I sit here writing this in a rustic, but beautiful French farmhouse that I have been renovating for 20 years. There’s lots of space and lots of garden and as I wander around the garden the beauty and peace astound me even after twenty years. But here alone, as I am now, there is an ache in my heart, both that I am alone and that so often the house sits empty when it could be filled with people; friends, family, small children, grown up children, my children. 

I always expected and wanted to get married and have kids. I didn’t have a particular desire to bear them from my own body - to “reproduce” “myself” and produce biological children and thought I might adopt, but there was never a question of not having kids, much less not having a life in which they featured heavily . Naively I just thought it would happen one day, one way and another, but also I thought that friends kids would be part of my life and that as an adult with an interest and love to share that I would be part of a community or extended family raising kids together. There is an African saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and I still want to be part of that village. But somehow in the western world today people seem to think that they are solely responsible for the kids they have borne. And sadly one way and another I’ve never been with the right person at the right time, I wasn’t keen to be a single parent and thus I have not either borne or adopted kids and have now reached an age where it is too late. 

There also seems to be a feeling of ownership of children that excludes and helps no-one. I know for many the yearning is for biological children, but for me it hasn’t been, it’s just been for their presence, their love and the chance to love them. Only one of my siblings has children and she lives on the other side of the world, so I haven’t even had the chance to be much of a hands on auntie. So that “African village experience” has continued to elude me.

There is a strong narrative in society and in my own profession as a social worker and childcare professional, that biological relationships are more powerful than any others, particularly parent child relationships, and there is certainly some truth in that narrative but I wonder how much of the truth is made by the strength of the narrative? 

And yes I would have preferred lockdown with kids. Not if I was stuck in a small flat with no outside space and not enough food, but all other things being equal I would have loved the company, the distraction and the entertainment. And I say that as someone who has lived with and looked after other people’s kids sufficiently that I do know the realities and both the joys and the frustrations.

So it is hurtful when I hear that “you don’t / can’t understand unless / until you are a parent / have had children of you own” and the consequent dismissal of the strength of feeling, the insights and the full humanity of those who (through nothing more than absence of that particular good fortune) are not parents. And really it is just luck, not accomplishment or adequacy, just luck! And it is hurtful when parents speak and behave (and society supports this) as though they are saints for having kids. And they complain about how hard it is and how self sacrificing they are. But would they swap places with me? No. Will they share the burden with me - in practical terms - not verbally to elicit sympathy? No. Do they have an interest in what it feels like to be me, living my life? No. It is for me to be the one who looks up to and accommodates them, simply because they have been lucky in a way that I haven’t

But as I walk around and as I drive away from my French farmhouse I will enjoy the beauty, absolutely, and I will look forward to returning and I will take the next step of going overseas for my next project. And I will bury that ache, not so deep that I forget and can’t feel it - I couldn’t if I tried, but tucked away, just far enough out of sight and out of mind, that I can enjoy the blessings I do have have and the people I know and the things I can do. Because they are many.

Kathryn