Who Needs Kids?
By Terri Casey1999
Yet I realized that many people couldn't believe that a woman could be happy without the traditional main ingredient: children. When I told people that I had chosen not to have children, many assumed that I was selfish, a workaholic and irresponsible, that my marriage must be on the rocks, that I must hate children. Not a very flattering picture! And sometimes hurtful.
Where do these misperceptions come from, I wondered, and why do they persist? I realized that they're founded on the social myth that all women want to raise children, and there must be something wrong with those of us who don't.
Casual conversations with childless friends led me to interview 50 women married, partnered, cohabiting, single, divorced and widowed. From privileged backgrounds and disadvantaged ones, happy families and troubled ones. Their ages range from 25 to 82, and they come from varied races, ethnicities, cultural traditions and sexual orientations. They live all over the world and have varying levels of education, everything from trade school certificates to Ph.D.s. They work as actors, corporate marketing managers, yoga teachers, graphic designers, high school counselors, environmental scientists and hairdressers. From these interviews came my first book, Pride & Joy: The Lives and Passions of Women Without Children.
How many women are childless by choice? Web surfing led me to the U.S. Census Bureau site, where I was surprised to see that alongside the current baby boom, another trend is unfolding. Of the roughly 10 million women in the U.S. between the ages of 40 and 44, about one in five does not have children by choice or by chance. That's up from one in ten in 1975 (a doubling in the last 20 years) and translates into nearly 2 million women who at the end of their childbearing years are not mothers, either by choice or by chance. Add in the women above and below that age bracket who aren't mothers and women who don't expect to be, and the number grows. Given that the rate of childlessness is increasing faster than the rate of infertility, demographers theorize that more women are choosing not to have children.
I wondered why we don't see positive images of childless women in movies, on TV or in books. So I decided to collect some of the stories behind the numbers. I wanted to talk to women who had chosen not to have children and led happy, productive lives. Personal networking and responses to announcements in newsletters of national women's organizations led to the 50 women who narrate Pride & Joy.
I discovered that "childless by choice" covers a wide continuum. Women never drawn to motherhood. Women who postponed children to pursue a career, then discovered they were happy with their lives and weren't eager to change. Women with mates who either don't want children or already have them and don't want more. Single, professional women not interested in visiting a sperm bank or adopting a baby, even if they can afford to.
As different as the Pride & Joy narrators are, some threads run through their stories. They speak of being drawn to life's wonderful paths and pleasures: intimate relationships, family, friendships, art, activism, adventure, scholarship, career, solitude, travel, spirituality. They lead fulfilling, productive lives. They're contributing and happy. They accept the fact that they're different from the majority of women. Their sense of identity, of femininity and productivity isn't tied to motherhood. I even talked to infertile women and those who had trouble maintaining a pregnancy who later were quite glad things worked out the way they did.
Women without children have a different sense of security. They must plan more proactively for old age than mothers, who may assume their children will care for them (even though in our mobile society, this doesn't always happen). The narrators in my book talk about taking good physical care of themselves, saving dollars aggressively, thinking they might rely to some extent on a niece or nephew they are close to, and most interestingly, developing understandings with friends to be there for each other later, possibly even pooling resources to buy/live in housing arrangements.
Although the subtitle of Pride & Joy refers to women without children, children figure prominently in several of the narrators' professional and personal lives. As aunts, teachers, social workers, doctors, ministers, therapists, and friends, many voluntarily childless women help raise and sometimes rescue the next generation while retaining the personal freedom they find integral to their identities. This larger scope of nurturing, so fully satisfying to many childfree women, is often overlooked as a major contribution to society.
I've never wanted to be a mother. Like many of the women in Pride & Joy, I prefer to follow the passions in my life working as a newspaper correspondent, traveling to explore other cultures, spending time with my husband and friends, and volunteering for causes I believe in.
I also prefer the roles I play in my wonderful family of origin daughter, sister and doting aunt to eight nieces and nephews, ages 6 to 30. Not only do we have face-to-face time, but also keep in touch by phone, letter and e-mail. Over the years I've been a Big Sister to two girls. I'm currently mentoring a talented 15-year-old writer, and the children on my street know to come to my house when they're selling school raffle tickets or want to play catch with someone who can throw them a decent high-fly ball.
Who needs kids? Maybe the better question is, does each of us need our own kids? The numbers suggest otherwise. Today's women have many options apart from motherhood for living out our nurturing sides: with other people's children, with other adults, with animals and the environment, in ways that best suit our individual natures, temperaments, and desires.