Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

Being childless does not mean you’ll end up alone

Sue Fagalde Lick childless and alone, childless in old age, taking care of aging parents, who will be there when you're old

When you reach a certain age, your parents get old and need help. Unless they die young, it’s going to happen. When my mother was dying in 2002, she had my father. I traveled back and forth from Oregon to San Jose to help, and I was at her side with Dad when she died. My brother and I helped plan her funeral, but Dad was the main caregiver.

For 11 years, my father has lived alone. He has two kids, but my brother lives three hours away, near Yosemite, and I’m 13 hours away on the Oregon coast. When Dad broke his wrist, I didn’t even know about it until after his surgery was over. He took care of himself afterwards. Ditto for his cataract surgery and getting a Pacemaker to keep his heart beating. He’s a strong and independent man. But now his heart is failing, and I have dropped everything to help him. He may or may not have open heart surgery soon. Right now, he’s pretty good sitting down, but if he does anything, even walking across the yard, he turns white and struggles for breath. He needs help, so I’m here. My brother comes on weekends. We’ll be here for whatever happens.

But you and I, dear reader, don’t have children. Who will help when our health fails? Yes, we have all heard that people who do have kids can’t count on them. We know about old people in nursing homes whose children never come around, but in most families, the children are there to help their parents.

So what do we do? Looking at a future alone can be frightening. My stepchildren won’t be around if I go to the hospital or get too weak to buy my own groceries and wash my own clothes. If I have money, I can hire someone to help, but that’s not the same.

Perhaps there are clues in what’s happening now. While I’m away, my friends in Oregon are taking care of things up there. Jo is tending my dog. Mary Lee and Jessie are filling in for me with music at church. Pat, who is my emergency contact with my doctors, is collecting my mail and sending the bills and other important things to me. She’s the one who drove me to the hospital and sat with me before my cataract surgery and the one who drove me to Albany in the dark when my husband died. Other friends brought food, cleaned my house and made sure I wasn’t alone.

You can’t count on children, but you can count on friends, as well as siblings, cousins and other relatives. And your spouse, of course, if you have one. If you feel like no one will be around in a crisis, make some connections now, and agree to be there for each other when things get tough.

It might be nice to have children to take care of us, but there’s a world of other people to turn to if we just look around.

What do you think? Do you worry about ending up alone with no one to help? I look forward to your comments

NOTE: I don’t have an Internet connection at my Dad’s house, so I may not be able to approve your comments until I can steal away to a coffee shop or wherever I can find Wi-Fi, but I will get to them, and I look forward to reading what you have to say.

Taking a stand on abortion not so easy

Sue Fagalde Lick Uncategorized

As you probably know, I’m Catholic. A recent Sunday was dubbed Respect for Life Sunday at our church. The readings and sermon were all about honoring life from conception to natural death. That means no abortion, capital punishment or euthanasia. In the afternoon, parishioners were invited to stand in front of the church holding anti-abortion signs. Abortion is murder, etc. They do this every year. I have never joined the line in front of the church. I considered it this year, but then I got an invitation to lunch and did that instead.
I’m a little uncomfortable standing in front of my community with a sign. I don’t know why. It can’t be any worse than the year I sat at the NOW booth at the county fair handing out gay rights buttons and condoms. Not that I don’t think condoms are a good thing, but the Catholic Church is also anti birth control, and I work for the church as a paid music minister.
I do think abortion is bad. I wouldn’t do it or encourage anyone else to do it. But I would never vote against a candidate just because he or she was pro-choice. It ought to be a deal-breaker, but it’s not. Usually I agree with everything else pro-choice candidates stand for.
What does this have to do with being childless by marriage? I was amazed by the number of women I interviewed who had had abortions. We don’t talk about abortion much in our society except at church, where we all supposedly agree. Although legal, it’s still mostly a secret. Many of the interviewees for my Childless by Marriage book were forced into it by either their parents or the man in their lives. In many cases, they aborted their only chance to have a child. Also in many cases, they had never told anyone about it.
I used to think a fetus was just a clump of cells, not a baby. If I got rid of it soon enough, that would be much better than being accidentally pregnant and unmarried. But now I have seen and heard too much to believe that anymore. As the sign on Highway 20 near where I live says, “If you’re pregnant, it’s a baby.”
Reading the various posts and blogs about having or not having babies, I see so much hate from the childfree crowd. For them, pregnancy is a disaster to be aborted. But babies are life, not just inconveniences. Women who give birth are not just ignorant breeders; they’re doing what God designed them to do. I know a lot of people disagree with this. Maybe you do, too, but that’s how I feel about it.
I think next year I will stand out in front of my church with a sign. Maybe.
How has abortion fit into your childless story? Please share.

Where do we “childless by circumstance” people fit in?

Sue Fagalde Lick baby pictures, Being Fruitful Without Multiplying, childless by circumstance, childless not by choice, childless stepmothers, Facebook groups, militantly childfree, uncomfortable around mothers
In preparing to write this blog, I look at the posts in the various related Facebook groups I belong to. It always makes me uncomfortable. The posts at the Childless Stepmothers group burn with anger. The stepmoms seem to hate their stepchildren as well as the kids’ biological mothers. They resent the fact that they have to take care of these “brats” while they don’t get to have their own kids. Although my own relationship with my stepchildren has not always been smooth, I am always aware that by giving me a chance to interact with his kids, my husband gave me a family. It’s an opportunity to be a mother in some ways. I am lucky that the kids’ mom is a great person, and we all get along. It doesn’t always work out that way.
At the Being Fruitful Without Multiplying group, the overriding theme seems to be that people who have babies are idiots. Not smart enough to use birth control. Look how pregnancy ruins your body. Look how it ruins your life. How dare these breeders make us share our world with their “spawn?” And how could a doctor refuse to sterilize a person in his or her 20s, saying they’re “too young?”
At Childless Not by Choice, the grief fills my computer monitor with tears. Some members are childless because their partner can’t or doesn’t want to have kids, some don’t have partners, and some have struggled with infertility, including multiple miscarriages, stillbirths and failed attempts to get pregnant.They’d give anything to have children.
I feel most comfortable with the Childless Not by Choice group, but it’s not easy to face all this sadness.
In real life, too, it’s hard to fit in sometimes. At my new dentist’s office last week, the dental assistant went on and on about her children and grandchildren—as well as her husband. She didn’t ask if I was married or had children, and I couldn’t tell her because of the sharp instruments in my mouth.
At lunch last Sunday after church, I sat with four friends, all mothers, three of them grandmothers, as they passed around baby pictures and talked about their families. I love these women, but I felt like a papaya at a table full of apples. I sipped my iced tea and hoped our food would arrive soon.
I have other friends I meet at writing workshops and other events who are militantly childfree. If I say anything about kids, they proclaim that they never wanted them, thank God they don’t have them. They shudder at the thought of being mothers while I quietly hope the program will start soon.
It’s a crazy time. In my mother’s generation, everybody had children if they were physically able to do so. They were all happy apples. Now, with so many choices, it’s one big mixed-up fruit cocktail.
What are your experiences dealing with the moms and non-moms? Please share in the comments.
(If you want to join any of these Facebook groups, search for them by name. Most are private so people can share freely. If you need an invitation to get in, let me know.)

Jody Day’s book rocks the childless life

Sue Fagalde Lick books about childlessness, childless by circumstance, childless by marriage, childless grief, Gateway-women, Jody Day, non-mothers, Plan B, Rocking the Life Unexpected, UK authors


Jody Day of Gateway-Women.com and I have corresponded off and on over the last few years. We both write about childlessness in our blogs. She lives in the UK, where it really seems as if the conversation about not having children has advanced far beyond that in the United States. When she said she was writing a book, I couldn’t wait to read it, and I was not disappointed.

In Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children, Day offers childless women a way to define what their lives can be without children. If Plan A, to be a mother, didn’t work out, what is Plan B? Day’s Plan B is to write about and create a community to support women who are childless by circumstance–which includes those of us who are childless by marriage. In addition to her blogs and online groups, she hosts gatherings of childless women and 12-week courses to help them find their new path as non-mothers, nomos, as she calls them. If you live in the UK, you can actually meet in person. But if you don’t, you can be with them in spirit through this book.

Day, who is training to be a psychotherapist, tells her own story and provides exercises to help women dig themselves out of their childless grief and discover the new life that is still available to them. Chapters explore family histories, our relationships with our bodies, stereotypes about childless women, our views of ourselves, ways to heal from our grief, and much more. She also includes extensive lists of resources that in themselves are worth the price of the book.

I did get a free copy of the book, but I would recommend it just as highly if I had paid for it. There are lots of books about childlessness on the market these days, but most focus on the joys of the “childfree” life or the sorrows of infertility and don’t get at the things bugging those of us who are childless by circumstance. I hope you’ll read my Childless by Marriage book if you haven’t already, but do read this one, too. It will help, I promise.

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[Sue Fagalde Lick is part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ]

No kids? Forget Legoland

Sue Fagalde Lick adults playing with toys, children's museums, Kidzworld, Legoland, Legos, Lincoln Logs, no adults without kids, no kids no admittance, NotMom, The Building for Kids, Tinker Toys


Did you know you can’t get into Legoland unless you’re accompanied by a child? It’s true for all the Lego parks. This hit the news in July when a 63-year-old Lego fan was turned away from the park near Toronto, Canada because he didn’t bring a child. Actually he did bring his daughter, but she was 30, so it didn’t count.
The account I read at the The NotMom blog went on to say the man was a Lego fanatic with 72 different sets of the interlocking toys, about 50,000 pieces. You’d think the park would welcome guys like him. But no.
The Legoland website states, “Adults must be accompanied by a child to visit the attraction.” Once a month, there is an “Adult Night,” but the rest of the time it’s no kids, no admittance.
Exploring further, I discovered many children’s museums have the same policy. The Building for Kids, a children’s museum in Appleton, Wisconsin prohibits childless adults “for everyone’s safety.” Kidzworld indoor play center, which bills itself the “best place on the planet,” bars grownups unless they bring someone under age 18.
These policies seem to come from a combination of trying to keep the focus on children and keeping out twisted adults who might harm and/or kidnap them. Does that mean grownups without kids can’t be trusted?
It doesn’t seem fair. I’d like to play with Legos and walk through a world of Lego creations. I like playing games and learning and building things. Just because I’m old enough for AARP doesn’t mean the kid in me is gone.
It’s like when we were little and my brother got all the cool toys because he was a boy. Legos hadn’t been invented yet, but we had Tinker toys, Lincoln Logs and these snap-together red rubber bricks that were probably precursors to Legos. I didn’t get to play with them much; I was supposed to stick to my dolls.
We didn’t have Legoland or children’s museums when I was a kid, and my parents wouldn’t have taken us there anyway—although we did go to Disneyland once. But now as a grownup, I find out I can’t get in unless I bring a child? That’s crazy. Of course, I have to ask myself whether I want to be surrounded by hundreds of kids, but that’s another issue.
Moms have access to all the toys. I’m not a child molester. I just want to play, too.
Have you encountered situations where you couldn’t join in because you didn’t have a child? We’d love to hear about it.

Thinking beyond our childlessness

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, grieving over childlessness, Jody Day, longing for children, Rocking the Life Unexpected, thinking about childlessness, Unleashed in Oregon
https://amzn.to/2VHJVkWSometimes I get tired of thinking about childlessness. I’ve got a million other things on my mind, including nonstop meetings and rehearsals this week, my ongoing struggle to put my water-damaged den back together (see my Unleashed in Oregon blog), my need to practice for two upcoming musical performances, my job playing the piano at church, my dog’s ongoing flea problem, my aging father’s ailments, my best friend’s close call with breast cancer and continuing fight with COPD, missing my dead husband, selling my novel, wondering when I should prune my hydrangeas, the floods in Colorado, the shootings in Washington D.C., the conflicts in the Middle East, why some fools are angry that our new Miss America is of Indian descent, what I’m going to wear to the church fundraiser on Friday night . . .
There’s so much to think about besides the fact that I never had children. I wish I had them. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. I think. I’m not 100 percent sure. Marrying Fred was the best thing that ever happened to me. Losing him was the worst. Not having children is barely a blip in comparison. I want kids. I want grandkids. I want sticky-fingered hugs and kid pictures all over my house. I want somebody to buy toys for and to teach and to love and to watch carry on our family heritage into the future. I want all that. I didn’t get it. It makes me so angry I want to throw things.
But I can’t change it now, and there’s no point in ruining the life I do have because I didn’t get the one I thought I’d have.
Some of these thoughts are coming up because I’m reading Jody Day’s new book Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfiling Life Without Children. It’s a wonderful book that can help women who wanted children and don’t have them to deal with their grief and move on. I will give you a full review as soon as I finish it, but you can order it now.
My dear friends, I hurt for you. I feel your deep pain as you struggle to deal with situations where you feel lost, where you don’t know what to do about your mate who can’t or won’t give you children, where you go nuts when people with children just don’t understand how you feel. I know. I’ve been there. It’s big. It’s huge. It affects your whole life. That’s one of the main things I tried to show in my Childless by Marriage book, that everything is different when you never have children. But there is more to life. And there’s more to you than just the fact that you don’t have children. Think about it.
Group hug?

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[Sue Fagalde Lick is part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ]

‘Otherhood’ and Fifty Ways to Be Childless

Sue Fagalde Lick 50 Ways Not to Be a Mother, Childfree Reflections, childless by marriage, gateway-women.com, Jody Day, Marcia Drut-Davis, Melanie Notkin, Otherhood, Savvy Aunt
Today’s post is a trio of goodies for you:
1. Jody Day at Gateway-Women.com has compiled a wonderful list called “50 Ways Not to Be a Mother—with Apologies to Paul Simon.” It’s amazing how many different ways a person can wind up not having children, a lot of them through absolutely no fault or choice of their own. Me, I seem to fit numbers 9 and 39. Check out the list and see what number fits your situation.
2. Some of those 50 ways deal with not having a suitable partner, which leads me to my second link. Melanie Notkin, author of Savvy Auntie and the accompanying blog, has written a new book called Otherhood: The Unrequited Love Story of Modern Women, which talks about how many of us never find the right partner. As a result, we don’t become parents. It’s due out in February, but you can pre-order it now. Melanie has also written about this at her Huffington Post blog. Read “The Truth About the Childless Life” there.
3. Marcia Drut-Davis, author of a new book titled Confessions of a Childfree Woman: A Life Spent Swimming Against the Mainstream, has a blog called Childfree Reflections, which may offer some comfort to you. The site includes a free resource list, but I must warn you that you have to sign up for the newsletter to get it, and nearly all of the resources are for people who are childfree by choice.
Oh what the heck, I’ll plug my own site. I’ve got a ridiculously long resource list on my Childless by Marriage website, which you can access with no strings. If you’d like to buy my book, I’d be delighted, but the list is my gift to you.
Have a wonderful week.

Are Your Pets Your Fur Babies?

Sue Fagalde Lick Amanda Huggett Hofland, dogs in baby clothes, fur baby, How-to Dog Blog, pets are child substitutes


Fur babies. A lot of childless women are tossing this term around these days. For some reason, it makes me cringe. God knows I love my dog, but is she my baby? I sure feel like it when I’m taking her to the vet or standing on the deck at dawn saying “Go potty. Come on, please go potty.” I am responsible for the care and feeding of this creature. But I’m not her mother. Her mother was a Staffordshire bull terrier. I’m quite aware that at 5 ½, Annie is a mature dog who will soon pass me in the life cycle, get old and ultimately die while I’m still hoping for many more years of life.
My dog is my dog, my companion, my responsibility, but not my child.


I see a lot of people treating their animals as their children. An article called “Fur Babies—An Alternative to Having Kids?” on The ‘How-To’ Dog Blog addresses this fur baby situation quite well. Writer Amanda Huggett Hofland admits that she and her husband might be using their two cats and dog as practice children while they decide whether or not they want to have human children. She talks about people who throw parties for their pets, dress them up in little clothes, tell them stories, and call themselves “mom and dad.” Although it seems crazy, she finds herself doing these things, too. But are pets a valid alternative to having children?

The blog post quotes experts who raise some interesting questions about the pet-human relationship as a substitute for having babies. Ultimately it’s not the same, they conclude, although there are many benefits to be had from owning pets.

I agree. I don’t know what I’d do without Annie. But I also know that I can shut the door and go about my life without her whenever I choose, something I couldn’t do with an actual baby. I also know that right now we’re both covered with flea bites, thanks to her thick fur. Dogs are great, but dogs are not kids.

Somehow in my mind, the folks who dress dogs and cats in baby clothes are doing exactly what we did as children; they’re playing with dolls. Except these dolls are living breathing animals. What do you think? Do you treat your pets as substitute children? Is it crazy or a good way to fill the void?

 

Would you marry someone who is infertile?

Sue Fagalde Lick catholic marriage, childless, inability to conceive, infertile marriage, infertility, vasectomy, wanting children
We often talk here about couples in which one partner is not willing to have children. Sometimes they discuss it before they get married. Other times it comes as a rude surprise to the partner who wants kids. But what about situations where one partner, for whatever reason, physically cannot make babies? What if you knew that going in? Would you sacrifice children for love?
I’ve been doing a little reading about marriages in which a partner is infertile. Many of the listings that come up are religious discussions. As you might expect, the Catholics dominate. The main thought is that for a marriage to be valid, the couple must have a sexual union. That means if a partner is impotent, i.e., can’t have sex, and they know it before the wedding, they can’t have a valid marriage. If it happens later, that’s okay. But if the couple is infertile, that does not invalidate the marriage. If their sexual union does not result in children, they’re still married.
Some folks are using the same arguments in their debate about gay marriage. After all, a same-sex couple cannot  procreate without outside help. But they do have a sexual union. I’m not going to get into whether or not gay marriage is a good thing. I think if people love each other, they should be allowed to be together. Period. But it does underscore the question I am asking today: Would you marry someone who is unable to provide the necessary sperm or egg to conceive a child? Or is that a deal breaker?
In my case, I knew Fred had had a vasectomy, and I knew it had taken 16 years for him and his first wife to get pregnant. But in my usual unrealistic way, I figured we could overcome all that and pop out some babies while I was still in my fertile 30s. What if I had known that there was absolutely no chance? What if instead of saying he didn’t want more children, he’d said, “I can’t.” Would I have married him? I honestly don’t know. I think I would have. I really loved him and didn’t have other prospects. But I’d have been forced to consciously choose a life without the children I always thought I’d have. (Yes, we could have had the adoption talk and I would have learned that no, he didn’t want to do that, so the result would have been the same, but that’s a whole other discussion.)
What if I were the one with the fertility problem? Would I expect a man to give up children for me? Would I be constantly afraid that no man would have me if I couldn’t give him sons and daughters? How and when would I tell the guys I dated? Would I feel guilty about depriving them of kids?
When couples disagree, that’s hard, but infertility is a whole other thing, full of sadness. It’s not a rare thing either. The U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web site lists statistics for infertility. The percentage of women ages 15-44 with “impaired fecundity” is 10.9 percent or 6.7 million. Stop and think about that. One in 10. On the male side in the same age group, 13.9 percent were surgically sterile (usually vasectomy), 4.2 percent sterile for other reasons and another 5.2 percent considered subfertile, meaning conception was possible but not likely. That’s a lot of guys, nearly a quarter of them.
So how do you feel about that? Would you marry someone you knew was infertile? I would love to hear what you think about this.

Can you have meaningful work and babies, too?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, children and careers, Poets and Writers, Rochelle Spencer, work vs. babies, working mothers
An article titled “Books and Babies” in one of my writing magazines, Poets & Writers (March-April 2013), caught my attention for a number of reasons. I’ve never seen anything like it in a publication for writers. Usually the articles are about things like plot and characters and how to sell your writing. They never talk about babies. But here it was, the cover story in Poets & Writers, with photos of couples with their toddlers and their baby bumps.
Part of me thought: oh God, they’re everywhere now. Just like in all the restaurants where I try to eat in this tourist town in the summer. Babies every-freaking-where. And I thought, oh, the childfree crowd is going to hate this.
But part of me thought: Good. This is important. The question Rochelle Spencer, the article’s author, was asking was: What does having babies do to your writing life? She got the answer even before she had a chance to interview the three featured couples. Just scheduling the interviews proved difficult. Having babies clearly changes their working lives. Suddenly their attention is focused on the children, and finding time to write is a challenge. However, in all three of these couples, the husband and wife are both writers and they support each other in ways we might not see in other couples with different kinds of jobs, or in single-parent situations. They both take care of the children, and they give each other time off to write. It’s not as much time as they used to have, and they’re sleep-deprived and distracted, but they’re still writing.
I always thought I would have children AND write. I saw no problem with being a stay-at-home mom who wrote books, stories and poems. Sure, the baby and toddler years would be intense, but soon the kids would be in school for a big chunk of the day and I could write. Basically I would trade my mother’s knitting and needlework for word-work. I did not envision going to an office every day or traveling around the country for whatever job I had. I was never interested in a job. I just wanted to stay home and write.
Of course that’s not what happened. I got divorced, remarried, widowed. I did not have babies, although I did have a live-in stepson for eight years AND I worked all day. The stress of home life plus work was huge. Even when I worked at home, I was literally running between computer and stove, meetings and Boy Scouts, interviews and school functions. When Michael moved in, I was going to grad school; I had to drop out. No way could I add homework to the mix. I get tired just thinking about it—and he was already pushing 12 when he came to live with us.
I admire these couples in Poets & Writers who are having families and continuing their writing careers. I suspect one could find other couples who have given up on their creative work, at least while their kids are small.
I have often thought God wanted me to do my writing and music and knew I couldn’t do it all. When I was interviewing childless women for my Childless by Marriage book, many said they could not do the work they felt drawn to if they had kids. What do you think? Is it possible to combine career and children? Does not having kids allow you to do things you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise?
Let’s talk about it in the comments.