KJ

My experience growing up shaped my beliefs about family and I believe contributed to my ambivalence about having children. I’ve always a struggled with it, having one foot on the gas and the other on the brake; with a deep concern for not wanting to inflict any of my unhealed pain on the next generation.

One thing I knew for sure was that I only wanted to bring children in to the world from a stable loving relationship - this was my dream. It’s been a rocky road, and by the time I found that relationship in my late 30’s and in my early 40’s decided to try for a family, my biological clock had, well, all but stopped ticking.

So, here I am at midlife; working each day on acceptance and with the help of others in the childless community, building my plan B life.

As those in this community know, there are lots of challenges on this path, but one that was unexpected for me is coping with feeling so invisible and an outsider as a childless woman.

Fortunately, I rarely receive negative judgmental comments (not to my face anyway!) or inappropriate questions about my childlessness from people I hardly know. I actually wish people I do know and love would ask me more about it but for some reason they rarely do. Maybe they think it’s prying or maybe as one friend said, they assume I didn’t want kids and that’s the end of it. I don’t know and I don’t feel ready to ask.

I am slowly learning to own my identity as a childless woman more and hope some day to be able to speak about who I am in this aspect with confidence and pride. I’m not there yet but inspired by others, I feel there is hope I will get there too.

This experience of feeling invisible as a childless woman shows up a lot when I am with mums / grandmothers and the topic of conversation frequently centres around these roles / identities. Interestingly, this rarely happens in conversation with dads / grand dads!

Thanks to my own mum, my sister and I were encouraged to be able to have conversations with lots of different people (we didn’t appreciate it at the time!) This helps me in so many situations, especially meeting new people and I am genuinely curious and in the main interested and enjoy hearing about others stories and experiences.

My female friends, family and colleagues are mostly keen to talk about their kids and are grateful for anyone who will listen and this in itself is not an issue. The issue for me is about the need for balance, mutuality and reciprocity in relationship.

A good conversation I believe is a balanced one – we take an interest in each other, especially important when its about something different than our own experience. I’m not saying I am perfect at this (given the chance I would talk till the cows come home about our cats!) but I try to hold these principles.

I’ve noticed that when I say I don’t have kids or I just haven’t mentioned the fact, often I’m not asked about other aspects of my life and I wonder if its because some of the mums I meet don’t know what else to ask me about.

Because I don’t like the awkwardness and I’m usually not comfortable ending it on that note, I either try to somehow ‘make up for it’ by saying something like ‘but I do have nephews and stepkids’ as if I’m trying to prove I’m not a child hater (ridiculous, I know!) or I turn it quickly back on to them and continue the conversation about stuff they are in to (i.e. more about the kids!) I don’t like this default pattern but I find it hard at the moment to do anything else.

So what’s in it for me when I do this? Well, I suppose I get to be liked and I get to stay in the group… of sorts. What’s not in it for me? I don’t really feel seen or heard, and that’s lonely and isolating. In my down moments, it can also lead to self shaming and feeling less than. Of course, all this goes on internally, so the mums are none the wiser, and so it continues.

Thankfully I do have some great reciprocal and mutual relationships in my life, many of which are with mums / grandmothers. They are people who are curious and interested in people (and cats, lol) including people who have different lives to their own. I cherish and am nourished by these relationships.

I do want to hear about people’s kids and grandkids they are important; I’d just like it to work both ways. Childless women and men have interesting lives too, and we have a great deal to contribute to this world.