By Aruna Raman
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Yes, I am progeny-less. Yes, I have navigated my way through age, patience and politeness barriers. Yes, I haven’t experienced the “thrill of the pain”, or the slithering out of a pumpkin-head through my vagina. Yes, my womb only holds my thoughts, fears, apprehensions, and functions as a receptacle for my monthly blood. Yes, I haven’t created a legacy, or quasi-insurance for my dotage (if I live that long!). And yes, my inscrutability becomes bewildering, irritating and pitiable.
And yet, it annoys me when a venerable elder (usually related by blood) employs the all-important “with child” suffix when mapping out the identity of a quasi-known person. “Oh yes, she is a hedge fund hawk, and her two little ones just won the national level teeth-pulling competition.” “So do you know about so and so? She has a full-time job, manages an ill parent, and a child to boot.” It is as if the suffix catapults one to a gilded realm, while the rest of us self-absorbed denizens are lotus-eating our way through our days.
I am an old hand at this non-procreation set-piece. I have been wafting on the wings of gentle nudging, coercion, emotional blackmail, pity, disbelief, and the veiled “selfish bitch” tag. It is as if I am stubbornly holding the baton in the reproduction relay-race, and not passing it on to the anointed “next generation.” Ejecting progeny is somehow associated with the semantic equivalent of affixing “in bed” to the end of every sentence — it is purported to make things seem/sound much better than they actually are. Existential crisis? No problem, get knocked up! Mid-life heebie jeebies? Don’t get that inner-thigh piercing, heed the clarion call of your inner Earth mother! You get the drill.
Don’t get me wrong (I am sure everyone who chooses to remain childfree inadvertently begins a sentence like so) — I am sure that motherhood, or indeed parenthood, ushers feelings of pure joy in its wake. I have seen friends embrace this new role with exhausting exhilaration. This isn’t a litany-diatribe to diminish their choices. However, I have problems when their choices are cast in sharp relief against mine, and I am viewed as an emotionally opaque being, who spends her days bathing in milk and honey, and scarfs goblets of wine for every meal. It is the elevation of the “with-child” brigade and the gentle dismissal of the “sans-child” one that causes me great anguish.
So, why did I make the choice? A patchwork quilt of reasons, and chief among them is that I suffer from clinical depression, and live in a country where this condition is met with annoying incredulity. I have been dealing with emotional evisceration for most of my life, and my midlife awakening has taught me that I have a lot of self-healing and mending to do. It is after years of struggle that I have discovered this shattering, yet empowering truth about myself. The powerful sense of awareness helps me manage myself. And yet, each day is a mask-wearing kabuki — there are challenges that I relish, people I love, and opportunities I embrace. However, there are times when I feel like impaling myself, and/or the person next to me, on a tuning fork (kids: do not try this at home).
No child I know should suffer through the multiplicities of my personality, especially my own. I have a partner who understands, though we have travelled through an interesting path to get to where we are. While I swiftly employ the “Magna Carta” defence of the childfree — “I don’t want to bring a child into a polluted, unkind world” — I would go so far as to say that I don’t want to bring a child into my world; a tentative, “constructed laughter”, “reluctant subscriber to free will,” “deep down I am just a little girl” kind of world. Children will find better homes where they are meant to find them.
Make no mistake — the equivalent of my maternal urges does meet a match in my work. I spend my time teaching and mentoring young people, and the open-faced trust they place in me is heartening, but also scary. Every smile, every breakthrough, and every word of praise means that I have met with some measure of success in my surrogate, non-womb parent role. My friends take heart in the fact that they can commandeer their errant teens in my direction, and I will be ready for them. There’s also a significant “aunt of honour” vacancy that I can fill, for those who are willing to offer me the role.
So, the next time you upstage me with a pregnant woman story when I complain of “out-of-sorts” ness, know this — my womb, and the contents of it, are my business. They will, or should not, influence my capacity for receiving praise, love and empathy. This is from the mouths of babes. So there.
Aruna Raman is a social innovation professional.
June 19, 2016 at 6:57 am
This is so stupid. I understand your right to do what you want. But you are looking at this all wrong and very pesimistic. Children are the future. If you don’t like our life now children when they grow up can make it damn better.
June 19, 2016 at 1:21 pm
Tnuuvyunf If you understand the right to do what she wants. Then stop typing right after that sentence. A really fun way to re-phrase this would be: “I believe that children are the future, but I understand the right to do what you want, so I will have children who will shape the future”.
June 19, 2016 at 4:54 pm
Tnuuvyunf you are what she is talking about..Its her life, her body, her choice.
June 20, 2016 at 4:15 pm
Motherhood is too primal to respond to reasoned arguement.
June 20, 2016 at 4:41 pm
CaliforniaIndia It’s nonsense to say that ALL women are born to be mothers without insisting that there is a bone deep conviction that ALL men are born to be fathers… and for some reason, people generally don’t claim that. SOME women have a bone deep conviction to be mothers, some flesh deep and some none at all. Same as men.
Remember that your convictions are a product of your personality, family, upbringing and experience: all combining uniquely to create you. It doesn’t mean that any of them are immutable laws of nature. If people didn’t want different things, this would be an incredibly boring world to live in.
July 2, 2016 at 7:26 pm
CaliforniaIndia I am a children’s writer – basically, my entire career is based on kids. I love kids. I have the highest respect and admiration for moms who take good care of their kids and also manage to housekeep, work, handle all sorts of mental pressure and do a gazillion other things. I have also worked in a professional capacity in US & UK taking care of other people’s children.
Still, I DON’T think motherhood is the highest pride, greatest achievement and most complete fulfilment. It may be so for YOU, but not for ME or this article’s authors. It will be a sad thing for the progress of humanity if procreation – something everybody can do with or without breaking a sweat – is the single most achievement of women.
If it helps, I have LOTS of friends who are mothers who gladly echo that sentiment.
August 26, 2016 at 5:13 am
@Tnuuvyunf. This is really stupid to say that children will make our life better if we don’t like it already. This is really selfish of anyone to expect their children to change their life when they will be needing parent’s time and support to understand their own life and handle their problems.
September 6, 2016 at 6:31 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. I think we’re all fucked. Our trojan horses (society) have left us bewildered in the world of fucks where our definition of success or failure seems to get muddled with money and lifeless materialism. Emancipation is on the card only if we could unlearn and start again. We’re being brought up in an environment where if you are not doing what others have done before then you are not only doing things wrong but are completely in over your head and deserve to get ostracize for it.
They say children are future – the future they so called talk about is not at all bright. Do I want to bring in a child in this world who has go through authoritarian school systems, then she grows up and learns a little if she hasn’t gotten raped/molested by some motherfucker walking down the streets including in America, consumes world’s resources day in and day out, venture out into materialism, buy a house, strive in this world of so called opportunities and have more children and the cycle continues….do I want to be part of this cycle. NO. Fuck NO.
I am with you. Don’t have kids. People are brain fucked. If I really want a child either I’ll get a pet or better I’ll adopt one. Let’s change lives. Break the cycle.
-Jack
October 15, 2016 at 3:56 pm
That was inspired… Fantastic.
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