Hilary
Someone once told me to pretend the role I need to play at that moment, to fake my feelings, or thoughts, or identity to placate the moment in order to avoid awkward truths. Its worked for me for a very long time. But perhaps I can change that now.
I was working with young parents and children under 5 who have special needs. My job was to advise parents in their homes, staff in pre schools, about parenting skills, opportunities in the community for them and their other children, and helping parents come to terms with having a child with special needs. All that while the fertility tests and promises were going on. No one ever asked me directly if I had had or had children, as I spoke so authoritatively about parenting skills, giving them good strategies and hope for the future. Part of this was my professional knowledge but for the main it was my wish to help. The other huge part was that I didnt want to be "found out”. How could I, being childless, tell a mother or a couple, about how to go about parenting their child. And I wasnt ever found out. Faking was exhausting and ethically challenging but I kept it up.
But when the final bell tolled that I was not going to be able to have children, that all methods had failed and this last one had too, I had to take time off work to take in the enormous truth of what lay ahead, which at the time was a long black tunnel. I could not face my work families, or the children, and saw happy families everywhere so didnt want to go out. My work colleagues were wonderful, and I took 6 weeks off work. But the job had to continue. So I had to go back into the work, back into the families, back to the children, and all the work is about families and children. It was very hard.
I found I could not fake it as well, although still no one asked me if I had children. I began to see everyone, men and women alike, as parents and that I was on the other side of the fence, that no one knew I was there with my broken heart but smiling face. I left that job due to Covid changing everything about it, but then was left without any contact with any children or families (my own immediate family live in Australia and I’m in the UK) and was adrift with my identity. I still today see all women as parents, who have been through the childbirth and rearing process, and different to me because I dont have that experience. I know that’s not accurate, but it’s how I mainly still feel. This all happened about 2017. There was no support or help out there. I did have a partner but we could not communicate on the matter, which made things very tense at home, and I was really on my own with my feelings. I shut down, shut up, and continued pretending although I stopped going to 2 year old birthday parties of my friends’ children and stopped being involved with them. I have got so used to pretending I have been through the parenting process, I could fool anyone by now. Especially when people want my professional opinion and I sound really convincing. General sentences like” We all get so tired we sometimes cant think straight” or “ we all know what the terrible 2’s are like…” so it was all true, but with a spin on it.
Only a few months ago someone told me about Childless Collective. I wept when I saw this - offering so much community and individual support to a group of women who are like me. This is new for me, and for the first time, I dare to drop my guard and my false persona. I am 71 now, but feel it’s not too late to try to undo a habit of coping under the guise of “we do our best for our children” etc. I feel like I can come out, but only with this group, and this is a first time for me. I hope just a small part of the world does sit up and listen to this week’s calling for attention and praise for the Childless Without Choice Community. I believe in the future there will be more of us, and we will be seen and heard, and take our place in a society that recognises us.
So what am I really saying? More questions than answers. When do we interrupt the happy grandparent who asks us how old are our grandchildren, or the lonely couple whose children have successfully left home, and they ask how I was when mine left home - perhaps this forum might have given me the courage to say “I dont have children”.
Thank you Childless Community.
