Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

How Will It Be for the Childless Under President Trump?

Sue Fagalde Lick abortion and childlessness, childfree, childless, childless not by choice , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It has been a week since the man who said childless cat ladies were miserable and didn’t have a stake in the future of the country and the man who helped shut down abortion access to millions of American women were elected as our incoming vice president and president.

I don’t usually talk politics here, and I will delete comments debating what’s good or bad about Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or dissing me because I voted blue or anyone else for voting red, but I am worried about what this means for all of us.

As Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz said about abortion, IVF, and other reproductive concerns, “it’s nobody’s damn business.” I agree. It’s between a woman and her partner.

Since the US Supreme Court voted down the national right to abortion in the Dobbs decision in 2022, numerous states have outlawed the procedure, forcing pregnant women to travel long distances or do without the care they needed. As is frequently testified in the liberal press, these are not all women who simply don’t want to have a baby. They are victims of rape or incest or have medical issues that require ending much-desired pregnancies.

While Trump has said he won’t outlaw IVF or birth control, his administration could make it more difficult to access reproductive assistance. It might limit insurance coverage for contraception. Will it be more difficult to get a vasectomy or a hysterectomy? I hope not.

It’s possible we’re crying “the sky is falling” when nothing will actually change from the way it is right now, at least not legally.

But attitudes seem to have changed. We hear more people insisting that those of us without children are defying the laws of God and nature. They don’t understand that most of us didn’t choose not to have children. For many different reasons, the parenting path was not open to us, and it breaks our hearts. To have to defend ourselves on top of that painful loss against people who just don’t get it does not seem fair.

Then again, is that any different than it was before?

I have been watching “The Golden Bachelorette” on TV. The finale was last night. I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t watched it yet. At last week’s “Men Tell All” episode, every single “bachelor” had his children in the audience. Joan, the 61-year-old bachelorette, is very vocal about her devotion to her children and grandchildren. And that’s great, but I wonder if childless applicants were intentionally screened out of being on the show?

If I were on the “Bachelorette,” I wouldn’t have any offspring in the audience. I probably wouldn’t have anyone. They wouldn’t choose a chubby old writer like me, and I wouldn’t do it anyway, but still, the lack of childless people is noticeable.

We can second-guess the election results. Maybe Harris talked too much about abortion and not enough about the economy. Maybe she just didn’t have enough time after President Biden withdrew from the race. Maybe our country is still not ready for a woman president, especially one who is a stepmother but never gave birth to her own children. Maybe voters just like Trump better. Maybe Americans really do want to go back to a more traditional time. I don’t know.

I don’t want to talk about who voted for what, but I do want to ask: How are you? Are you worried about being childless in this new America? Did your childlessness have anything to do with how you voted? Did the US election spark fights between you and your partner or others close to you? Let’s talk about it, lovingly please.

Photo by Nesrin u00d6ztu00fcrk on Pexels.com–She looks happy!

Further reading:

“People around the world are appalled by Trump’s win, but women have been gripped by a visceral horror” | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett | The Guardian

“What Trump has said about birth control, and what he could do as president” – Good Morning America

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If you like Childless by Marriage, consider reading my “Can I Do It Alone” Substack at https://suelick.substack.com.

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As non-parents, are we still kids at heart?

Sue Fagalde Lick Chatty Cathy, childless, childless on Halloween, childless women playing with dolls, playing with dolls , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I was dressing my Chatty Cathy doll the other night when—

What? Are you surprised a 72-year-old woman is dressing a doll from the 1960s? Well, I was. She’s more of a vintage artifact these days, but she’s still with me, watching over my office from atop a tall storage cabinet. This was the doll who spoke when you pulled the string behind her neck, saying things like “I’m hungry” or “I love you.” Now she just says “aaaaarrrrgh.”

Unlike most of the dolls my family bought me, she wasn’t brown-eyed and black-haired like me. This girl’s a blue-eyed blonde, about eighteen inches tall, pudgy-kneed and rosy-cheeked. She’s one of the few my mother didn’t give away when she decided I was too old to play with dolls.

I have an authentic Chatty Cathy storage chest loaded with clothing for all seasons and all occasions. We bought some official Chatty Cathy outfits, but my mother made most of her extensive wardrobe one summer while I was away visiting my grandparents on the coast. She must have sewed night and day on my grandmother’s old treadle-powered machine to make so many little dresses, pants, aprons, hats, and coats in such a short time. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me, and I still treasure them, along with the letter she wrote to me, talking about what she and Dad were up to and how much she missed me.

Photo shows a vintage Chatty Cathy doll, blonde and blue-eyed, wearing a red and black plaid coat and a matching cap.

Back to 2024. Here on the Oregon coast, the rainy season has begun, and Chatty Cathy was wearing only a thin summer dress. As I put on her red flannel coat and hat, slipping them over her plastic arms, I thought about how this was like dressing a child, the child I never had. I thought about how my mother would never get to make little dresses for a real daughter of mine. That daughter might play with my old dolls and destroy them. Or she might shun them for the newer dolls that are softer and do more things. Maybe she wouldn’t play with dolls at all.

My brother does have a daughter, but they lived at a distance, and Mom never got to spend much time with her. Cancer took my mother too soon for her to enjoy my brother’s three beautiful grandchildren.

If I had given birth on what was the expected schedule back in the 1970s, so much would have been different. By now, I might be the grandmother or even great-grandmother making or buying little garments and slipping them over pudgy arms and legs, talking to the little ones as I did it.

Did I talk to Chatty Cathy as I dressed her? Of course. I talk to tea kettles and slugs, pine trees and blue jays. I probably wouldn’t be talking to everything like a crazy person if I didn’t live alone, but as it turns out, I didn’t have children, and Chatty Cathy outlasted ten homes, two marriages, a divorce and widowhood. Tough doll, that one. So, I told her about how the weather folks were forecasting a cold, wet winter and she needed to dress warmly. She just blinked her eyes at me.

I often think I’m still able to play like a child because I didn’t have a child. I didn’t age through the generations the way mothers and fathers do. I’m a motherless and fatherless daughter with no one coming up behind me, just great-nieces and nephews off to the side. When I have the chance, not often enough, I’m happy to get down and play with them as if I weren’t the aged aunt.

Meanwhile, Halloween is this week. It can be difficult watching parents dress their little ones in costumes and take them out trick-or-treating. If we can’t hitch on to someone else’s kids, we don’t get to play this time.

Social media will be filled with pictures of children, babies, and maybe a few dogs and cats dressed as ghosts, witches, superheroes, or something else I don’t know about. If you can join in the fun somehow, go for it. If it hurts too much, stay off the Internet and go to the movies until all the kids are snug in their beds.

This week at my Substack, I talk about comparing our lives to other people’s lives. That certainly applies here, too. When we look at others having babies and doing things with their growing kids, we can feel left out and sad, even when we feel all right most of the time. It’s normal. Allow yourself to feel jealous for a little while, then shake it off and move on. Everyone has both hardships and blessings, whether they have children or don’t.

Meanwhile, if you still have your old dolls or other toys, you don’t have to share them. But don’t play with them in front of other grown-ups. They might not understand.

Do you feel younger than your peers because you don’t have children? Have you saved remnants of your childhood that you take out from time to time?

How are you dealing with Halloween?

Button up; it’s getting colder, and next week’s U.S. election is coming like a hurricane.

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The Womb is Not Our Only Source of Creation

Sue Fagalde Lick childless, mother energy, other ways to mother, poem by Sue Fagalde Lick, poems about childlessness , , , , , , , , , ,

“It’s Not that I Can’t Have Children” is the title of a poem by Kai Coggin that was featured at poets.org recently. It really caught my attention. I think so many of us can identify with it. For copyright reasons, I can’t reproduce the whole thing here, but I encourage you to read it.

The poet speaks of the ways her womb could have been a home for children but never was, and yet she has been a mother in many ways.

I love these lines:

But perhaps that proverbial ship has sailed,
and the life that I have created
is the life I have      the life I love.
Perhaps my womb has turned outward somehow
and my heart is fertility itself.

Isn’t that beautiful? “The life I have created is the life I love.” Think about that. Can you treasure the life you have right now, not calling yourself “less” anything but full of all that you are and all that you need?

“My heart is fertility itself.” This can mean that we plant seeds and grow all kinds of things, literal things like flowers and vegetables but also ideas and projects and love. For me, it’s books and music, which the readers and listeners take in and then create something of their own.

We may not have children, but that doesn’t mean we’re idle, that we don’t do anything. The things we make, the things we do, the love we give, wherever we give it—it all counts.

Coggin concludes:

I mother other kingdoms,
rock every other species to sleep--
the green and howl and pulse and bloom.

It's not that I can't have children,
it's that I already do.

Yes. We use our mothering energy in all kinds of ways, whether it’s with pets, partners, parents, friends, students, or through volunteer work. We use it with the flowers we nurture in our gardens and the birds we rescue when they fall. We use it when we clean up litter or fight for clean air and water or assist others with whatever they need, whether it’s a babysitter or help rebuilding after a hurricane.

We mother. And we father.

And it’s okay.

I know not everyone likes poetry, but I find that sometimes a poem can say in a few words what is impossible to express in a whole book. If you’d like to read one of mine, here at the blog in 2017, I posted this poem about being surrounded by grandmothers: “Sunday Brunch with the Grandmas.”

I welcome your thoughts.

Photo by Photo By: Kaboompics.com on Pexels.com

More to Read

“The Son I’ll Never Have” by Mark Wunderlich

I Will Bear This Scar: Poems of Childless Women, edited by Marietta Bratton. Nearly twenty years old but still beautiful.

Nulligravida, poems and essays by Saralyn Caine—just arrived in my mailbox, but it looks goods.

Bearing Life: Women’s Writings on Childlessness, edited by Rochelle Ratner. This book includes poetry and prose about life without children.

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Childless, childfree: Does Either Word Really Fit?

Sue Fagalde Lick childfree, childless, childless by choice, World Childless Week , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Childless. How does that word feel to you? Comfortable or not quite right, like the dress I ordered online and might have to return because it doesn’t allow enough room for my bust?

Do you call yourself childless? I use it in the name of this blog, but there are a lot of people who bristle at the term.

Child-less. It implies we’re missing something. Our life is less than it might otherwise be. But can’t our lives be full of wonderful things without children?

People who have chosen not to have children often call themselves childfree. They emphasize the freedom of a life without children to care for, as if kids were a heavy load they don’t have to carry.

I could claim the childfree term, too. I mean, even if I expected to have children and grieve that I didn’t, I don’t have the obligations of parenting. I am therefore free. Right?

I don’t know. The whole concept makes me squirm.

Here’s another question: if you are still young enough and fertile enough that having a child is possible, albeit unlikely, when do you declare that you are childless or childfree? If you have had a hysterectomy or had your tubes tied, you have a definite answer. No kids. But what if it’s still a possibility? How do you classify yourself when you’re not certain if this is forever?

What if your partner is happily childfree but you feel childless?

Neither of these terms is comfortable for everyone. Other terms have been suggested: not-mom, nonparent, or nomo (not mother). But they’re all “not” something.

In medical terms, a woman who has not given birth is nulliparous. I don’t know what doctors call a man who has not fathered a child. Just a man, I suppose. This article in Psychology Today calls them “non-dads.”

For men, sometimes there’s the snide addition “as far as we know,” implying one or more of their sperm might have hit home during their various sexual liaisons.

Wikipedia defines childlessness as the state of not having children. They break down the reasons for childlessness: infertility, ob-gyn problems, mental health difficulties, chronic illness/disability, lack of a partner or same-sex partner, social or legal barriers, economic or social pressure to pursue career before children, lack of resources, insufficient money, lack of access to medical care, jobs commitments, unwillingness of one’s partner to conceive or raise children, and death of one’s conceived children before birth or after.

Childfree, says Wikipedia, refers to people who choose not to have children.

Rachel Chrastil, author of the book How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children, wrote in another Psychology Today article, “I define someone as childless if they never had a biological child and have never been deeply involved in raising a child, whether through legal adoption or otherwise.”

She says she calls herself childless “with the caveat that I don’t view the absence of children as a deficit to be overcome.”

In an article at She Defined.com, Donna Carlton defines childfree as making a conscious decision not to have children and childless as a situation where the person wanted to have children but was not able to and thus “the decision is out of their hands.”

That sounds pretty black and white, but it’s not. Judy Graham, counselor and founder of WomenHood, a support service for childless Australian women, says that sometimes women move from defining themselves as childless to childfree as they get older and realize they prefer life without children.

I call myself childless in my writing, but when people in real life broach the subject, I don’t say, “I’m childless.” I say, “I never had any children.” Or “I don’t have any kids.” Then, as we have all experienced, the conversation stalls out, or the other person says something dumb, like, “I wish I never did” or “You can have mine” or “You’re lucky.” If you’re younger, you probably hear, “There’s still time” or “Don’t wait too long.”

I don’t know about you, but I often feel driven to explain how I really did want children but was not able to have them. Sometimes I say, “God had other plans.” Although the real reason is that both my husbands were unwilling, I never put the blame on them. Usually, I just change the subject.

To be one hundred percent honest, sometimes it hurts like hell that I don’t have children and grandchildren, and other times, it’s okay. Where’s the term for that?

I started thinking about this during the recent World Childless Week, where, of course, “childness” is part of the name. Many of those involved are childless due to infertility, which was not my situation. But I attend because however you got to not having children, the bottom line is you don’t have them.

Childless. How does that word feel to you? Comfortable or not right, like the dress that didn’t allow enough room for my bust?

Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels.com

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Can Pets Fill the Empty Space Where Children Would Be?

Sue Fagalde Lick dogs, dogs as child substitutes, fur babies, parenting pets, pets are child substitutes, pets instead of children, treating pets like babies, World Childless Week , , , , , , , , , , ,

Are dogs and cats a good substitute for children? In some ways yes, in other ways no. But they do fill a gap in our lives. 

Yesterday was Pet Day at World Childless Week. Many people posted stories and pictures about their “fur babies.” Read them all at https://worldchildlessweek.net/the-importance-of-pets. 

I was particularly taken by a piece written by a woman who calls herself “LabraMummy.” The owner of two labrador retrievers, she writes, “What I know about being unable to have children is that family takes ALL forms and that being part of a family means being able to love and care for someone other than yourself.”

She goes on: “I know there are people who don’t like the term furparents or furkids but I fully embrace being known as a furmumma. Hence, I call them my family members rather than my pets. To each, their own!”

Another contributor, LH writes, “Being a parent is not only about giving birth to a baby you conceived. After all, we have grandparents and godparents also. Being a parent is about loving something and taking care of it, putting its needs before your own, doing what you can to help it have the best life possible which is exactly what us fur parents do.”

The panelists at a World Childless Week webinar titled “Who Rescues Who” agreed with LH and LabraMummy that while cats and dogs are not the same as humans, they do offer an experience of having a family and they provide a great deal of comfort to those who are grieving the loss of the children they might have had. 

I believe that’s true. It has been sixteen and a half years since my late husband Fred and I adopted Chico and Annie, the puppies in the photo. It was 2008. Fred had Alzheimer’s disease. It had advanced to the point that we had aides coming in because I couldn’t leave him alone. In less than a year, he would move into a nursing home, but we didn’t know that then. 

The puppies brought us a lot of joy at a difficult time. 

Here’s a little of what I posted then:

Fred and I adopted two 7-week-old puppies last week, and it really feels as if I have two babies. They’re the same weight as babies, have the same needs, and fill the same needs in my heart. 

Last night, my church choir surprised me with a puppy shower. There were two baby blankets, but of course no little onesies. I did get dog treats, chew toys galore, balls, weewee pads, and lots of advice. There was a gorgeous, white-frosted cake with big red flowers on it. This may sound totally nuts, but it felt as if I had received something I’d been waiting for all my life. I sat on the floor of the chapel opening presents and soaking it all in.

Puppies are certainly not the same as humans. They won’t take care of you in your old age. Conversations are rather one-sided. And they poop and piddle on the floor. But for the childless person who wanted children and didn’t have them, they’re one way of filling that emptiness.

And the following week, I wrote:

Almost three weeks into it, I feel much more relaxed about the whole puppy business. We’re falling into a routine. I feed them breakfast, take them out, stash them in the laundry room while I shower and have my breakfast, then we all dash down the hall to my office, where they munch their rawhide chews and fall asleep.

Every hour or so we have to go out because their bladders are small. I still pack one under each arm to carry them out because I don’t trust them not to pee in the house, especially when they just woke up, but that’s 27 pounds of dog now. It’s a race between housetraining and dog growth.

Eventually they have lunch, they potty, Fred and I have lunch, and we all go back to work, stopping every hour or so for a potty break and playtime. We repeat the routine until they fall asleep for the night and peace finally reigns over the kingdom.

As for training, it’s coming along, most of the time. They sit, they come, they bite less, although they’re still better paper shredders than the machine in Fred’s office. When they’re not eating, excreting or sleeping, they’re usually wrestling. It drives me nuts. But I think I had a breakthrough this morning. I actually got them to separate and sit perfectly still for at least a minute.

What has all this got to do with childlessness? Lots of things, actually. These are my baby substitutes. There is no denying it. At 56, this is the first time I have ever cared for a baby anything longer than a couple hours. I am learning lessons that mothers of human babies learn much earlier in life, especially this: the child’s needs come first. I’m struggling to spread my attention among the pups, my husband, and my work. I’m losing work time and spending tons of money on these little guys. These are all experiences that are familiar to women with children, but they’re new to me.

Dogs are not children. But I call myself “Mom.” And God help me, every friend who calls or visits gets called Auntie or Uncle so-and-so. I can’t help myself.

Those who follow the blog know that I lost Chico just shy of two years old, and Annie passed away a year ago at age 15. I am just beginning to look for a new dog. Not a puppy. I don’t think I can do that again, but a grownup dog friend who will become my family. 

What do you think? Can pets fill in the gaps where don’t have children and make us a family? Tell us about your furbabies–or if the term makes you cringe, tell us why it does? I welcome your comments. 

World Childless Week continues for a few more days. Check the schedule at https://worldchildlessweek.net. As part of the “Childless Elderwomen,” I joined a panel discussion today on friendships and how we have them when our friends are busy with their children. I’ll let you know when the recording is available.

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Who Can You Talk to About Your Childless Life?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless not by choice, Clueless comments, comments about childlessness, people talking about their babies. when friends have babies and you don't, talking about childlessness, women talking about their children , , , , , , ,

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. 

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My Childless Story is Not the Same as Yours

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, childless in old age, childless old age, childless regrets, regrets about marriage , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Photo shows young woman perched on a couch playing guitar and singing. She is wearing red glasses, a red jacket, gray pleated skirt, and red loafers. Behind her is a faded blue and white quilt. Photo is from the early 1980s.

Dear young childless readers, I have a confession to make: the older I get the less I think about not having children. That’s one of the blessings of aging, but it’s making it hard to know what to write about in this blog after nearly 20 years.  

I know many of you are still in the throes of trying to decide what to do. The years are passing, menopause looms, and you worry that if you don’t have a baby, you will regret it forever. Your friends and family are after you to get pregnant. But your partner doesn’t want to, and maybe in your heart you’re not sure you want to either. Or you’ve been trying hard to have a baby and getting nothing but heartbreak. Maybe the decision is made, and you are grieving so hard you don’t know how you’ll survive. 

I remember that feeling, but it’s fading. I see this giant wall rising between me and you and between me and those years in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s when I was conflicted, furious, and heartbroken. Now, I’m grandmother age. I still wish I had children. I wish I didn’t feel so awkward around other people’s children. I hate that my “family photo” includes just one person while my friends and family fill the frame with their grown children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and all their spouses.

But that ship sailed so long ago. My fertile years took place before many of you were born. I started having sex in 1974, the year birth control became legal in the U.S. for unmarried women. We didn’t have computers or cell phones. Calculators were high tech then. We listened to vinyl records and heated our food on the stove because we didn’t have microwave ovens. I had to see a doctor to get prescriptions to treat my cramps and yeast infections. You certainly couldn’t purchase condoms off the shelf at Safeway. Now you can buy all that stuff on Amazon. 

Life was so incredibly different, and it was less common for people to decide not to marry or have children. I never considered either option. I fell into the timing hole between the first husband, who was never ready to be a father, and the second one, who already was a dad to three nearly grown children. 

I have told my childless story so many times here that regular readers can probably recite it from memory. It’s time to put it in the cedar chest with my mini-skirts and peasant blouses. It’s time to tell your story.  

In my own life, my focus is on aging and living alone these days. That’s really all I want to write about (see my “Can I Do It Alone?” Substack), but I don’t want to keep giving you the old lady voice. The grandma voice. The one that can only offer hindsight, not what it’s like right now for women stuck in the childless-by-marriage conundrum. It’s even harder to write for the few men who read this blog because I have never been a man. I don’t know what it’s like to be a father or want to be a father. Or NOT to want to.

I’m not quitting. Childless by Marriage will go on. I will keep sharing what I can gather from readers, the media, and those moments when I feel the non-mom grief again. But know that I’m writing from the other side of the wall. I feel like the older woman sitting at Starbucks with a younger woman who has come to her for advice. As if this older woman knows anything but her own story! Which doesn’t change! How did it happen? Bad timing? Do I regret my choices? Did I have a choice? If so, yes, but I’m not sure I did. Would I do it again? No. I shouldn’t have married the first husband for a lot of reasons. Not marrying him would have changed everything that followed.

My advice always boils down to this: If the problem is your partner and you can’t live with it, dump him/her. If the problem is physical, do your best to accept it and move on. If the problem is money, spend less on other things, and have a baby before it’s too late. Have more than one because people need brothers and sisters. 

I keep trying to sneak back into that younger skin to give you worthwhile posts, but I need your help.

  1. Tell me what you want to see here. What bothers you the most? What do you want to talk about? 
  2. Write a guest post or a letter I can post and answer. You can be as anonymous as you would like.
  3. Send me links to resources, news stories, blogs, Substacks, or whatever you find that might spark a new post. 

Help an old lady out, and let’s keep this going. I’d really like to get to 1,000 posts. This is number 874. Together, we can do it.

By the way, World Childless Week is coming around again online next month with a ton of workshops, panel discussions, articles, and videos to enjoy. I will be joining Jody Day’s Childless Elderwomen on Thursday, Sept. 19 for another fireside chat as part of World Childless Week. Our topic is “Friendships Across Life,” particularly what happens when our friends have children and we don’t. Go to https://worldchildlessweek.net to see how you can participate and to register to attend some or all of the events. Most of them are free, although donations are welcome.

Photo is of me around 1983 at my grandparents’ house. Note the spiffy red glasses and permed hair.

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Enough with the ‘Childless Cat Lady’ craziness!

Sue Fagalde Lick childless women, women without children, women without grandchildren , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My Google alerts about childlessness are all about one thing these days: what Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance said three years ago, how the country is going to hell because it’s being run by miserable childless cat ladies. That isn’t even true. It’s mostly being run by white men with wives and kids they show off at election time.

In 2021, Vance also talked about how the childless should pay more taxes. But in the U.S, those of us without children already do pay more. Parents subtract a personal deduction for each child, along with deductions for childcare and other expenses. So enough of all that.

Vance’s wife Usha has been trying to soften the blow from her husband’s comments. He was joking, she says. Vance himself says he was simply saying “American families are good and the government should be more pro-family.” He blames the media for blowing up a sarcastic remark he made before he even ran for Senate.

We all say stupid stuff we want to forget about. On the Megyn Kelly show, Vance said, “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks … this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons don’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

So, okay. Democrats are as family-oriented as anyone else, except that they push for women’s right to choose and are more open to non-traditional partnerships. In politics, people exaggerate for effect. It’s happening on both sides.

Maybe things will calm down now that Democrat Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz, a married man with two children, for her running mate.

But Vance’s comments bring up the age-old cliche of the “career gal,” the woman too busy with her work to have children. That term makes me wince. How about you? We see it in movies, read about it in books. This woman is always hard-hearted, cold, mean even. She has no time for love, family, or sentiment. She is not a hugger.

She is also not real. Many of us love our work and want to give it as much of our time as possible. But that does not mean we don’t also treasure family. It doesn’t mean we don’t long for the children and grandchildren we may never have. It doesn’t mean stepchildren can’t be as precious as kids to whom we give birth.

Families come in all shapes. Some are like the big families I see coming into church with a mother, father, and five or more children. Some are a man, woman, and kids from a former partnership. Some are a combination of foster and adopted kids. Some are just a man and a woman, two women or two men, or just a woman or man and cat or dog. Let’s support all sorts of families, including yours and mine.

Do we want to live in a country where we can’t run for president or any other office unless we have a “Leave It to Beaver” family with a loving spouse and children? I don’t.

And please, let’s stop talking about Vance and “childless cat ladies.” The cat owners I know are very fine people, and they vote.

What do you think about all this? Please, no ugly fights over Trump/Vance vs. Harris/Walz. But let’s talk about it. And then let’s get back to more important issues that have nothing to do with politics.

Photo by Sam Lion on Pexels.com

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How do we respond to complaints about “childless cat ladies” running for office?

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Politics is something I usually avoid here. One would think having or not having children has nothing to do with all that mess happening on the news these days. But things have been said that cannot be ignored.

Once again, as has happened in so many other countries, people are questioning whether U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris should run for president when she has no children of her own. Like many of us, she has stepchildren, but has not given birth.  

Harris is not the first to receive this kind of criticism. A few years back, I wrote about childless women leaders in other countries who faced criticism because they didn’t have children. Among them were British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, former Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and the first woman premier in Tasmania, Lara Giddings. How could these childless “career women” possibly understand the needs of families, people argued.

There will always be voters who ignore all the amazing things these women have accomplished and focus on their lack of children. Their intelligence, skill, and heart don’t matter if they can’t lead a beautiful family onto the stage for photo ops.

In a 2021 interview now going viral, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance called Harris one of the “miserable childless cat ladies.” She and others like her have no direct stake in the US since they are not mothers, he said.

He has even implied that those without children should not be allowed to vote.

Say what?????

What about all those people who would love to have children but can’t for physical or circumstantial reasons? What about people who choose to devote their lives to other things? Are they less valuable human beings? Of course not.

I don’t know which side of the political spectrum you favor, but this is not a blue or red issue. It’s all the colors. As older politicians give way to younger ones, more and more will not fit the traditional family mold. The birth rate is going down. The traditional picture of two heterosexual parents, two kids, a dog, and a house with a white picket fence is fading away.

I just finished watching the TV series “The Good Wife.” In it, our heroine Alicia and her politician husband Peter pose with their kids for the cameras as if they were a happy family when in fact they aren’t even together. Everyone believes Peter would lose the election if people know his marriage was a sham. In fiction as in real life, the implication is you can’t win unless you have that traditional family. If I were running for office, I would be standing up there alone. Would that disqualify me? Would it make me a “miserable cat lady”?

Impossible. I’m allergic to cats. And I’m not miserable.

The United States has never had a woman president. Harris will have to fight plenty of discrimination for being female and non-white. Her childless status adds another layer.  Honestly, if she had children, she would probably be accused of neglecting them for her work. That’s not an issue with male candidates because it’s assumed their wives are taking care of the kids.

Despite our lack of children, you and I do have a stake in the future. We contribute in so many ways beyond giving birth to baby humans. We work, create, teach, organize, and provide care. We love and live, and yes, we do contribute. We do leave a legacy. We are fully human and capable. In a world where the birth rate is going down, where marriage and parenting are no longer assumed, we can no longer require parenthood as a qualification for office.

Let’s talk about this. We don’t need to rant about Trump or Biden here. Keep the focus on childlessness. Can a candidate without children run successfully for office? Why do some people think they can’t? How can we convince them we’re as qualified as anyone? Is it different for men than it is for women? What do you see as our contributions to the future?

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Will Abortion Bans Mean Fewer Childless Couples?

Sue Fagalde Lick abortion, abortion and childlessness, childless women who aborted their babies, men who don't want children, Roe v. Wade, women who don't want children , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Since a June 2022 Supreme Court decision allowed U.S. states to ban or severely restrict abortion rights, the birth rate has gone up, particularly where it’s most difficult to get an abortion. Not a surprise, right?

Dubbed the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court ruling said there is no constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling ended nearly 50 years of legal abortion under Roe v. Wade and opened the doors for the individual states to make their own laws about abortion.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which offers a state by state analysis of the abortion situation, says fourteen states have outright bans on abortion. Abortion is protected by state law in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia and is at risk of being severely limited or prohibited in twenty-six states and three territories.

In an NPR interview, Caitlin Myers, a professor at Middlebury College, discussed a study by Middlebury and Georgia Tech that showed a 2.3 percent increase in births. They also see people flooding from abortion-banning states to other states for abortions. These options are not available to everyone. In a large state like Texas, for example, where births increased 5.3 percent, they might have to drive hundreds of miles to find a state where abortion is still allowed. Travel to access abortion requires money, time off work, and sometimes access to child care. Aborting via medication by mail is another option, but it may not be the best option for everyone, and it’s not easy to get a prescription.

While people are still having abortions, some feel trapped in unwanted pregnancies and are having babies they might not otherwise have had, Myers said.

In an article for NBC News, writer Suzanne Gamboa said a study by the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality showed the Texas teen birthrate for Latinos has risen dramatically since the abortion ban. “Texas women delivered 16,147 more babies in 2022 than in 2021. Of those, 84 percent were delivered by Latinas. In addition, the average fertility rate rose 5.1 percent among Latinas while the overall fertility rate for Texas rose by 2 percent.”

Another factor: For many, abortion is something done quietly, often in secret. How do you keep it secret when you have to go to such efforts to find someone willing to do the procedure? It might be easier to just have the baby.

What has this got to do with being childless by marriage? When I was researching my Childless by Marriage book, I was astonished by the number of women who had had abortions, sometimes more than one. Many were encouraged or even ordered to do so by partners who did not want any children. For some, the aborted pregnancy turned out to be their only chance to become mothers. If abortion had not been legal and relatively easy to obtain, would they have had children? Would they be raising them alone after their men dumped them?

I have more questions than answers about all of this. I am Catholic and not a big fan of abortion, but I hate to see people’s rights so restricted. I have not had an abortion, nor have I helped anyone else through the process, so you readers may know more about it than I do. What do you think? How will the abortion ban affect people in situations where one partner is unwilling to have children? If you have personal experience in this area, would you be willing to tell us about it? Have you considered what you would do if you fell pregnant and didn’t feel able to have the child? If you live in another country, what is the abortion situation there?

(photo by Ashley Jones, Pexels.com)

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The marvelous Jody Day interviewed me on June 29 about my new book No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

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