Electing To Remain Childless

By Rochelle Ratner
January 9, 2000

One of my earliest tangible memories is of myself at age 5 or 6. My mother still bathed me but, training me to wash myself, she explained the importance of cleaning the belly button "because that's where babies come from." I recall later, while bathing myself, purposely leaving my navel unwashed, so determined was I that I didn't want babies. I might have even voiced my views at the time, but I certainly wasn't taken seriously.

Most Americans do not seem to have caught up with the concept that women can lead rich, complete, compassionate lives, and yet not be mothers. Women with doubts about their own desire or capacity to mother are accused of being selfish; they're brusquely commanded to "grow up." Well-meaning friends caution that they're missing out on life's most exhilarating pleasure or that their partner won't feel any ties to a childless relationship. The supposition that motherhood is an intrinsic part of female identity is so complete that well-meaning acquaintances often assume childless women are physically unable to bear children. Tactfully, they avoid the subject in conversations.

So who are such women to talk to? After a woman has a miscarriage, she receives sympathy from everyone around her, along with urgings to try again and heartfelt stories of other people who miscarried but later had three children. If she's going for fertility treatments she will, again, hear all the wonderful success stories. After a woman has opted for abortion (unless she lives in conservative or fundamentalist environment) she will most likely find a camaraderie among trusted friends and colleagues who will relate tales of their own abortions, and assure her that there will be plenty of time to have children later, when she's more settled. But let a woman state that she has no desire for children, no wish to get pregnant, and no incentive to even explore adoption issues, and she will be met with silence--perhaps with an empty stare, perhaps with a hostile one.

Once I began talking about and confessing that I had no desire to mother, it seemed as if everyone I met had a story to tell. I heard about sisters who simply had to talk to me and husbands still unresolved about the issue.

Acquaintances related stories of family pressure to conceive or of parents baffled by a daughter's lifestyle. Friends I assumed were determined to remain childless were, I discovered, still wavering. And there were plenty of others who, like myself, were resolute, and relieved to finally be able to say so.

Over the past three or four years the issue of voluntary childlessness seems to be garnering personal and public attention. Despite the marvels of fertility technology, women in all sectors of society, from all ethnic backgrounds, are electing to remain childless. Articles are appearing in newspapers and popular magazines. In 1998, six "childless by choice" books were published (although 1999 saw only paperback reprint).

Yet I still can't walk into a bookstore and immediately find the book I've just heard about. I first have to weed through shelf after shelf containing books on infertility and adoption. And most likely these shelves will be in the "parenting" section. More and more of late, I find myself not bolting, but observing the women around me. I'm curious as to their backgrounds and, yes, even their children. But aside from apologies as one of us reaches across the other to retrieve a book, we seldom speak

Voluntarily childless women are finally tentatively beginning to identify themselves and talk with one another. When we can also talk with mothers--with each of us accepting and respecting the others' choices--then we will have taken a giant step toward achieving the true meaning of "reproductive choice."