Shireen

I married a boy I’d gone to school with at 24. We planned to have children at 29, but instead we were separated by then. I met my second husband at 33 and when we got together, we knew we wanted children together.

My godson was born when I was 37 and when I held him, I knew it was the right time. We’d bought the nice house near the good school with the little room ready to be a nursery by then. But things didn’t work out for us and after a year and the tests we found out that we both had fertility problems, and there was only a very slim chance we’d conceive, even with medical assistance, and then the window was closing. Nevertheless we tried, and we considered adoption, but neither worked out for us. We had a really hard time coming to terms with what just seemed easy for everyone else.

When we were in our forties, my mum started to get more dependent on me. She had mobility problems and then was diagnosed with both cancer and dementia at the same time. I took on the role of main carer for seven years, travelling back and forth 200 miles from our house to her.

After mum died in 2020, it took a long time to get used to not being completely responsible for looking after mum and eventually I realised that I felt differently about not having children. Although it still hurts we couldn’t have them, I think the intense experience of caring for someone so deeply turned my experience around. I wasn’t investing in the future by raising my children, but I was saying thank you to my mum for raising me.

I’m now studying the experiences of and attitudes towards childless women for my PhD.