Parenthood - and motherhood ambivalence in particular - is back in public conversation as falling birth rates made headlines again this week. I will write an updated Peak Notions column on this soon (I appreciate your patience and support as I enter the stage of writing my book which I think of as the deadline equivalent of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the spiked floor and ceiling are closing in and you have to put your arm elbow-deep into a wall recess seething with gigantic, scuttling insects to find the kill switch). For now, I wanted to share this column you may have missed, on considering parenthood in a confused world and the costs that come with every choice.
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
— Metaphors, Sylvia Plath
When I read other women in media who are, like me, currently trapped in ‘the window’ – that narrowing biological corridor in your thirties which necessitates the parenthood conversation – I’m struck by three things. Firstly, and unsurprisingly, the conversation is presented in binary terms. Do or don’t. Motherhood or the child-free life. You must choose and commit thoroughly to one or the other while people around you loom expectantly, awaiting your decision like they have shares in it. Secondly, once made, you must defend the high ground of your decision with a sharpened stick – there is no room for ambivalence or doubt, lest the ‘other side’ be allowed to think, or make you feel, that they’ve made a superior decision or live a more fulfilled life. Thirdly, the conversation on every side has a snarky and slightly frenzied tone which is more or less intolerable in anything but microscopic doses.
This is not a description of all writing on the parenthood conversation of course, but it is the general timbre of public discourse. People on both sides feeling judged and victimised by the other and women of either inclination protesting, it seems, just a little too much. A forceful cycle of attack and defence and beneath it all a deep and throbbing insecurity that seems to whisper like a conscience, ‘Have I really made the right decision? Would I have been happier on the other team? Do they know something I don’t?’
As a woman in her thirties who does not have children (and probably won’t) but refuses to carve a final decision into my palm with a rusty blade and a clenched jaw, I’m not quite sure where to put myself. In an unpleasant return to a sort of embarrassing adolescent self-consciousness, I feel slightly in the way no matter where I settle. ‘Madness!’ the two camps intone as I shuffle about vulnerably in the open, blood-soaked wasteland between their two trenches. ‘The window will close, and you will regret your indecision! The Baby Gods will smite you for your arrogance!’ One side sees indecision as an indictment of their definitive choice of non-motherhood. The other sees it as a selfish attempt to find equivalently valid meaning and identity outside of the parent-child relationship – both see it as a tacit judgement that coasts upon their certainty. My acceptance of doubt is understood as an imposition, an uncomfortable question mark. A grievous indulgence that belittles their own struggle toward a decision, or seems to serve as a commentary on it.
My indecision is not based in ignorance. The window looms above like a bell jar or a gyre of angry seagulls nosing a womb on the turn. Sometimes people – interestingly, almost always women who are older than I am – ask me whether I’m aware that I don’t have forever to have a baby. To these women I say this: “We’ve just met, and this is a dinner party. I’m unbelievably uncomfortable right now. Could you just pass the salad please?” To risk adopting that brittle, defensive tone so common to this conversation – yes, it’s not really possible to be a woman approaching her mid-thirties without a primordial awareness that the window looms above. It may snap shut, or descend, or shatter suddenly, and then the decision will be made for me.
Now, you and the woman who eventually (but grudgingly) did pass the salad might think that this is a sort of Russian roulette scenario in which I submit my choice to the mysterious vicissitudes of my body so that I don’t have to consciously deal with it. It isn’t that. It’s an awareness that if one answer or the other has not presented itself with clarity despite years of thought and dialogue, then it’s not time to decide, and that in the event the ambivalence continues, it is better to risk forgoing motherhood than entertain the risk of giving life to a child it turns out I don’t want. One is a risk to me and the other party involved in creating a life, which we have every right to take – the other entails potentially harming someone else.
Regret is an interesting concept. Often, it involves retroactively considering a decision we made under one set of circumstances and judging it unfairly by our current ones. We look at our life as it is now and think ‘I have the capacity to handle what might have come if I had taken the other route’. We forget that we developed that capacity based on the choices we did make, and not the ones we didn’t. Because the motherhood conversation is so heavy – laden as a wet overcoat with insecurity, performance and hyperbole, it is almost impossible to have honestly.
The truth is that almost every woman I talk with about this filters my ambivalence through her own situation and preference. Mothers (not all, of course) who love their motherhood tend to want to spare me from missing out on something which has been so profound for them. I can see that some also consider the life I live to be frivolous or less meaningful than theirs. I don’t much mind unless they refuse to pass the salad. Some envy it. My varied, fulsome sleep-life (I’ll get nine hours anywhere), ability to dictate my own schedule and construct my life according to my own needs and desires without reference to the higher needs of someone else.
Non-mothers often want to recruit me into their club, but ironically, their requirement mirrors that of the mothers – ‘conform, reject ambivalence and declare loudly and often that this life entails missing out on nothing worth having’. Again, not all individual mothers and non-mothers are like this – many are not – but the way we collectively discuss the parenthood question polarises the conversation, leaving no room for the many ambivalent amblers like me who understand the looming window perfectly well, but elect not to be governed by it in the knowledge that every choice has costs.
We deeply crave narratives which support the idea that our choices come from a position of power and not weakness, so we construct them. We want people and structures around us to reinforce the idea that our choice is at least acceptable if not admirable. No one really enjoys pity, or worse, contempt. In popular discourse, the parenthood question is almost always conveyed in a tone of defensiveness. We are insecure about the path we didn’t take and what we might have been if we had done things differently, so we pretend that the choice we did make was cost-free. Of course, a choice is not a choice at all unless it is made freely. It cannot be one made through fear of a closing window.
My situation is only mine – other women who feel uncertain or unconvinced about whether motherhood is right for them may meet that doubt via a different route. There are many. Not having found the ‘right’ person yet. Not wanting to do it alone. Feeling forced to choose between having a child and staying in a relationship. A persistent feeling that one’s womanhood is incomplete until it generates a life outside itself and of course, there are other, more pragmatic reasons. The struggle between what we’d like and what we might recognise as the best course of action. A desire to be a mother knitted through with the knowledge that one may not actually make a good caregiver. Worry about the ethics of bringing a life into the world as we know it. Knowledge that one does not have the material resources to give a child a life that didn’t entail significant hardship. Fear that forging ahead despite the doubt could lead to the worst possible outcome – a mother who resents her child. There are more, but they all justify ambivalence. They all generate doubt.
There are some columns that involve overcoming significant reluctance to write, and this was one of them. I spent days considering how I might add something to the conversation that wouldn’t take a bite out of one side while buoying up the other. Because apparently that’s where we are at – taking sides. Pro- versus anti-natalists, as the tedious and polarised online landscape would have it. The discourse demands that you pick a side. That you choose your weapon and decide. I haven’t made my mind up and I won’t make a choice solely out of deference to other people’s values. The window might close of its own accord in the meantime. Perhaps the fact that I’m okay with that represents a decision in itself.
Thoroughly enjoyed this piece and wanted to comment with a view of the flip side! I am 47 this year and currently 33 weeks pregnant with my 3rd child thanks to the miracles of assisted reproductive technology (my other two are 26 and 24). I met my current (childless) partner late in life (he's 49).
I 'skipped' the biological clock pressure due to having kids young, but boy have I faced a full frontal assault at daring to have enter motherhood again in my late 40's! If people had issue with the fact that IVF has been affordable for me (which I am both acutely conscious of and incredibly grateful for), I would understand, but instead the sentiment has consistently been around how selfish and irresponsible I am, or how 'greedy' it is when I am already a mother. There's a palpable, pervading sense that I should accept biological inevitability (even if I don't have to) and leave motherhood to younger women. As you brilliantly surmise Laura, we just can't get away from women's wombs as a free-for-all topic for discussion, no matter where the hands are on the clock!
I am 40, and I don't have children, out of choice. The reasons have shifted and waxed over the years but mainly because I never really felt I could give children the whole of me, the mental space to commit to just how much I'd want to love them or care for them. Later in life my own physical health also became a barrier. I am now at an age where the question has changed- not - 'are you going to have kids' but, head cocked to one side, sad face on... 'oh, you don't have kids.... why?' I invariably make something up - oh, it never really happened for us / I have animals / oh, I'm too old now / etc - but it infuriates me that the implication is 'you must be so sad it didn't happen and/or abnormal, you don't know what you're missing'. You're right! I don't know what I'm missing. And yes, I may have made an excellent mother, thank you for telling me, but also... What if, actually, I am allowed to not feel guilty about the decisions I've made and enjoy my life for what it is? My nieces, nephews and my friends' children are amazing and I love them dearly. (That's the other one I roll out to the questioner. E.g. it's OK, I'm not missing out, I have children in my life...) However, I'd love to be able to love the life I have without being pressured to be sad about it.