From the time I was quite young, I was treated like I did not matter. Having narcissistic parents was a factor but the conservative misogyny in my family was actually more deeply entrenched. I felt very unwelcome in my family. My early experiences were very difficult. Since I had received the message like many childless women to never quit, I never quit thinking that the good I worked to develop in myself and gave to others would not register. In my family, I did not.
Of course, women receive these messages that they do not really matter all of the time. I did not realize that then. I can see why many women will become mothers because at least then they do matter, at least to some degree. To this day, especially in conservative cultures, but also in modern ones, women still receive the message that they do not matter unless they are mothers and that they are not real women if they do not have children. And of course, that childless women are not “normal.”
I learned - with much resistance on my part - that I was a second class citizen. That has not changed in my family in spite of 3.5 academic degrees and having worked my whole life. I am still invisible. Unfortunately, being childless my family moved me from second class citizen to third class citizen. Motherhood provides the women in my family with a source of honor, respect, and visibility, while childlessness removes any chance that that will be the case. How many of us find that we are relegated to the least comfortable bedroom at family gatherings, or that plans are made but we are never asked what we might like to do? It happens to me also.
I never expected not to be a mother, but to me in order to be a responsible adult, I felt strongly that learning to earn a living came first. I started my adult years in the 1970s when the United States had recently liberalized divorce laws and I saw how often women were abandoned with their children and without child support. It took decades for a national child support system to be put in place.
I could feel the desperation at the time and it left a lasting impression on me on top of the early misogyny in my family. So I put off any idea of having children until I could earn an income. I went to school for an MBA and worked in marketing which I did not love but which was one area women could work outside the “pink ghetto” as women’s work was called back in the day.
My mother was German and like all German mothers was put on a pedestal and expected not to work. Try wrapping your arms around the idea of a mother with two pedestals one for narcissism and the other for being a German mother! It took me a long time to be able to laugh about it. The women of my generation subscribe to this model of adult female life and I definitely have felt the condescension that comes from working and being childless. As my sister says, “love is the answer” and that is code for staying home and having children. It is bad enough being childless but women who work are not loving people. It is silly but the mindset is prevalent.
So this is my takeaway from all of this. I could never understand all of the resentment I received growing up and still receive to this day. Under the hood of the perfect nuclear family is so much resentment. A lot of the behavior in my family is the internalized expression of my mother’s resentment. Part of my grieving process has not been just the loss of my own children but also the loss of a family that cannot appreciate me and continues to resent me. I see this happening to so many childless women, not just me. We are paying a high price for the challenges of social and cultural change. I did not expect the cost of the resistance to change to hit me so hard and I am not alone. I think that in many ways childless women are very resented because, in spite of the pain of not being able to have a child of our own, we can consider having some adventure in life and for many women with children that is not a possibility.
The legacy of the patriarchy still has its tentacles in all of us. There is something terribly wrong when we cannot embrace and appreciate the good in all of us. I listen to the stories of other childless women as a moderator in Jody Day’s wonderfully compassionate community, Gateway. It is striking to me how many of us - no matter why we are childless, in my case, childless not by choice - feel that the good in us does not really register or matter because to many we are only servants of the parenting class and of little value otherwise.
Some of the bravest women I know are childless.
Some of the most talented women I know are childless.
And some of the most deserving women I know are childless.
Enough is enough!
Thanks
Maria
You can read more from Maria Hill at Sensitive Evolution