When I was in my mids, my then husband and I did try, and fail, to conceive a child. Though I would have welcomed a child, their yearning seemed foreign to me. My husband and I considered our options. So we just decided to stop focusing on having a baby, and a baby never came. In social situations around that time, when outsiders would nose into what I believe is private business, the fact that I had taken the path of least resistance gave me an easy out.
And yet even today I rarely volunteer how utterly happy I am with the decision I made more than 20 years ago. But I do recognize all the things that have come my way as the result of not having kids—and, by extension, being a woman on my own after my marriage broke up: not having children certainly made it less difficult to end the marriage when it became clear that my husband and I had to do so.
In some ways, the baby I never had is a part of me. She has given me freedom. By the time I had actually launched any sort of part-time writing career, the do-or-die babymaking years were upon me. My husband was a freelance writer. I had a full-time job as a magazine copy editor; whatever writing I was doing was happening on the side.
But what would that mean, exactly, when the writing I was doing was already in the margins of my life? I knew women who had babies and careers—of course, it was possible. Today, American women have more public images of themselves than that of a housewife. We see ourselves depicted in television, ads, movies, and magazines not to mention relief! But that's what makes the public images of total motherhood so insidious. We see these diverse images of ourselves and believe that the oppressive standard Friedan wrote about is dead, when in fact it has simply shifted.
Because no matter how many different kinds of public images women see of themselves, they're still limited. They're still largely white, straight upper-middle-class depictions, and they all still identify women as mothers or non-mothers.
American culture can't accept the reality of a woman who does not want to be a mother. It goes against everything we've been taught to think about women and how desperately they want babies. If we're to believe the media and pop culture, women—even teen girls—are forever desperate for a baby. It's our greatest desire. The truth is, most women spend the majority of their lives trying not to get pregnant. According to the Guttmacher Institute, by the time a woman with two children is in her mids she will have spent only five years trying to become pregnant, being pregnant, and not being at risk for getting pregnant following a birth.
But to avoid getting pregnant before or after those two births, she would had had to refrain from sex or use contraception for an average of 25 years. Almost all American women 99 percent , ages , who have had sexual intercourse use some form of birth control. The second most popular form of birth control after the Pill? And now, more than ever, women are increasingly choosing forms of contraception that are for long-term use.
Since , for example, IUD use has increased by a whopping percent. That's a long part of life and a lot of effort to avoid parenthood! Now, it may be that these statistics simply indicate that modern women are just exerting more control over when and under what circumstances they become mothers.
To a large degree that's true. But it doesn't jibe with an even more shocking reality: that half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended. Once you factor in the abortion rate and pregnancies that end in miscarriage, we're left with the rather surprising fact that one-third of babies born in the United States were unplanned. Not so surprising, however, is that the intention to have children definitively impacts how parents feel about their children, and how those children are treated—sometimes to terrifying results.
Jennifer Barber, a population researcher at the University of Michigan, studied more than 3, mothers and their close to 6, children from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Basically, children who were unplanned didn't get as much emotional and cognitive support as children who were planned—as reported both by the researchers and the mothers themselves.
Across the board, children who were wanted got more from their parents than children who weren't. Children who were unplanned were also subject to harsher parenting and more punitive measures than a sibling who was intended.
She also says that in addition to benign emotional neglect, parenting unintended children is also associated with infant health problems and mortality, maternal depression, and sometimes child abuse. I just don't see myself being mentally strong enough to be a mother with these possible risks.
Plus, mental health issues run in my family. I've suffered from depression and I still have anxiety. I wouldn't want a child to go through the same things I went through.
Without children, I can focus all my attention on my nephew and nieces. I just love our freedom. I honestly felt like my body had done me a favor. I thought there was no chance I could ever consider not having children, and then I had a life-changing head injury.
All the extra stuff I have to constantly do that just came naturally before made me realize that I need far too much of my own attention to share it with anyone else. I find it SO difficult to look after myself that I can't imagine how much harder it would be raising a child. Not to mention the pregnancy and how I would have to come off my pain meds to have a healthy pregnancy.
The fact that I'm disabled and on benefits means that if I ever had children, they would not have the same opportunities that I did and their lives would be infinitely harder. Also, this world just isn't a world I would want to bring children into. I may consider fostering or adoption in the future but physically having my own child is just not something I want. I never did. Some things that solidified that decision even more for me were the social obligations placed on women to be the keeper of the house and children.
I always hated gender stereotypes and fought to be seen as capable of anything and not to have to live up to certain ideals. Secondly, I watched how my brother struggled to raise a son that he had very young. He gave up a lot for him and struggled to pay bills.
I loved spending time with him and taking him places. That is enough for me. I appreciated that he went home at the end of the day. Then at 34, I decided to go off birth control and I got pregnant within 2 weeks. Instead of feeling excited, I was honestly completely terrified.
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