childless by marriage

Does having stepchildren make you a mother?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, childless stepmothers, free Childless by Marriage e-book, stepchildren, stepparenting

I’m sharing an excerpt from my book today. In many cases, people who are childless by marriage find themselves becoming stepparents to their spouses’ children from previous marriages. Sometimes it can really ease the pain of not having your own children, but at other times, it just makes the pain of childlessness worse.

A waiter in a restaurant I frequented during my Saratoga News days asked me one day if I was a mother. I gave my standard answer: “I don’t have any children of my own, but I have three stepchildren.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, then you got kids.”

Well, yes and no. A stepmother is a lot like a substitute teacher. The kids know she’s not the real teacher, so they don’t have to listen to her or do what she says. She has all the responsibility without the love and respect. If she sticks around long enough, they might get to like each other, but when the real teacher pokes her head in the door, they’ll all abandon their desks, screaming, “Mrs. Smith, you’re back!”

It also feels like being the babysitter or the nanny. When the folks come home, the dad gets out his wallet, hands you some money and says, “Thank you very much. We’ll take over now.”

Have you experienced this? It’s a big issue for a lot of us. Let’s talk about it for the next few posts. Do you have stepchildren? Do you feel like a real mother or father to them?

You can read a lot more about stepparenting in my book Childless by Marriage. If you have a Kindle and haven’t paid the crazy low price for the e-book yet, the e-book will be available for free Oct. 28-31. Just click here for the page to download it. You can buy the paperback or ebook from Amazon.com.

What if you never find that special someone?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless and single, childless by marriage, finding that special someone, Mandy Appleyard, people who never marry, unmarried and childless

We often talk here about having found a partner who is great in every way except for being unable or unwilling to have children. But what about those people who don’t find that special someone? I just read an article by Mandy Appleyard from the UK that talks about her experience with this. I really recommend you read “The Love I’ll Never Know.” Appleyard talks about the cruel comments people make. They assume that she chose career over family and that’s why she has neither husband nor children. But her relationships never worked out. She was even married for a while and had two miscarriages before that marriage failed. People don’t understand. She talks about how she copes by enjoying her career and transferring her love to her godchildren. I think we can all identify with a lot of what she says. Read the comments, too. It’s unbelievable how thick-headed some people can be.

Most of us somehow find a partner along the way, but not everyone does. Among the people I interviewed for my book was a nurse named Barbara who had never married. Yes, she had a career, but that career didn’t fill the empty place in her heart. For a while she worked in the maternity ward and she would weep as she delivered newborns from the nursery to their mothers. Would she have liked to have a family? Yes. But it just didn’t happen.

I was lucky enough to be married twice to men I loved. At least on the surface, I had the beginnings of a family. If we had agreed to have children, we could have. The problem was that we didn’t agree.

There’s no guarantee in this world that we’re going to find that special someone. I’m amazed that most of us do end up getting married at least once. But what if it never happens? What if every relationship goes bad and we’re still alone as our fertility dries up? Use a sperm donor or adopt, some people suggest, as if those are easy options. They’re not, and I don’t think we can blame anyone who decides not to try single parenting.

For those of us who don’t have children but do have partners or spouses whom we love, I think we should give them a big hug and thank them for being there. It could be worse.

What do you think about all this?

My Childless Dog and I

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, childless dogs, childless not by choice, Psychology Today interview, spaying and neutering

You can tell I’m tired and overwhelmed when the blog is this late and I take to writing about my dog, but I’m still here. Keep those questions and comments coming.

I live with a dog named Annie. She’s almost 4 1/2, half Lab and half Staffordshire bull terrier. We started with two dogs, Annie and her brother Chico, but Chico got a little crazy and had to go live somewhere else. Losing my little boy broke my heart. But that’s not the main topic today. The subject is how my dog and I are both childless.

As soon as Annie was old enough, we had her spayed, vet talk for a hysterectomy. We didn’t ask her if she wanted to have puppies. Nor did we ask the two female dogs that preceded her in our lives. We just did it. We didn’t want to acquire a houseful of puppies, and I never wanted to face the heartbreak of giving them away and separating them from their mother. I know that’s the way it goes, and the dogs are probably fine. Annie’s mom seemed relieved when the puppies were gone. When Annie met up with her mother more than a year after we adopted her, they fought, and we had to pull them apart.

We hear a lot about the need to spay and neuter our pets to keep from having too many unwanted animals, and most of us do it because we really only want the one dog or cat and we don’t want the hassle of dealing with baby animals. We only allow our pets to mate when we want them to have babies. Otherwise, we strive to keep males and females apart.

Some advocates of the childfree lifestyle argue that we ought to do the same for people because there are too many of us. They fight for the right to have their tubes tied, often encountering doctors who refuse to do the surgery because they might change their minds.

Me, I never got spayed. I still have all my parts, but I never used them to make babies. Now Annie and I hang out together, two childless females mothering each other into old age.

*****

Ellen Walker, author of Complete Without Kids, interviewed me about my book recently for her Psychologytoday.com blog, and it was published Sunday. Give it a look at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blogs/complete-without-kids/2012-7/are-you-childless-marriage. You might want to subscribe to her blog. It’s full of good things, and we’re all sisters in this childless game. Annie, too.

Dec. 17: First Date with Prince Charming

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, that first date, treasure your partner

“Don’t screw it up,” my friend Sandy told me before I went on my first date with Fred Lick. I did my best. I dressed up, styled my hair, took care with my makeup. I tucked my diaphragm into my purse, just in case. And then he drove up in the rattiest car, and I thought, Oh no, what am I getting into.

But you can’t judge a man by his car. Fred was in the process of getting a divorce, which is hard on the finances, and his teenage son had put something on the car that ruined the paint. None of that mattered. Fred was handsome, smart, and funny. He had a good job supervising senior centers, and he lived in this quaint little house in the Willow Glen section of San Jose.

He took me to a winery in the east foothills, one of his favorite places. Then we went out for Chinese food. After that, we back to his house to watch movies. We didn’t actually see the second movie. Somewhere early in “Flashdance,” we began making out. I excused myself to put in my diaphragm, and Fred brought pillows and a blanket for the floor. We made love.

Unlike other guys who assumed sex came with dinner, Fred was gentle and considerate. He kept asking, “Is this all right? Are you sure?” I was sure. By the end of the evening, we both knew we belonged together. It was the beginning of a beautiful love story.

I soon learned that I didn’t need the diaphragm. Fred had had a vasectomy. After a certain amount of talk about adoption and ways to get me pregnant, he let me know the three kids he had from his first marriage were enough. We never had children together, and I grieve that loss. But that does not negate the love that began on Dec. 17, 1983. Fred is not here to celebrate this year, but I will remember and treasure what I had rather than what I have lost.

So many of us get caught up in what we don’t have. We start seeing our mates as the enemy rather than the people we love. Take some time today to look at your spouse, partner or lover and treasure what you have with them. Maybe you don’t have kids, but you do have each other. Thank God for that.

Happy anniversary, Fred.

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.”

The road not taken

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, husbands who don't want children

As I lay awake last night, one thought led to another, and I realized with a shock that the young sons of the man I dated before I met Fred must be in their 30s by now. I was so flabbergasted it woke me up completely. Forget sleeping.

Jason and Jeremy were 5 and 7 in the days when I dated their dad after my first marriage ended. We got along great, and I knew I’d be happy being their stepmother. I also knew that other children would follow because this boyfriend was eager to make babies with me. In fact, yesterday I found a poem I wrote about how I was worried that I might be pregnant out of wedlock. My, how things have changed. I never did get pregnant.

That boyfriend, let’s call him Jack, was abusive. When he was in a good mood, things were great, but when he wasn’t, look out. It would not have been a good marriage, but I could have had as many babies as I wanted.

Jack and I broke up for a while, and I started dating Gerry. He too was happy to welcome babies, although his crazy theory was: If you get pregnant, we’ll get married. When I discovered he was doing drugs, I broke up with him. No babies there. I went back to Jack, but was lucky to escape relatively unscathed.

Then Fred came along. So nice, so kind, so loving. He didn’t want to add any more children to the three kids he already had and he had had a vasectomy, but he was just about perfect in every other way. I married him and wound up not having children. Did I make the right decision?

If things had worked out differently, I could have had grown children by now.

Life happens one day, one choice at a time. None of us knows what lies ahead.

I’m a widow?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, stepchildren, widow

As you probably know by now, my husband, Fred, passed away April 23 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s hard to believe it has already been more than a month. I miss him every day, and if I don’t keep my mind busy, I flash back to scenes from our lives together, both good and bad. Much of the time, I’m fine, but at any minute something can trigger my emotions. Grief is like riding waves. Some are small, some are huge, and there are calm places between the waves.

Meanwhile I’m trying to grapple with my new identity as an unmarried woman, a widow. I have a hard time with that term. It feels like there’s an implied “pitiful” attached to the word “widow”. Know what I mean? In other places and other times, a woman without a husband might be poverty-stricken and homeless, but that’s not my situation, thank God. I just miss Fred.

As I reported earlier, his kids were here to help with the memorial service and that first week full of upheaval and out-of-town visitors. That was truly great. Now they have disappeared again. The oldest son got married, and I wasn’t there. Too far, too soon. The daughter is back to work, school and loving her kids and grandkids. The youngest, who was supposed to come pick up some of his father’s things, didn’t show up.

When I went back to the cemetery for the placement of Fred’s ashes in the mausoleum, I went alone. Then I sat in a chair stairing at the urn and cried alone. Even if they were my own children, I might have been alone because they don’t live here. It’s my choice to stay in Oregon. I can’t blame them for the distance or for being busy with their own lives.

Meanwhile, I have a wonderful group of friends who feel like a family. Some of them are widowed, too. Others let me join them with their husbands and children for holidays and special events. I think we all need to reach out to other people and bring them into our lives. Young or old, there’s no reason we can’t love someone, even if they’re not officially family.

Will I ever get married again? If so, might I take on a whole new set of stepchildren and stepgrandchildren? Do I want that? I don’t know. I don’t expect to find anyone as great as Fred was.

Now that the marriage has run to its death-do-us-part end, I ask myself if it was worth sacrificing my chance at motherhood. Probably. Most people don’t get a love like we had, and most people don’t get to do all the things I have been able to do as a childless woman. But if I had to do it over again, would I insist on having children? Yes, I would.

Peace to you all.

Do I have children?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, stepchildren

I got to the space on the Who’s Who form where it asked for the names of my sons and daughters and decided to come back to it another day.
At the furniture store where we bought a new mattress, we told the lefthanded salesperson that we were both left-handed, too, and she innocently asked if we had any children. “No,” I replied, then looked at my husband said, “Well, he does.”
Last Mother’s Day, I told anyone who asked that I was not a mother. Period.
What happened to my stock answer of “I have three stepchildren?” For years, that’s what I said, that’s what I wrote on forms, that’s what I put on those pesky high-school reunion questionnaires, that’s what I wound up telling Who’s Who.
It was a good answer. It acknowledged my husband’s sons and daughter while conveying that I have not actually given birth. People would know that yes, there were children in my life, even if they weren’t mine. I could go on to discuss being a Boy Scout mom, dealing with teenage attitudes, planning a daughter’s wedding or welcoming grandchildren into the family. Just don’t ask me about birth, colic or potty training because I don’t know.
But that was years ago. The kids are grown. My stepdaughter has a granddaughter now, and I may never see that child outside of Facebook.
It’s partially our fault because we moved away to Oregon–something I would never have agreed to do if I had children of my own back in California.
The step between me and my stepchildren became a chasm when my husband came down with Alzheimer’s Disease and moved to a nursing home. He doesn’t always remember that he has children. And now, when people ask, I just say no. It’s easier. I still care about them and hope they care about me, but the only thing we have in common these days is our last name.
My, this is a gloomy post, isn’t it? It’s really okay. It’s just a fact. What about you? When people ask if you have children, do you count stepchilden or other non-biological children in your life or just say “no.”

Build a robot baby for Christmas?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, robot child, Thanksgiving without children

Let’s start off with an interesting news item. It seems this childless couple in the UK built themselves a robot they named AIMEC, and now they treat him (how do they know the gender?) as their son. He’s brilliant, funny, musical, and helpful around the house, they say. Maybe they’ll even make him a baby brother. Ladies, if your husband doesn’t want an actual child, maybe he’d go for this. Most guys like gadgets.

But seriously, Thanksgiving is this week. Right away, our holidays don’t look like the ones we see on TV because we don’t have children and grandchildren to gather around the table eating turkey and pumpkin pie. Unlike parents, our plans don’t revolve around our kids. That gives us some freedom to choose what we want to do, but it also may spark feelings of sadness and loss.

I’ll be spending Thanksgiving with my dad at my aunt’s house. My brother is coming, and I’ll see some cousins I haven’t seen for a while. But I’ll be the one flying solo, the one whose life bears no resemblance to everyone else’s.

What can we do? I suggest we all spend just a little while thinking about what we don’t have and a lot of time feeling grateful for what we do have. One of my friends at church, for example, is in a wheelchair. She can’t walk, she weighs over 300 pounds, her husband died recently, and she has no money and no way to earn any. Compared to her situation, I am blessed in so many ways.

Let’s count our blessings, folks. It could be worse.

How can we use our mothering energy?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, mothering energy, other ways to mother, Sue Fagalde Lick

In a comment on a previous post, Elena said she wished she knew how to use her “mothering energy.” I wanted to flip out an easy answer about getting involved with kids at her church, a local school, or some kind of social program. But then I realized I would not feel comfortable doing any of these things. I have minimal experience being around children. I am utterly unprepared to teach or take care of them. I could learn, but the idea makes me nervous. I know, they’re just kids and I was one once, but I feel less qualified to work with children than I feel about the accounting job someone just suggested I apply for. At least I have been balancing checkbooks (sort of) for decades.

Mothers and others might find it difficult to believe that a woman could go through life spending almost no time with children, but it happens. It happened to me, and maybe it happened to you.

These days I lead singing with the children at our church on Wednesday nights. It’s fun, but another woman does all the talking and interacting with the kids. I just sing and play my guitar.

Some childless people have lots of kids around them. Maybe they come from big families where they took care of their siblings or they have nieces and nephews they adore. Some are teachers or work with kids in daycare or medicine or some other field. They’re using their mothering energy all the time. We could volunteer at church, school, or the children’s shelter to be around children, but if you don’t feel comfortable with that, I understand.

Let’s look at it another way. What is mothering? Beyond actually giving birth, it’s taking care of someone else. God knows we all need that, no matter how old we are. We can provide food for the poor, company for the lonely, help for anyone who needs it. And it doesn’t have to be human. We can take care of dogs. We can grow flowers or tomatoes.

And we can make things, using our creativity in so many ways, whether we write books, bake bread, make sculptures or program computers.

I know it’s not the same as having children, but moping about what we don’t have doesn’t help for long. Grieve for a while, admit that it sucks, then find some other way to use your motherly powers.

What are your thoughts on mothering energy?