talking about childlessness

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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Emotional infertility and other questions to ponder

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by circumstance, childless in India, educated more likely to be childless, emotional infertility, gateway-women.com, Jessica Valenti, Megan Lloyd Davies, talking about childlessness, women's e-news

Jody of Gateway-women.com,  https:/gateway-women.com, shared a link today for an article called “It’s Not My Fault That I Missed the Chance to Become a Mother” by Megan Lloyd Davies. This is a great article about “emotional infertility,” a term I had not heard before. It basically refers to people who don’t have kids because they never found the right partner or the one they found didn’t want kids. It also acknowledges, thank God, that this can be as painful as physical infertility. Give it a read.You may be comforted by the conclusions Megan reaches and join me in booing some of the thoughtless comments.

Question? How come I read so much more about childlessness from the UK than I do in the US press? A lot of those ladies over there are buying my book, too, via Kindle. Thank you so much. Are Americans less comfortable discussing the subject? Just wondering.

This whole childless thing varies by culture. Every few months I read about someone in India who had committed suicide because they couldn’t have kids. You may be grieving, feeling left out, or just plain pissed because life hasn’t given you children, but imagine living in a place where you’re shunned, harassed and completely shut out of the family if you can’t squeeze a baby out of your uterus. These men and women need our prayers.

In both the US and UK, about one-fifth of women reach age 45 without reproducing, but the statistics are more complicated than that. An article by Jessica Valenti in women’s e-news this week quotes a Pew Research Center study that showed the most educated women are the most likely group to never have a child. In 2008, 24 percent of women ages 40 to 44 with medical or legal, master’s or doctoral degrees had not had children. I have seen similar statistics many times. Why do you think this is? FYI, I have a master’s degree, and my late husband had one, too.

I welcome your comments.

 

Goals for a new year without children

Sue Fagalde Lick childless goals, dealing with childlessness, talking about childlessness

Dear friends,
So many of you have been writing to me about your childless by marriage situations. I feel for your grief. I share it. Although I like to think I have accepted my situation and moved on, sometimes I want to curse and throw things when I realize, again, what I have missed by not having children. I never really direct my anger at my husbands who didn’t want to have kids with me. I’m more angry at myself for letting the opportunity slip by without taking action.

With my husband passing away, this will be my first year in a long time that I haven’t been married, so I have a new life to build. I get angry that this happened to us. It’s not fair that I don’t have kids or a husband at this age. But you know what? Hanging onto the bitterness doesn’t do any good. God gave me this life, and I need to live it.

Whatever your situation this year, let’s set some goals for dealing with being childless by marriage.

Repeat after me:

1) I will discuss very honestly how I feel with my partner or spouse. I will not hold back, even if I’m afraid that what I say will make him/her angry or sad. They need to know. Silent resentment will poison our relationship.

2) I will decide once and for all whether I can live a life without children. Is this person worth giving up children? If not, I will do something about it.

3) I will find a way include at least one child in my life as an unofficial godmother, auntie or whatever I want to call it. I can find this child in my family, among my friends’ children, in volunteering in my community, or even one of those situations where I “adopt” a poor child in another country.

4) I will find something to be thankful for every day.

5) (this one’s for me) If I am posting as Anonymous, I will start using a name. It doesn’t have to be my real name. It can be serious or silly, but it will help Sue tell one poster from another.

Happy New Year to all.