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To Be a Mother or Not to Be a Mother
By Alicia Fortinberry, MS
"Oh, I see your 38th birthday is coming up. What are you doing about birth control? Time's running out for having kids, you know," says the earnest woman physician I see in a clinic when Bob and I are on the road giving workshops. "Kids? Who's thinking kids? I came in for a sore throat!" I protest.
"You want to hear about pressure," my good friend Angela tells me after I mention the clucky doctor. "Ever since I got married four years ago it's all any of my relatives and most of my friends what to know: 'So when are you getting pregnant?'" Angela is 28, a brilliant editor of a growing publishing house. Children? She and her IT-consultant husband, whose job requires travel, worry they don't have enough quality time for their two Siamese cats.
"I've got it all figured out!" KC, a 31-year-old client, tells me with a sort of frantic jubilance. "I don't seem to have much luck finding a husband, but my best friend John, who's gay, said he'd be delighted to father my child. I'm running out of time to find a real partner and have kids, after all."
"Uh, great," I say. (Unlike a mother, a therapist must stay calm at all times.) KC is a very attractive young woman who is used to making executive decisions and has the money to implement most of them. But she has had one failed marriage and has lost all confidence about relationships. "Let's give it one more year and see what happens in the partner department," I say.
As all the articles and books are telling us, women in developed countries don't just "fall pregnant" (an interesting English and Australian phrase) any more.
In fact, the majority of women are not having babies before their thirties, and over 30% percent are not having children at all.
It's a big decision, and you can't just try it out. Women must face this choice all throughout their productive lives, and then (unless they go for costly and emotionally taxing in vitro treatment) experience the consequences when the eggs run out.
Even having one child doesn't stop the need for decisions. Dahlia, who has one son with behavior problems, desperately wanted another one in hopes that "this one would be easier, and I could experience some of the calmer closeness I've missed." Dahlia and her husband finally had to face the fact that they barely had enough energy for one troubled child, and another would destabilize the whole family. This did not stop her from genuinely mourning her loss.
Yet there's very little around to help us make such a gigantic choice. People also don't seem to talk about it much. Imagine discussing with your mother-in-law the ins and outs of giving her a grandchild. Or with your boss or even colleagues (which probably will get back to the boss).
Or with your friend who feels burdened by her children but is in denial. How many women, whichever choice they've made, whether for "freedom" or motherhood, would want to admit to the longing for what might have been?
And how do you know at 25 how you'll feel at 45 or 50? If you have children, how do you know if you can meet that emotional and financial demand, especially in these times of uncertain employment? What effect will the changed dynamic have on your relationship? Other children? Job? If you decide not to have children, what will you feel as the season for children, and then grandchildren, passes you by?
Then there is the issue of gay couples. Not only do they have to make this difficult decision, but much of society is against them having children, whether through adoption or assisted birth.
My own mother had me at 24, which she later told me was considered "very old" then. She prides herself on the fact that she worked up until the hour of delivery. The underlying saga of my life was how she gave up her career for kids. Actually, the delivery of me delivered her from a dead-end job and gave her an excuse for being dependent on my father the rest of her life. Many of our mothers were such martyrs. The baby-boomers and the decade after are largely the generation who lived out their mothers' dreams, or tried to. And the next generation are the ones who paid the price of two parents working, which a lot of recent research suggests has its own drawbacks on children's development. Not to mention the daily ripping apart of separation and guilt of the working mothers!
This is the background against which we confront these choices. Social mores are no help at all. We are told we are selfish if we don't want to make the sacrifices inherent in child-rearing, and that we are adding to overpopulation if we do!
One way of confronting this impossible-seeming dilemma is through denial. In my 20s and 30s, I personally perfected the art. Living in the publication milieu of Manhattan, the few mothers I knew were single, and struggling. All of my acquaintances were either unmarried or over it. When a physician friend of mine married, moved to Boston and had kids, I finally visited. Her sweet little boy threw himself into my arms and I, startled, dropped him. Piercing screams, parental alarm and outrage. That night I curled up in bed with the family cat, who had been neglected since the baby, and we comforted each other.
When I, much to my surprise, got married, neither my husband nor I could understand the anguish over the kid decision. I felt no internal yearning, no biological clock or urge to knit booties. When a 40-year-old therapist friend of mine started a free support group, with herself as a member, for women without children, I couldn't imagine what they were all on about. What was such a big deal? Didn't she have a career? When she finally decided to have a child, and did so, I was puzzled as to why she took six months off from her practice and horrified at how she'd let her hair grow scraggly and grey-rooted.
I didn't see the danger signs creeping up on me. I should have wondered when I began to get excited when clients brought their babies for me to meet. Bob started mentioning that sometimes my attention suddenly shifted from what he was saying onto the nearest baby or small child. Once he realized it was hormonal, he wasn't hurt. "You've got that smile again," he'd sigh.
Finally, it was the dogs who were the giveaway. Our dogs and cats had died, and we were often on the road teaching, so that we couldn't get more pets. It started with me petting the occasional dog out for a walk. Then I began picking up my pace if a dog was in front of me, accosting the surprised owner with the child-like, "Can I pet your dog?" When I began crossing roads at the sight of a pooch, Bob began to get nervous. But it was when I started opening garden gates and trespassing to cuddle dogs or pick up and stroke cats that Bob began to have serious concerns for my physical safety and my freedom from jail.
What had happened? Peri-menopause was upon me. The egg countdown had begun! I desperately wanted to embrace small creatures, and the lure of puppies or kittens was absolutely irresistible. And of course there were the mood swings.
We weren't meant to be without children, as mothers or grandmothers. And perhaps there is a cost to the decision not to have them. No one can guarantee it's pain-free. The problem is the conditions of our society, which entail a cost no matter which way you choose. It does take a village to raise a child and, in the developed societies, there are no more close-knit villages. People mourn the loss of the extended family through distance or distaste, but that was never a solution for many people anyway. As a client of mine puts it "Your parents know how to push all your buttons because they installed them," and there's some truth to that. Parents can aggravate family tensions, and in-laws even more so.
Bob and I decided not to have children because we felt that, with our careers, the burden would be too much for us alone. And for many in the unsupported nuclear family, this is the case.
Children were meant to be with their mothers, and from 10 to 49 other women, for the first six years of life. In a functional hunter-gatherer society, there was always a woman delighted to offer a child a lap or a hand or a hug. Women did not have to prove themselves or gain vital independence in frantic and demanding "careers," they simply went gathering and gossiping together, and the kids were carried or came along, too.
This isn't true in our dysfunctional society, where mothers are often imprisoned in isolation with the birth of a child, and workplaces don't allow the children to be there with the mothers. In such a society, perhaps there's no perfect choice.
Still, those trying to make such a choice need to hear from we who are living with our decisions. They need to hear perhaps that there are lots of ways to give and receive love without giving birth. And if they do decide to invite that miracle into their lives, they might think about inviting as many people as possible to become their "tribe" and share it, both for their child's sake, and for theirs. And we need to push employers to allow us to have our children with us at work.
Don't let anybody tell you that there's no cost to you either way. Don't let anyone tell you what to do, but seek the honesty of other women. Do whatever you can to lessen the cost and maximize the fulfillment. And reward yourself as a hero for the struggle, either way.
PS. I intend to change my lifestyle to allow at least one dog and one kitten, maybe many more.
Good luck to you.
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About the Author
Alicia Fortinberry is an award-winning health writer, and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with her husband and long-term collaborator Dr Bob Murray, she is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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