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On Not Having Children

To breed or not to breed? The mother of all questions

These comments are not aimed at anybody, and no offence is intended.

“So, when's it going to happen?”

I admit I can be a bit of an airhead sometimes, and I didn't know what she meant. The Second Coming? Nuclear apocalypse?

“When's what going to happen?”

“Babies!”

Bless her, she was only showing an interest. A colleague of my husband's she wasn't a friend as such, so the question shouldn't have come as a surprise: as a married, childless woman in my thirties, to some I'm an object of curiosity (cruise holidays put the spotlight on the question of why my husband and I don't have children, yet we don't ask why people do).

It caught me out. Flustered, I mumbled something about the length of a piece of string – the same as an umbilical chord? A fallopian tube? - hoping she'd get the hint. I'd rather be asked about my menstrual cycle, my bank balance, the mortgage, my sex life. Anything other than babies.

Why? Of all my life, about which I'm normally happy to bore people, this is a sensitive subject. How can it not be? For those who desperately want children and can't conceive, the pain and longing must be unimaginable. It's a minefield, and it's for that reason I don't pry: for all I know x and y could already be trying. Besides which, it's none of my business.

But of course, not everyone sees it this way. I've a while to go before I hit that “certain age”, but I do seem to have reached an age when people start wondering – and asking – when “it” is going to happen, as if it just does, like the immaculate conception. Perhaps “obsessed” is too strong a word but there's certainly an interest, and not just from well-meaning adults. I work with young people and the question “Miss, are you pregnant?” is asked with disconcerting regularity.

Now, despite not being a parent I've spent enough time in the company of kids to know that many of them live in the moment and are unable to self-censor. Not that that makes it any less unsettling – or baffling. I'm not skinny, but neither am I fat. I've got curves and my stomach sticks out a bit – in a nice way, I think – because it's round, soft and feminine (even more so, ironically, when I've got my period). Without wishing to tar all youngsters with the same brush, if they think celebrity washboard stomachs are normal, then that's perturbing.

As is the theory offered by a colleague, that the lurid fascination – repulsion - is to do with the idea of us “doing it”, as opposed to a mere friendly interest in our family lives. Whatever, when a pupil asks me if I'm pregnant my stock answer now is, “No, just fat” - which usually shuts them up.

It's not rocket science. Asking any woman of any age or size out of the blue if she's pregnant is never the wisest thing to do – for various obvious reasons.

And yet people do, or whether you're going to be. It would be easier if I knew one way or the other, whether to have a baby or not. My trouble is, I just don't know. A brooder by nature – I brood in the thinking sense – I've thought about it a lot, for sure. And how lovely to be sure.

I used to know. As a teenager I most definitely was not going to have children. At school, success for me was measured by exam results, prospects, not by having babies. Babies were a millstone: get pregnant and you're missing out - that thought alone was prophylactic enough. There was plenty of time to have babies later.

Consequently, I spent quite a lot of my life avoiding pregnancy, a skill finely honed at university and in my early 20s. Not getting pregnant was a big deal, and I was brilliant at it - still am. And time was always on my side.

Now I'm in my thirties it's the opposite: if you don't get pregnant you're missing out: babies enrich your life, tapping into fountains of love you never knew existed. Childbirth is a miracle, an unbelievable high - the magic, the wonder of it all. Cuddling a tiny baby is one of the most beautiful experiences in the world. Babies are adorable, super-cute. What's more, they give unconditional love – at least for a while.

What better aspiration? And not just at my time of life. Youngsters know that having babies need not be the end of the world. Some girls get so broody, you can tell the first thing they'll do after leaving school, if they haven't done so already, is get pregnant. I've seen them getting gooey-eyed over photos of babies – sometimes their own - on their mobile phones.

This isn't a criticism. I too like babies (almost as much as I like what you  have to do to get one, orgasm addict that I am), and I admire their conviction. Despite what the government would like us to think, not everyone is academic, and society needs to rid itself of its snobbery about jobs which don't require university degrees, parenthood the most important one of all.

Who can blame anyone for having babies? I just don't think I could do it. If I did, or if there was a university degree in it, I might have done it by now. As it is, I have no idea if I'd make a good parent, if such a thing exists, as if we're ever supposed to know. It seems to me parents can never win, and I can barely look after myself, let alone a dependent.

I like sleep, and love my lies-in. I like to go on holidays, eat, drink and do what I like, when I like, without having to worry about what kind of example it may set to an impressionable mind. It's one thing to inflict myself on a fully-grown man - my husband is more than capable of taking it - but it's quite another to inflict myself on a child, on a baby. Fruitcake? For a while I felt I was mad, bad and dangerous to know, so one out of three these days ain't bad. But my screw-ups would be the baby's, I'd probably blame myself for everything, and I don't need that. Neither does any baby of mine – the poor little sod.

No, I gave up “wanting it all” (horrible expression) years ago – if ever did. I'm not greedy. We just like to please ourselves. The only responsibilities my husband and I have are to each other. If that makes me a childish, self-obsessed, navel-gazing hedonist – and note, it's usually the woman (what if a woman had written Philip Larkin's This Be the Verse? Ironic or not, it's pretty strong stuff) - then I guess I can live with it. I'd rather be selfish without children than with.

Because it strikes me that to have a child you have to be phenomenally selfless. Babies aren't possessions, or even “achievements”, yet I can't think of a reason for me having them which isn't all about me. Nature's way of passing the time? Curiosity? A life experience to tick off the list? A mini-me ego-trip? Because everyone else is? Because everyone else says I should? Because of the familiar refrain, "Oh but you'd both make such good parents"?  I don't need to have a baby to get my man to stick around, to demonstrate how much we love each other, or to make me realise "what's important".  I already know I'm not the centre of the universe.

Neither do I presume that a child will keep me company or look after me in my old age, or that it will fill a void, as in that god-awful line from Jerry Maguire - “You complete me.” Oh really? Which bit am I then?

That view is startlingly common. Children add an extra... “dimension”: without them everything is trivial and pointless, life is one frivolous decadent distraction after another and you'll never get to understand the human condition. The sacrifice makes life more difficult, but also more worthwhile, more worthy.

Certainly no one could possibly work as hard as a woman – or a man - with a baby to look after. I wouldn't want to have a kid as an excuse not to do a “normal” job (an eighty-hour week in the office sounds like a picnic in comparison – and you get days off). But having a baby just to prove my worth? How does that help anybody?

People become parents for all kinds of reasons. I can't say I've ever had the biological urge, and at 36 the clock's not started ticking. So far my body hasn't made my mind up for me, and I don't feel any need to demonstrate my abundant fertility. No Baby on Board signs or harvest festivals between my legs. I'm woman enough, thank you.

Being a woman isn't necessarily a precursor to motherhood. Neither is motherhood the pinnacle of femininity, despite ultimate yummy mummy Angelina Jolie – and I do love Angelina – gliding around serenely in designer maxi-dress and diamonds, a child in each hand and one – no wait two! - more in the oven. No more a reflection of reality than a celebrity washboard stomach.

Glamour or drudgery? One thing's for sure: things have changed a lot. Whereas once women were required to have as many children as possible, that requisite is no longer there. Having babies is no longer a necessity, but a choice - the human race certainly doesn't rely on me for its survival.

In fact, we're told that women are having fewer babies than ever, that actually the child-free among us are becoming less of a minority. So why do I feel such pressure? I shouldn't have to justify myself, but I do. Why? Men don't - or at least, they don't seem to so much.

Because a woman's fertility is finite. For millennia, our “role” in society was bound up in our ability to have children. And pressure does remain from some corners. “Don't leave it too long,” people say, as if I'm already past it – and as if having babies will save me from decrepitude. For “childless” read spinster: frigid, loveless maiden aunt. I never dreamed I'd be stigmatised in my thirties for not having children, as gymslip mums were way back when I was a teenager.

Having a child is an act of love, of spiritual growth, a way of finding or creating meaning and purpose, of accessing our higher selves. Creating life, sharing life, giving love, watching a child grow and learn, and learning from them, are part of the privilege - all things I admire, and all things to which I'm sure I can aspire without having my own child.

Because my life is not sad, loveless, joyless and unfulfilled because it is child-free. I still feel pain, the full range of human emotion, of which indecision is a part. Having children is not for everyone - just as is not having them - and I don't think it makes me any less a woman, or any less capable of love, as anyone who hasn't – for whatever reason – will testify.

Some people who have children do as much justifying as those who don't have children, but what is possible with children is possible without, and vice versa. If we're all unconsciously looking for ways to live beyond death, then there are other ways to create permanence - giving birth to a novel, for example. 

I struggle, and I just don't know. I love my friends with children, but am aware of the value my childfree friends.

Perhaps I'll never decide. I visualise myself in the future, old and grey, visiting my present self saying, “You did what you thought best at the time, and you were lucky to have the choice.”

Sometimes choosing not to do something demonstrates love enough.

© Agnetha 2010

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