When I spotted an article on Facebook about Kim Catrall’s “spot-on” response to the question of why she never had kids, I was intrigued.
I anticipated a pithy riposte and was all geared up to smugly nod along. To say I was disappointed is an understatement; I wasn’t disappointed, I was furious.
This is what she said:
I am not a biological parent, but I am a parent. I have young actors and actresses that I mentor; I have nieces and nephews that I am very close to. … There is a way to become a mother in this day and age that doesn’t include your name on the child’s birth certificate. You know, you can express that maternal side of you very, very clearly, very strongly. … It feels very satisfying.
Just to be clear, the article is well-intentioned, and Kim can answer that question how ever she pleases, I just wish she’d been a bit more “none of your damn business” and a bit less placatory.
I felt let down, because the response sounded appeasing. It suggested that she was OK with not having children only because she had found other ways to express her overwhelming surplus of nurturing, maternal instinct, ways that (thankfully) prevented her ovaries exploding all over the poor journalist at BBC Radio 4.
Being child-free at 43, a lot of people seem confounded by my reluctance to rent out my womb to a small person for almost a year, and then have an audience gather and peer closely as I force it out through a part of my anatomy I’ve been told to keep hidden for the best part of my life. There must be a reason, they insist, after all, mothering is the raison d’être of every woman born. Right?
Wrong.
I was 37 when I realised I wasn’t going to have children. My boyfriend (now husband) and I had a conversation in which I discovered he didn’t want more children, since he already has two. Back at my flat, devastated, I shut him in my lounge room, myself in my kitchen, and promptly called my Mum so she could commiserate with me on another doomed relationship.
Except she didn’t, not even after she’d heard my tearful tale of injustice.
In fact, in her usual infuriatingly reasonable tone, she said, “Why? Do you want to have children? I just always assumed you didn’t”.
I was too surprised to defend my position as the wronged party, I muttered some unconvincing plea for sympathy, which was followed by, “Well, do you want children then?” from Mum.
The answer was no, and is still no. Looking back, I was only upset because I didn’t want someone else to make that decision for me. Realising that I had, in fact, already made that decision myself was incredibly freeing.
So, the conversation I thought marked the end of a fledgling romance, was in fact a turning point in my life, a long standing burden suddenly lifted. It was compensation for the groundhog years from my mid-twenties through to the present day. Years of enduring child-friendly and childless un-friendly occasions where the theme de rigueur was, “You’ll be next”, “Tick, tick, tick, tick” or even, “Well, you know your chances of conceiving have already reduced considerably by now?”
I prepared myself for entering the delightfully named woman-of-a-certain-age phase, with a single sentence.
“No, I don’t want children.”
Or, to particularly annoying people, “No, I don’t like children”.
I’m comfortable with my choice, but I’m tired of the way the topic is laboured during conversations. Yes, a lot of people like and want to have children. Go forth and multiply. Have 1, 2, 5, 25, work, don’t work, employ a nanny, seek out child care facilities, co-parent or single parent.
Do whatever makes you happy, because it is your life and you are free to make choices. Freedom means we all get to decide how we use our bodies, without the shackles of convention.
We’ve known almost six decades of access to birth control options, albeit not always terribly good ones (unless you are a man).
Still though, coverage of this topic positions child-free women as some kind of curiosity that needs to be studied. Excuses for being a stone cold, dead from the inside out abomination of Mother Nature include:
Expensive, prolonged, exotic and pretentious overseas experiences
Expensive and pretentious home renovations with no apparent budget restrictions
Smashing glass ceilings only to discover our gender equivalent pay failed to also go through the roof
Anything at all that could possibly plug the infinite void left by their mini-me-to-be
The underlying assumption is always that all women want children, there’s just something a bit wrong with any woman who doesn’t, and people have a right, even an obligation to investigate the source of that wrongness.
Feel free to ask if someone has kids, it’s polite to show an interest. However, if the answer is, “No.”, then move on. Satisfying one’s own curiosity doesn’t qualify as a valid reason to pry. That someone has exercised their freedom of choice is reason enough. And keep in mind that you don’t know everyone’s story, not everyone had the ability to make the choice I did, some have it thrust upon them.
If you suggest that all women are preheated to gas mark 6 and waiting for a bun, it implies that those of us who are not lead incomplete lives. Please don’t dismiss the wonderful value and enjoyment our life choices provide.
And, even though it’s none of your damn business, I will reveal how we fill that void left by the absence of babies.
We sleep.