husbands who don’t want children

"I’m Never Going to Be a Mother"

Sue Fagalde Lick childlessness, husbands who don't want children, never going to be a mother

Can you say “I’m never going to be a mother?” Calmly? Without tears? You’re a stronger woman than I am.

Back when Fred and I were engaged but not yet married, he told me on a camping trip that he really didn’t want to have any more children. I was upset, but I never really accepted the situation as permanent, and I married him anyway. As I say in my Childless by Marriage book,

“Despite Fred’s declaration in the woods, I honestly believed that somehow I would still have children. But how did I expect that to happen? Immaculate conception? One stubborn sperm that survived the vasectomy? I was 50 before I could say, ‘I am never going to be a mother’ and mean it. I have asked dozens of childless women if they could say it out loud. Most had no problem with it. But just as I delude myself that I can lose weight while eating muffins for breakfast every morning, I held on to the idea that I might still have a baby.”

Crazy? Perhaps. When it began to dawn on me that it really might never happen, I felt sorry for myself, as if this terrible fate had been placed upon me. It took a long time to understand that I consciously married a man who neither wanted nor was able to make me pregnant. That situation was not going to change. I chose Fred over children.

So, I am never going to be a mother.

How about you? Can you say this? Do you foresee being able to say it? If not and there’s still time, you may need to take drastic steps to make it happen.

 

He says, ‘We can’t afford a baby’

Sue Fagalde Lick husbands who don't want children , ,

Over the years of writing and talking about childlessness, I have heard lots of reasons why people decide not to have children. Often it’s the man saying, “We can’t afford it.” The couple may be short on cash. They may fear that if one stops working, even for a short time, they’ll go under. God knows it costs money to bear and raise a child. This Huffington Post article estimates $245,000, but most people find a way. Sometimes I wonder if saying, “We can’t afford it” is just a way of putting off babies indefinitely. I can certainly see the validity of planning and saving money to prepare for parenthood, but many times, I don’t see these naysayers doing anything to improve their financial situation.They just keep saying, “We can’t afford it.”

What do you think? Is money a valid reason to not have children? Have you been told, “We can’t afford it?”

***
Did you know more babies are born in August than any other month? Must be the holidays and cold weather that come nine months before. Anyway, it’s babies, babies, babies around here. Everywhere I look, despite the cost of having a child, I see more babies. At the farmers’ market the other day, I found myself dodging moms and and dads and strollers all along the way. My friends all seem to be welcoming grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I’m truly happy for them, but I’m starting to feel kind of lonely. How about you?

See you Thursday.

 

Why didn’t I ever think of this?

Sue Fagalde Lick Holy Thursday, husbands who don't want children, infertility

It’s Holy Week and we’re crazy busy at my church, where I co-lead the choirs. We have services every night. After the Holy Thursday Mass yesterday, we were invited to stay and meditate, somewhat like Jesus’ invitation to the disciples to stay with him in the garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper. While I sat there, breathing incense and staring at Jesus on the cross, I thought about a conversation that took place earlier in the chapel where we rehearse. Somebody talked about her age in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot and then we all started comparing how old we were then. I was 11, home from school with chicken pox. My friend who started the conversation was already in college. That led me to thinking about my husband Fred, who was 15 years older than me. In 1963, he had been married for four years–without children.

Fred married his first wife in 1959. Until I was sitting in the church last night, I never thought about how they didn’t adopt their first child until 1966. They spent seven years trying to conceive before they adopted a son, followed by a daughter two years later. In 1976, 17 years into their marriage, Fred’s first wife became pregnant and gave birth to their second son. All those years, they must have been living with infertility and worrying that they might never have children. I’m not Fred’s only wife who spent a long time without children. God knows why I never thought about this before.

Now I wish I could talk to Fred about it. Was he worried? Did he agree to adopt because he wanted children or because Annette did? It’s one of those times when I wish I could have Fred back for a few minutes to ask all the questions to which I don’t have answers. It would be swell if he could identify some of the tools in the garage and show me how to use the lawnmower, too.

Do I dare ask his ex? She was here for Fred’s funeral, but I didn’t think about it then. Do I just file this under ancient history that is none of my business?

I thought about lots of things during that long silence at church, little things like how much my feet hurt from standing and how I looked forward to having a snack when I got home to big things like thanking God for my many blessings. But realizing Fred and his first wife were childless for a long time really got my attention. After all that they went through, I came along asking for children. No wonder Fred wasn’t up for another round.

Thanks for letting me share. Happy Easter to everyone. Please try to enjoy whatever you have in your life and not let what you don’t have spoil the good stuff.

Can you forgive him or her for not giving you children?

Sue Fagalde Lick childlessness and forgiveness, coping with childlessness, husbands who don't want children, wives who don't want children

Last week, one of my readers asked if I had written about forgiveness. It’s key to moving on past a lack of children, she said. I had not, but I think we should talk about it.

In a marriage where one partner can’t or doesn’t want to have children and the other one does, somebody is not going to get what they want. There’s just no way around it. Either you split up and look for someone who feels the same way, or one of you gives in. The person who didn’t really want kids agrees to have them anyway or the one did want them remains childless. It’s a painful situation. Do you love the other person enough to make this kind of sacrifice? And if you do, is part of you going to hate them forever or can you forgive them?

I was married twice. Husband number one let me know a couple years into the marriage that he did not want children, couldn’t stand babies and would leave me if I had one. Would he really have done that? I don’t know. After six years, we divorced. Looking back, I know that he was not an evil person. He was just young. He was not ready to be a father, even if I felt completely ready to have a baby. Should I hate him? No. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Then came Fred, husband number two. When we got married, he was 48 years old. His kids were 18, 16, and 8. He and his first wife had spent years raising them, and now freedom was in sight. He didn’t want to start over with another baby. In fact, he had had a vasectomy to make sure he and his ex wouldn’t conceive again. I know that he loved me enough that if I had insisted on having a child, he would have agreed to seek a way to make me pregnant, but I didn’t insist. I just ran around feeling sorry for myself. I can understand all that now, and I can forgive him. He didn’t give me children of my own but he gave me so many other things.

I’m still working on forgiving myself.

If you’re in the throes of unfulfilled baby lust, it isn’t easy to forgive anyone or anything who denies you a child. But try, just for a minute, to see things from their perspective. Maybe you can’t forgive them yet. Maybe you can’t live with this and need to find another mate or another way to deal with the situation. But try to see things from their side. What makes them feel the way they do? Understanding is the first step toward finding a solution you both can live with.

So, in this new year, however it turns out, whatever you have to do, try a little forgiveness.

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.

Complete Without Kids author interview

Sue Fagalde Lick books about childlessness, Complete Without Kids, Ellen L. Walker, husbands who don't want children

Ellen L. Walker, a psychologist practicing in Bellingham, Washington, is the author of Complete Without Kids, an Insider’s Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or By Chance, which came out last month from Greenleaf Press. We talked by phone yesterday about life without children and about the book that was born from her experiences.

Walker, 50, has not had children. During her first marriage, her husband kept saying it was not the right time. They were going to school, working, too busy, etc. “He also said the same thing about getting a dog,” Walker said. A lot of women get pregnant “by accident” but she didn’t feel that was the right thing to do. However, she did get herself a dog, assuring him that she would take care of it.

After the marriage ended, she was resigned to being childless. But then she married Chris, who had grown children from his first marriage. Seeing him interact with his kids, she began to want her own children. Chris didn’t want any more kids. Then 45, she consulted her doctor, who said she probably could still have children and referred her to a doctor who specialized in older women’s pregnancies.

After many tearful talks with her husband, she began to think about all the ramifications of having a child at her age and realized it was not going to work for her and Chris. She thought about all the things she had been able to do in her life because she didn’t have children: her full-time psychology practice, travel, writing a book. Life was good, she decided, and she would have to accept that it was not going to include children.

“If I had married a different person, I probably would have ended up having kids,” she said. “But it was never my top priority.” Plus, she adds, “I seem to have been drawn to men who didn’t want to have babies with me.”

Walker calls herself childfree, not childless. “For me, it’s really important to use the term childfree. It describes a lifestyle, not a loss. The term childless has such a negative connotation.” It’s important to focus on the things we are able to do because we don’t have children and accept that no one can do everything in this life, she says.

Walker admires people who have taken serious time to think about their decision. She didn’t do that, and it has been difficult finding peace. Now her friends are going into the grandmother stage, and she is beginning to realize “this is going to be with me my whole life.”

Lots of couples these days find themselves disagreeing about whether to have children. It’s no longer assumed that after marriage comes babies. Walker recommends they see a marriage counselor to help them work it out. “It’s a huge life decision. To me, it could be a deal-breaker.” A therapist knows how to process all the feelings that come up and help people find closure.

Seeking closure was one of the reasons Walker wrote her book. “I wanted to find some peace of mind.” She started journaling, then started getting other people to tell their stories. She found that the childfree people she met were eager to talk about it, and she began doing interviews. “I realized that a lot of people had a lot of unfinished business with it.”

She admits she had a hard time disclosing so much of her own personal information in the book, but she hopes it will help others who are trying to figure out whether or not to have children. She wants young women to see role models who aren’t mothers and to take their decision as seriously as any other big decision in their lives.

“You’re not a loser if you decide not to be a parent,” she stresses.

***
Walker’s book is available at Amazon.com and other retail outlets. Visit Walker’s website and read her blog at www.completewithoutkids.com.

You just can’t tell

Sue Fagalde Lick husbands who don't want children

When I was dating my first husband, one of the things that impressed me was how well he interacted with children. I’d watching him playing with other people’s kids and think what a great dad he would make. It never occurred to me that we wouldn’t have children. I never dreamed that he wouldn’t want them. It was the natural progression, right? Before we got married, we signed papers with the Catholic Church saying we would welcome children and raise them Catholic, didn’t we? Oh, I was so young.

We had been married a few years when, despite using birth control, I thought I might be pregnant. To my horror, he said that if I was, he was leaving. I was not pregnant. The marriage didn’t last long enough to find out if he might have eventually changed his mind. Perhaps after he finished college and we got a home of our own . . . But he has been married two more times, and as far as I know, he has never had any children.

Husband number two was good with kids, too, as long as he didn’t have to deal with them at home. But he made it clear before we got married that he didn’t want any more children. At least I knew how he felt about it.

If your mate seems to enjoy playing with other people’s kids, don’t assume that he wants some of his own. Talk about it. Ask him before it’s too late.

Where’s the Nursery?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless, husbands who don't want children, menopause, nursery

“Dream House,” the slender file was labeled. I remembered it well, a 1968 home economics assignment filed away in a cabinet covered with bumper stickers for PBS, ecology groups, and local newspapers.
It was a great house, done up in bright red, green and yellow. I had an office, a darkroom, a craft room and a gallery, lots of bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, and bedroom, everything except a nursery. At 16, it never occurred to me to allot space for children. My home was a glorified office complex with living quarters attached.
The rest of the folder includes plans for a build-it-yourself desk and craft ideas for the kitchen and den. No nurseries or bunk beds.
Why didn’t I think about a place for children? I couldn’t have known that 35 years later I’d enter menopause without giving birth, that the equipment that caused me killer cramps every 28 days would never serve any purpose, that I would be married twice to men who wouldn’t or couldn’t have kids, that my only mothering experiences would be dog-mothering or step-mothering. I couldn’t possibly have known all that. I was not one of those teens who decide early that she doesn’t even want to have children. And, although I claim a bit of ESP, I don’t think that was involved here.
Perhaps I was just innocent. There’s no space for a husband in that house either. A late bloomer, I didn’t start dating until I was in college. By the time a man showed up at the door to take me on a date, my parents were so relieved they didn’t even consider imposing a curfew or giving him the third degree. But I daydreamed like every other teen of boys and men falling in love with me, wanting to marry me. Did I not realize that relationships with men usually led to children, or at least they did back in the ’60s? Love, marriage, baby carriage. I didn’t know much about sex, but I think I knew that much.
So why at 16 didn’t I leave space in my dream house for children? Why did I just seek work space?
I was a kid who “mothered” baby dolls, toddler dolls, Barbie dolls, stuffed animal dolls, enough dolls to cover my entire double bed. I gave them all names, carried them around with me, made them clothes, talked to them all the time, and grieved when they got torn or bent. I called myself their Mommy.
At the same time, I was in full wife and mother training. I learned how to cook and sew and clean. Mom had me washing, drying and ironing clothes by the hamper-full. By the time I was 10, I could copy her famous chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. By 15, I could prepare a full dinner. I could also knit, crochet, embroider and sew. Whatever other career I might pursue, my main life’s work would be the same as my mother’s: caring for a husband, home and children.
So why didn’t I put a nursery in my dream house?
Had I already decided that since I had had no dates at 16, nobody would ever ask me out, so I might as well plan life as a creative spinster? I don’t think so. As a 30-year-old divorcee whose life was all about work, I thought that, but not when I was in high school. I had crushes on several boys and at least one teacher, and I was berserk over Paul McCartney. But a nursery? Babies? I wasn’t thinking about that. Do most 16-year-olds think about babies in that window between playing with dolls and real-life pregnancy? Maybe that’s why so many teens get pregnant by accident. They don’t see it as something that might really happen to them.
I have always wanted a terrific office. Nurseries are pretty and soft and warm and smell of baby powder, but I have never seen myself belonging in one. I wanted to fit in; babies are God’s most amazing creation, but maybe I always knew he had another plan for me, a plan that required an office.
They say that the way you envision your life is the way it will turn out. If I had drawn a nursery into my dream house, would I be a mother and grandmother now? I’ll never know because it never occurred to me at 16.
Just as most of my classmates never thought about including an office in their dream houses. What for?
Perhaps this pencil diagram in an old folder in an old file cabinet contains the key to why I never became a mother. I could blame husband number one for not wanting them or husband number two for not wanting any more than the ones he already had. I could attribute my childless state to persistent use of birth control. But the truth, somehow, is that I always wanted an office, not a nursery. And that’s what I got.

As always, your comments are welcome.
Sue

Copyright 2007 Sue Fagalde Lick