she doesn’t want children

My Childless Story is Not the Same as Yours

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, childless in old age, childless old age, childless regrets, regrets about marriage , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Photo shows young woman perched on a couch playing guitar and singing. She is wearing red glasses, a red jacket, gray pleated skirt, and red loafers. Behind her is a faded blue and white quilt. Photo is from the early 1980s.

Dear young childless readers, I have a confession to make: the older I get the less I think about not having children. That’s one of the blessings of aging, but it’s making it hard to know what to write about in this blog after nearly 20 years.  

I know many of you are still in the throes of trying to decide what to do. The years are passing, menopause looms, and you worry that if you don’t have a baby, you will regret it forever. Your friends and family are after you to get pregnant. But your partner doesn’t want to, and maybe in your heart you’re not sure you want to either. Or you’ve been trying hard to have a baby and getting nothing but heartbreak. Maybe the decision is made, and you are grieving so hard you don’t know how you’ll survive. 

I remember that feeling, but it’s fading. I see this giant wall rising between me and you and between me and those years in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s when I was conflicted, furious, and heartbroken. Now, I’m grandmother age. I still wish I had children. I wish I didn’t feel so awkward around other people’s children. I hate that my “family photo” includes just one person while my friends and family fill the frame with their grown children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and all their spouses.

But that ship sailed so long ago. My fertile years took place before many of you were born. I started having sex in 1974, the year birth control became legal in the U.S. for unmarried women. We didn’t have computers or cell phones. Calculators were high tech then. We listened to vinyl records and heated our food on the stove because we didn’t have microwave ovens. I had to see a doctor to get prescriptions to treat my cramps and yeast infections. You certainly couldn’t purchase condoms off the shelf at Safeway. Now you can buy all that stuff on Amazon. 

Life was so incredibly different, and it was less common for people to decide not to marry or have children. I never considered either option. I fell into the timing hole between the first husband, who was never ready to be a father, and the second one, who already was a dad to three nearly grown children. 

I have told my childless story so many times here that regular readers can probably recite it from memory. It’s time to put it in the cedar chest with my mini-skirts and peasant blouses. It’s time to tell your story.  

In my own life, my focus is on aging and living alone these days. That’s really all I want to write about (see my “Can I Do It Alone?” Substack), but I don’t want to keep giving you the old lady voice. The grandma voice. The one that can only offer hindsight, not what it’s like right now for women stuck in the childless-by-marriage conundrum. It’s even harder to write for the few men who read this blog because I have never been a man. I don’t know what it’s like to be a father or want to be a father. Or NOT to want to.

I’m not quitting. Childless by Marriage will go on. I will keep sharing what I can gather from readers, the media, and those moments when I feel the non-mom grief again. But know that I’m writing from the other side of the wall. I feel like the older woman sitting at Starbucks with a younger woman who has come to her for advice. As if this older woman knows anything but her own story! Which doesn’t change! How did it happen? Bad timing? Do I regret my choices? Did I have a choice? If so, yes, but I’m not sure I did. Would I do it again? No. I shouldn’t have married the first husband for a lot of reasons. Not marrying him would have changed everything that followed.

My advice always boils down to this: If the problem is your partner and you can’t live with it, dump him/her. If the problem is physical, do your best to accept it and move on. If the problem is money, spend less on other things, and have a baby before it’s too late. Have more than one because people need brothers and sisters. 

I keep trying to sneak back into that younger skin to give you worthwhile posts, but I need your help.

  1. Tell me what you want to see here. What bothers you the most? What do you want to talk about? 
  2. Write a guest post or a letter I can post and answer. You can be as anonymous as you would like.
  3. Send me links to resources, news stories, blogs, Substacks, or whatever you find that might spark a new post. 

Help an old lady out, and let’s keep this going. I’d really like to get to 1,000 posts. This is number 874. Together, we can do it.

By the way, World Childless Week is coming around again online next month with a ton of workshops, panel discussions, articles, and videos to enjoy. I will be joining Jody Day’s Childless Elderwomen on Thursday, Sept. 19 for another fireside chat as part of World Childless Week. Our topic is “Friendships Across Life,” particularly what happens when our friends have children and we don’t. Go to https://worldchildlessweek.net to see how you can participate and to register to attend some or all of the events. Most of them are free, although donations are welcome.

Photo is of me around 1983 at my grandparents’ house. Note the spiffy red glasses and permed hair.

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The Big Gamble: Should You End the Relationship to Have Babies?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

Should I leave my otherwise good relationship in the hope of finding someone else I can make babies with? That’s the question people ask the most in the comments at this blog. I can’t answer that question. There are so many other questions to be answered first. How bad do you want to have children? Are you 100 percent sure it will never happen in your current relationship? Are you otherwise happy with your partner or would it end between you anyway? What if you never find someone and you end up alone?

I can’t answer any of these questions either. I know what happened with me. The first marriage without children was doomed from the start because my husband cheated on me and the only place we got along was in bed. By the time I got to the second marriage, after a couple more failed relationships, I was sure I was going to spend the rest of my life alone. I wouldn’t even have cats because I was allergic. So when Fred came along, we were such a good match, I accepted that we wouldn’t have children together and was glad to be a pseudo mom with his kids. A close friend has a similar story except that her first husband was abusive. Her second husband, Roy, had three kids, and my friend was content not to have any of her own. But our first marriages were bad to begin with, and not everybody finds a Fred or a Roy.

What if the relationship you’re in now is good, really good, except for this one issue of having children? Let’s look at it from the view of my mother’s generation. If one’s partner turned out to be infertile, one did not leave. If one of the people was infertile, then the couple was infertile. They adopted or accepted their childless status together. They didn’t dump the first spouse as a defective model and find a new one. As for someone declaring he or she didn’t want to have children? We didn’t hear much about that. If they were having sex, they were probably going to have kids because birth control was not nearly as easy to get.

Being older than most of you, I was sort of on the cusp of the old way. A certain family member urged me to get pregnant “by accident” and then everything would fall into place. Not likely, but life seemed so much less complicated then. Marriage, babies, the house with the picket fence . . . okay, I know it was probably not that simple, but I’m trying to make a point. Are we too ready to bail on our relationships now? Or should we get out quickly, before it’s too late to have babies? Which bring us back to our original question, to which I do not have the answers.

Here are some articles to read that might offer some answers or raise more questions.

“The High Failure Rate of Second and Third Marriages,” Psychology Today. Sobering facts to ponder before you dump your partner.

“8 Tough Truths to Consider When Your Partner Doesn’t Want Kids,” Huffington Post. This writer really does give you some answers or at least a path to finding them. Read this and do some soul-searching.

“I left the husband I loved because he refused to have children (and had IVF twins alone)” There’s another way to go, as this Daily Mail piece describes. Would you be willing to have children on your own if you don’t find the ideal partner?

This subject is too big for one post. I know many of you are in pain over this issue and agonizing over what to do. Please read and comment and we’ll come back to this next time. Thank you all for being here.