baby lust

Your Childless by Marriage Survival Guide

Sue Fagalde Lick baby showers, Childless Woman's Survival Guide, envying families with children, grandparent envy, nosy questions, questions about having children , , , , , , , , , , ,

Survival guide? I can hear the naysayers now. “What’s so hard about not having children? You’ve got nothing to worry about but yourself.”

Wrong! In a world where most people become parents, those of us who don’t procreate face a few special challenges, including feeling shut out by your friends with kids, getting dumped on at work because everyone assumes you have nothing else to do, and the mother-in-law who keeps buying stuffed animals for her unborn grandchildren.

In this second to last new post at the Childless by Marriage blog, I offer a few suggestions.

1) The question: Do you have children? For most people, it’s just a conversation starter, but answering “no” may start the conversation in a direction you’d rather not travel. So have a reply ready. I used to tell people I had three stepchildren, which usually satisfied folks, but since I no longer see the steps and I’m considerably older, I just say, “No, I never had any children.” My friend Jill replies, “I have dogs.” Another friend just looks them in the eye and asks, “Why?”

2) The next question: Why don’t you have children? Telling folks you hate kids will not win you many friends. If you wanted children but your partner was unwilling or unable, it’s not cool to put all the blame on them. This is a person you love, right? You’re in this together. (If you’re not on the same page, you need to figure out whether you should stay together). For a few years, you can say you’re not quite ready yet, but after that, you need a better excuse. You could say, “We decided children were not for us,” “Our lives were already so full,” or “We tried, but it didn’t work out, so we got a dog.” If you have fertility issues, talking about them may earn pity, but who needs that? I just say, “God had other plans for me.” Then I change the subject. You can always turn it around and ask, “Why do you have children?”

3) Baby showers: Men don’t have to worry as much about this, but it can be a nightmare for childless women. The longer your friends live with babies, the more you wonder if they have lost their minds. At baby showers, women who have given birth terrify the guest of honor by telling harrowing labor stories. They play obstetric word puzzles and hold timed doll-diapering contests before enjoying a long orgy of unwrapping gifts. You will be the only woman who puts the diaper on backwards, who has nothing to contribute to the conversation, and who buys a doll-sized lace dress the child will be too big for at birth. You have two choices: tell someone else’s birth stories and sip as much fortified punch as you can, or decline the invitation, pleading work, a funeral, or some other obligation you can’t get out of. Send a card with money tucked inside. Cash always works.

4) Baby lust: No matter how comfortable you may be most of the time with your status as a childless person, once in a while you are going to want to cuddle an infant and talk baby talk. Borrow a baby. A sibling, co-worker or friend will be delighted to pass her child to you for a while so she can take a break. Borrowing an infant is like renting that Lexus you could never afford to buy. In both cases, when they need servicing, you give them back.

5) Baby talk: In their reproductive years, your friends and co-workers will spend hours discussing their children’s schools, illnesses, and annoying or endearing habits. Later, they will talk about their grandchildren’s schools, illnesses, and annoying or endearing habits. When you mention your puppy’s new chew toy, they just stare at you. Find a child you can talk about. Stepchildren work well, also nieces and nephews, students or the neighbor’s kid down the street. Collect stories you can share when the talk is all about kids. Worst case, reminisce about your own childhood.

6) Acting like a child: Ever pass an arcade and want to drop in a few quarters but everyone there is either a child or a parent? Ever miss playing marbles, jacks or Barbies? Play them alone, and people think you’re nuts. Play them with a child and you are helping, teaching, interacting. So, borrow a kid—with his parents’ permission—and have fun. You’ll get a reputation for being great with children, and their parents will be grateful because they’re sick of playing video games and searching for Barbie’s itty-bitty high heels.

7) The empty nest syndrome: Everyone has an empty nest eventually. Kids grow up and move away, and parents suddenly wonder what happened to their lives. You’re way ahead of them because your nest was never full. If you need something to feed and clean up after, get a dog. The dog will never learn to drive, never get married, never tell you she’s embarrassed to be seen with you. Dogs never ask for money or bring home bags of dirty clothes for you to wash. Overall, dogs are more fun than kids. And I’ll bet most of your friends who are raising tiny humans would agree.

8) You are not alone: With more and more people opting not to have children (or get married), you are not the only person without offspring. When you find someone else who is childless, talk to them, invite them to a meal, do things together. Eventually, the parent-people will look up and see you again when their kids no longer need constant supervision. Meanwhile, you don’t have to be alone. If you look around, you’ll find that people without kids are part of the new normal.

Dear friends, what would you add to this list? What is your best advice for childless by marriage readers?

One more post to go before I stop posting regularly here at the Childless by Marriage blog. What would you like to read here? I will keep up the website, with its reference list and an index of the 900 posts I have published over the years. You can still comment. I will read your comments and respond.

The Childless by Marriage Facebook page will continue. If you haven’t visited there, give it a try.

If you want to know what I’m up to these days, visit my “Can I Do It Alone?” Substack at https://suelick.substack.com or friend me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/suelick. 

Thanks for reading Childless by Marriage!

If Egg and Sperm had come together . . .

Sue Fagalde Lick childlessness, What if I'd had a baby , , , , , , , , ,

The night I lost my virginity to the man who would become my first husband was probably the only time we had unprotected sex. If my math is correct, I was ripe for conception, my young eggs eager to hook up with his sperm. If I had conceived that night, almost two years before we got married .  . .

We were near Los Angeles, visiting friends of his whom I barely knew. We had spent the day at Disneyland, where he kept bugging me to have sex. We were drunk. Our friends had gone to bed, and he invited me to join him on the floor in the two sleeping bags he had zipped together. One thing led to another . . .

Before we did it, I said, “We’re going to get married, right?” He said yeah, but don’t tell anybody. It was Fourth of July. We announced our engagement in September, four months later, but there was never a real proposal.

My ex hustled me off to get birth control as soon as we got home from that trip. I remember I had told my mother, “We’re not going to do anything down there that we wouldn’t do here.” Ha. What if I had come home pregnant? My parents would have lost their minds. It was 1972. Out-of-wedlock babies were still a scandal. My reputation would have been trashed forever—or not, if we got married quickly enough to make it look like it happened on the honeymoon. But there is no quick marriage for Catholics, not with the six-month prep.

However it worked out, I would have had a child.

We probably would have gotten married sooner. I don’t think he would have left me. His parents wouldn’t let him, and he did everything they said. As it was, we got married two weeks after I graduated from college. If I had had a baby, would I have graduated at all?

Would we still have lived in that two-bedroom apartment by the freeway? We would have had to use my “office” for the baby. Where would I have done my writing? The sound of the typewriter annoyed my husband. Maybe we would have lived elsewhere. Or moved in with his parents, God forbid.

We would have missed some fabulous trips. Or maybe not. Maybe I would have been out in the desert or the mountains with my baby bump. Maybe we’d still be making love on the tailgate of the Jeep or on a rock by a river. Maybe our child would be a backpack baby.

I have a feeling he would have started cheating sooner. Maybe he would have been drunk even more often. The marriage would have ended anyway. We were just not compatible. But I would have that child, and maybe I’d be a grandmother now.

It would have been hard to do my newspaper work, very difficult, with all those late meetings and deadlines and all that running around doing interviews and taking pictures–not that I could get a newspaper job without a degree.

My parents weren’t the kind who would step up and babysit. My in-laws were still working. My ex clearly wasn’t up for childcare. He didn’t even take care of our dog and cat.

But I would have this child. When I met Fred, I would be a single parent. My child, around 11 years old, would be older than his youngest, who turned 7 shortly after we met. Fred would have welcomed him or her. He liked older kids, just didn’t want to deal with a baby. Maybe this child would have helped me through Fred’s illness and my widowhood. I might have had a daughter-in-law, too. I could live near them and do holidays with “the kids” like my friends do.

Maybe I would write about kids and motherhood instead of dogs and dying husbands. Maybe I’d write children’s books. . . .

At church Sunday, a young couple with a baby a few months old sat in the pew right beside the piano. I watched that baby the whole time. So cute. So magical with that perfectly clear skin, those tiny fingers, and those blue eyes observing everything. His parents clearly adored him. Mid-Mass, the mom nursed him under a blanket, and then he fell asleep. Oh, I melted. I started to think about how I never got to care for a baby like that. The pain started. I chased it away. Not here, not now. I had music to play. But . . . shit. You know.

I mourn the child I might have had, but at the same time, I know I was lucky. If I had had a baby with husband number one, I would have been tied to him and his family forever, even after I married Fred. That would have been complicated, to put it mildly. My career would have been trashed. I guess I should be grateful.

So that one time, I did not get pregnant. God knows, lots of people do get pregnant after one passionate night. In the movies, it happens all the time. One night together, and bam, the pregnancy test comes out positive. In the novel I finished reading recently, the couple didn’t have sex very often, but every time they did, the woman conceived. For a lot of people, it’s not that easy. Not even close.

Have there been times when you might have had an oops baby? What if you had? Does it kill you to remember what might have been? Feel free to share in the comments.

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One of our readers recommended “5 Flights Up” as a movie where the couple does not have children. I watched it last weekend and really enjoyed it. Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton are the couple, and it’s a sweet feel-good movie. Put it on your list.