Lockdown and Everything Else Must Be Easy Without Children
And here it is again. The same fiber woven through a different human experience - this time, a worldwide pandemic. Little in life seems to be free from the myth that lives not involving the raising of children are naturally easier.
Had the me of four to even three years ago been privy to the assumption of childless ease during lockdown and everything else pandemic, I shudder to think of the emotional fallout I’d have suffered.
The me of then was about three years out of my last round of IVF, eking out a recovery from four years of trying to conceive. My husband and I had to abandon our pursuit of parenthood in order to save ourselves, and were grinding away at the transition into unexpected non-parenthood, an experience that I can only think to describe as word defying.
Processing raw grief, recovering from PTSD and relearning myself and the world were just a few of the items on my infertility survivor involuntarily childless to do list. My reality was soaked in heartbreak, upheaval and endless secondary losses spun from the losses of all of my children, parenthood and grandparenthood. I felt permanently unhitched from the world and everything in it. The experience, and even the concept of easy, had become entirely unfamiliar.
And yet, the human conversation in all its inherent glory was somehow littered with assertions that I was living it up.
I’d been told on more than one occasion that, when it comes to having spouses who work long hours (my husband is in the restaurant business), I have it easier because I’m not stuck at home with kids. Which would then force me to bear the news that it’s generally much better to be “stuck” at home raising one’s children than it is to be stuck at home grieving their loss.
Oh, it’s all YOUR time!
I was once told upon someone finding out I didn’t have kids. Because we all know how grief, trauma and general life
upheaval clears a calendar! Nope, nothing to do or process or cope with or figure out there! It was said innocently enough while sticking me in the awkward position of having to give the person a brief run down of my story and point out that raw grief and trauma recovery in fact do NOT constitute free time.
Another situation I was in went like this:
Do you have kids?
Me: No.
Oh, footloose and fancy free huh??
Wrong again humans!!
This time, I was in the unmerciful situation of having to deliver another encapsulation of my story along with the fact that foot loose and fancy free couldn’t be farther from the truth - that not being able to have children is actually one of the tougher things a person could possibly go through.
Having childless pandemic belittlements layered atop what I went through, well, I can’t quite imagine. I certainly would not have needed this one more impediment to my healing. While I’ve made it through the raw grief and trauma recovery phases - and yes, congratulations ARE in order for that - there are plenty more like me still in the trenches, out in the world hiding in plain sight, and so I write this in part for them.
Parented status does not boil down to either “have” or “don’t have because you easily decided you didn’t want”. It does not reduce down to having kids is the most elevated status of hard while not having them is the most disrespectable version of easy. The range of human experience, especially when it comes to human reproduction and the acquisition of children in general, is infinitely splattered with hues of gray.
And so my pandemic and overall conversation tip for those who have children and for those who have never wanted for children? Have an awareness of who your audience might be.
In addition to those still in the throes of trying to have children - a bonafide purgatory in and of itself especially in a pandemic - you could be presuming an easy time of the one in five adults globally who are childless not by choice (an analysis of data has shown that as much as 90% of people who don’t have children wanted them).
You could be presuming the ease of someone who was not in or had to end a relationship during their last fertile years (a large percentage of the childless not by choice are circumstantially childless). You could be presuming the ease of someone who suffered a miscarriage or miscarriages and never got their rainbow baby. Or of someone whose only child was born still. You could be presuming the ease of someone who has endured one or more failed adoptions, or of someone who isn’t eligible to adopt due to their health history or something else. You could be presuming the ease of someone who had an unsuccessful fertility treatment, or two, or ten and had to stop (like me). You could be presuming the ease of someone who couldn’t have children via merely having sex and didn’t have the financial means to pursue other options. You could be presuming the ease of someone who went into early menopause before being able to have children or of someone who can’t have children due to a chronic health condition, or of someone who had to have their reproductive organs removed before being able to reproduce, and the list, believe me, goes on.
My experiences taught me the hard way that the company of my fellow humans can be highly overrated. I learned the hard way that, if I were bleeding out from a life threatening wound on the side of a road, it would actually be better to have no one come than to have people driving by, insistent upon only smiling and waving. That is the worst feeling in the world.
So during this World Childless Week 2020, I ask you, as nicely as I can, please try not to be a smiler and a waver.
And now? What about the presumption of pandemic ease for those of us who have emerged from the raw and consuming phases of grief and for those of us who became trauma survivors on our path to involuntary childlessness who have come quite a ways in our trauma recovery?
Well not so fast, cowboy!
Before assuming life-ease - pandemic and otherwise - of us, there are a few things to consider as far as what we do go through within the presence of the absence of our children. Sure, being without living children during the pandemic and especially during lockdown might sound nice, but there are a load of other things one would have to contend with. Life altering loss does leave its imprint, and generally NOT in the forms of endless lounging, cocktails galore and constant dance parties.
If there’s any fact that should be known about being involuntarily childless that somehow curiously isn’t, it’s that when you can’t have the children you wanted, you need to literally invent a whole new life. Before everyone perks up too much though, as someone who is currently engaged in this not asked for endeavor I can assure you, it’s not as romantic as it sounds.
This reinvention process occurs amid the tempered, if not at times zapped motivation that comes from life altering loss. It typically entails multiple false starts and dead ends. And for me, the process has been threaded with the wayward sense forward common amongst trauma survivors. Discovering new meaning is a painstaking, typically ambiguous journey, never mind translating that into something payable if one’s new meaning is going to come in the form of work. And a pandemic on top of that, well, you get the idea.
Due the unnecessary shame, societal silencing and invisibility surrounding involuntary childlessness, and due to the varied natures of what we encounter on our individual paths to involuntary childlessness, our social support systems are rather absent. Particularly those of the in-person variety. I’m optimistic this will shift for the better in coming generations, thanks to the pioneering work of Jody Day at www.gateway-women.com as well as other initiatives. But for now it’s still generally a perpetual gap.
While there are many viable options to commiserate with one’s peers over the stress (and what must be just the general wackiness) of sudden home schooling for example, my options for having any sort of a useful conversation about reinventing one’s life in middle age amid a world wide pandemic are scarce. And the chances of having a spontaneous conversation about such a thing at the grocery store, chiropractor, or with a neighbor? Essentially zero.
If you did find yourself amid lockdown and the pandemic without children, there’s a better chance you’d also find yourself taking on the majority of the responsibilities caring for an aging parent. An aging parent who, though you may (or may not!) appreciate them tremendously, you haven’t gotten the same out of as your parented siblings (should you have any). Because what, after all, do our parents know about being involuntary childless?
There’s also the constant having to wrap your head around a loss that will be with you in one way or another for the rest of your life. And further, the integration of that loss for the sake of your emotional survival and mental health while meeting resistance from your fellow “Oh, she’s STILL talking about THAT” humans every step of the way. While this gets considerably less intense and more fluid over time, it’s always hovering to one degree or another.
And then, there’s the rest of life, which doesn’t stop for any of us regardless of what we’ve lost. Not being able to have children did not get me a free pass from having an extraordinarily debilitating at its onset long term (but thankfully and mercifully resolving) autonomic nervous system disorder. It did not absolve us from having the current administration here in the US attempt to rescind my husband’s immigration status, nor did it prevent business and financial troubles. If anything, not being able to have children left us much more vulnerable to some of the above occurrences.
Last but not least, there’s all that is missed, too excessive to name here. Throughout the pandemic I’ve been intermittently sad that I won’t have a child or children to reflect upon this pivotal time in history with years down the road. Even though the fact we wanted to strangle each other during lockdown likely would have been part of that reflection! While I have good things in my life and am hopeful for more good things in my future, I do not have the names, faces, voices, relationships with and memories of my children. Those things cannot be procured and experienced later. There are no stand ins for stuff like that.
So no, the involuntarily childless for the most part don’t have to figure out how to sleuth working from home with young children (if that’s even possible) or home schooling or endure having to be around our children 24/7 with no respite in sight or struggle to piece together child care from few viable options. Nor do we need to be actively reminded of as much!
Having not had any social or societal support systems in my time of need and loss, I can feel to some extent for what parents are going through now. Vagaries and uncertainties now exist where unquestioned societal support systems used to be.
None of the major things the involuntarily childless do deal with, however, in any way qualify as “easy”.
While childless people can and often do go on to have meaningful and fulfilling lives, these lives are hard won. The are not fashioned from the imagined chirpy treats of childlessness, but rather from the brand of grit that can only be born from the shattering of one’s soul. They are envisioned in the absence of wise elders due to societal silencing (thanks Sarah Roberts from www.emptycradlefertilelife.com for illuminating this). They are fashioned in the absence of any societal acknowledgement whatsoever, and often in the presence of strained family systems that fail to properly honor, nurture and integrate their involuntarily childless members.
The lives of the involuntarily childless are not extended versions of a weekend away from the kids. I and I know many in my tribe make an effort not to assume someone’s life is easy just because they got to have the children we wanted so badly. We deserve the same in return.
Sarah Chamberlin