrack about it. They’re not cruel. They just can’t feel what you feel.
So where can you find someone who knows what you’re going through?
We are lucky to have Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women and Katy Seppi, longtime host of the annual Childless Collective Summit. Katy has taken over management of the original Gateway Women and renamed it The Childless Collective, but Jody Day is still extremely involved in the childless community, focusing more these days on older childless women. Both Katy and Jody are actively working to bring people who are childless not by choice together online and in person. Visit their websites to see what they’re up to.
This month, Stephanie Joy Phillips is once again hosting World Childless Week Sept. 16-22. It’s all online, and I encourage you to participate in some or all of it. Activities include speakers, panels, webinars, and testimony by hundreds of women. Their stories may sound familiar. You may finally feel like somebody understands. Even if you don’t attend the events, do look at the terrific resource page.
I’ll be joining the “nomo crones” panel on Thursday, Sept. 19 during World Childless Week to talk about friendships between parents and nonparents. That should be a lively discussion. Have you ever lost a friend when they had a baby? Oh yes, me too. Register here for our chat. It will be recorded, so you can still hear it if you can’t make it to the live session (noon PDT).
For two years, Karen Malone Wright brought childless and childfree women together at the Not-Mom Summit in Ohio. It was so great to be in a room full of women who would not be pulling out baby pictures and asking how many children you had because we were all in similar situations.
How do we find people to talk to in our real lives? I guess we keep our ears open. When you meet someone else who doesn’t have kids–or whose children don’t have kids–mention that you don’t either. Ask if it was by choice or by chance, and if it’s the latter, ask if they’d like to go for coffee and talk about it. They may shut down like a slamming door. But maybe they’ll smile and say, “Yes, I’d like that.” It’s worth a try.
So, do you have someone to talk to about your childless situation? I welcome your comments.
Childless by Marriage 
Sue, it’s unfathomable to me some people’s responses if I attempt to discuss the pain from my childlessness. Starting with my husband, who either minimizes it or changes the subject. Then there is my nephew who looks angry that I would dare to attempt to empathize with his pain (since no one in the history of mankind has every hurt as much as he has, cough cough) and mention that my childless pain also hurts me deeply in an attempt to build a bridge between us. My mother: I cannot begin to go there whatsoever. I have very few friends and the vast majority are mothers, or, even worse, grandmothers. I am blessed with 1 friend whom I’m close to who gets it. She also is CNBC. We can get raw about Mother’s Day and baby showers, and are not threatened by each other’s vulnerability. I know that she is a gift to me and I treasure her deeply.
A big turning point came around 8-9 years ago when I began to find online support. Mainly FB groups. (I did join JD GW for a while as well. Enjoyed exchanging Christmas cards with those ladies.) So if you, gentle reader, have not found these groups, search for them on FB or online. They are out there!
Outside of these groups, I don’t bring my CNBC journey up period. It is not worth the looks and stares and assumptions. Too many people see CNBC as bitter and angry (thanks to Hollyweird). Having built a very full and mostly fun life without kids, I am neither of those things, and based on past experience, some people seem to want to force me into that box. It’s not worth it.
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The only way to improve the public acceptance of childlessness or childfreedom, is to talk and write about it. It takes time.
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When I was going through that initial grief, I had two online friends who had been through it. And I wrote about it. Now, I have a whole internet full of online women who understand! It is so different. It’s wonderful.
In real life, I have one very close friend who – despite being a mother and then grandmother – has always tried to understand. She can’t, though. Not really. Some friends who are mothers seem to resent me raising it. So I do so, pointedly, to remind them their experience is not universal! And others clearly don’t really know what to say, so revert to not saying anything at all.
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I’ve been married for 20 years. I have no children of my own. I’m kind of a hybrid. Growing up, I didn’t like the idea of ever being a parent. In my 30s I found out I couldn’t have children for medical reasons. And now, let’s just say I don’t envy other women my age who need the energy for chasing toddlers or the patience for dealing with teenagers.
My husband has a few children from a previous marriage, who are now young adults. My husband was the non-custodial parent when they were growing up, so I’d only see them every so often (their mother is also re-married and has more children with her current husband). I never had the responsibilities that the partner of a custodial parent might have.
Growing up, their mother was uncomfortable with her children liking any other woman but herself. The girlfriend of my husband’s brother once drove the kids down to see their father. We found out their mother told the kids that their Uncle’s girlfriend “hates driving them”.
It wasn’t true.
She’d also repeatedly tell her kids that I hated them. She convinced some of them that I caused the divorce ( I didn’t ).
As a result, I never became close with the kids. They were put in too much of a loyalty bind.
Now as adults, I have no relationship with them and haven’t seen them in years.
I don’t have anyone to talk to about it in real life. It feels like I don’t fit in anywhere.
Parents don’t accept me because it’s my husband who has children, not me.
I feel like an outsider anyway, when they talk about their family vacations or what their children are up to.
My attempts to blend in with childless couples or individuals hasn’t worked out either.
They tend to exclude me, giving the reason that my husband has children, and therefore I’m not really childless.
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It’s so hard. Thank you for sharing your story, Sam.
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Hello Sue,
Long time reader, first time commenter here. Over 20 years ago, DH and I were going through infertility, and I found the world of blogs, and LoriBeth at theroadlesstraveledlb. Her blog was a lifeline for me, that should the journey take us to being childless, it was possible to survive that and live with courage, honesty and integrity in the face of one of the very deep, foundational dreams of life to not come true. As it turned out, we did eventually have 2 kids – however, throughout the years I have continued to regularly read her blog and several others that I found through her site – like yours. At first I wondered why I would do this, when my experience of life was different. Then realized the generosity being shared in these blogs, like yours – wisdom, grace, grit, honesty about the hard things and the pain and suffering; also how to find joy and happiness, and build your life anew without this dream, in the face of an agonizing loss of a future that had been hoped for. Accepting that the path will have suffering, but also finding the renewal and the good things in the path one was on, though it was not desired.
I am writing to you in the hope that you might be able to share something about – when you have to make such a difficult choice – how do you choose out of love and care for yourself, and not choose out of fear?
This question is paramount for me right now, as my spouse of 25+ years and I have had some big conversations and he has landed on a realization that he is poly (as in, having a need to have more than one sexual/whatever partner). It explains some issues in our marriage, because I know without a doubt he loves me and I am important and special to him – and yet, for him, a monogamous situation feels stifling and like he cannot be himself. There’s a world a hurt in here, from two incidents of infidelity and him heaping negative self-talk etc. upon himself, to me being weighted down with the feeling that something was off (the infidelity was not disclosed until recently) – so for years, living with the sense that things weren’t right but not being able to get it out in the open and deal with it, and thus having an anxiety that interfered with living.
I know about myself that I am deeply monogamous. I have no interest in seeing or sleeping with someone else; to me you only do those things with someone who is your special person. It feels like DH’s desire to have other partners means I am not special, not as loved, etc. – that’s the mono lens – whereas he sees as it not being like that – I can be his #1 person and special to him even if he wants to explore with others. So I have gone through an excruciating time of anger, sorrow and grief, but arrived at a place where now we are communicating with love and clearly. My anxiety has released itself and I am able to do some things like exercise, declutter items, etc. that I have wanted to do but had no energy for over the last number of years.
And now there is a decision before us – we are going to try a mono / poly situation, where he does see other people; I am going to stay monogamous because that is not what I want. There are so many things to consider – I am concerned about STI’s and such, so that could mean our sexual life changes drastically, for one. If I (or he) finds we just can’t do it, then it will be time to split up and divorce.
So here is where my question comes in. I know it isn’t that same agonizing choice that you faced years ago – stay with the love of your life and know you would never have children? Or leave him to see if you could meet another person to have kids with … or, have kids on your own (maybe not as possible a choice when you were going through this).
You see, I really do love him, and I know he loves me – there is so much good in our lives together. Will that be enough for me, even if it doesn’t match the deep desire I have to be the “one and only” for my lover / partner / husband? Or would it be better to end things, maybe to just hold onto friendship, and to be on my own (with the possibility of finding someone else who could love me as I dearly wish to be loved)?
When it is such a painful choice, how do you figure it out? How do you know if you’ve made the best choice for you?
Please feel free to edit as needed, but I do want to remain anonymous.
Thank you ….
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Anonymous Mono, wow. I’m sure you never saw this coming. I don’t have an answer for you. It would not work for me. Either we’re both in it exclusively, or I’m out. But I’m not in love with the man. I guess you try it for a while and be very honest with him and with yourself. If it feels all wrong, you might have to split up. Or he might have to give up his “poly” life. As I said, I don’ t know the answer.
Readers, do you have any suggestions?
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Wow. Nope, no suggestions but it’s a great illustration to us that sometimes, despite our best efforts, “we get what we get.” And instead of having a solution, we have the job of navigating complicated feelings about something we didn’t ask for.
My husband made a choice, years ago, that brought up many complicated feelings and humiliating consequences. I could have easily left him. After years of poor behavior, I easily could have left, without fear of judgment. I didn’t. I gave him a year to work it out – intending to at least leave him in a good mental state. He surprised me with a truly changed mindset. And now, years later, I am mostly grateful that I made that choice.
Still, I did spend years doubting myself, watching and thinking internally, never wanting to find myself in the same situation. I nursed him through sobriety. It was the most rewarding part of my life, and the result was a “happily ever after.” I sure did get lucky it went my way. But some days my mind plays tricks, and I don’t feel so strong. I throw the past in his face and we both wonder if it was all worth it. Even though I live a happy life, and I am 100% happy to be with my husband – I feel the weight of what could have been and what the whole thing took from me. I wonder if it matters – I was a hot mess to begin with. Some days I am grateful for the situation because I grew stronger as a result. I found a voice. But I’m not always brave enough to use it.
It’s complicated, in a similar way that your feelings are complicated. Do you have a year to spare? Do you have 6 months to test this out? Maybe you’ll know in 3 months if you can ever live that life. Probably you already know. Maybe he will try it once and it won’t be what he thought. Maybe you’ll end up with a lovely secondary friendship with this third person. But what happens when you slowly stop being “okay?” Will he decide he’s never going to go back to monogamy? Can you (wisely) prepare for that possibility – while living in the moment in your new life – that now includes another woman? Are you secure enough in your marriage to KNOW that you will always come first? Or will you always be waiting for the other shoe to drop? The mental load seems staggering, and I worry – for you are the one who has to give up the most to keep what could easily disappear without your knowledge.
You have your children. A family. Maybe divorce (with fair compensation, so you do not have to worry about your financial affairs) and keep him in your life, in your home, in your bed, in your future. He can live his poly life with you, but the divorce will give you the power to easily say, “not anymore.” It also gives you the mental and legal freedom to be open to exploring a new monogamous relationship.
I wish you all the best in this difficult season of life.
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