“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that m
any women without kids historically have been writers, therapists, and engaged in other ways with the creative and healing arts. Women who, beginning with their own process of self-reflection, have gone on to dedicate their lives to understanding and making peace with the more confusing psycho-emotional aspects of the human condition. Women who might also, in another era, have been given the label witch. Walking any path that diverges from the norm leads to the kind of internal self-inquiry that lends itself to vocations like these, which (whether undertaken professionally or not) tend to heal the self as surely as they heal others.
Not that many mothers are not also engaged in this kind of work. But with no child to dedicate one’s nurturing energies to, women without kids are by default their own personal development—time and space that is a rare enough commodity already in a capitalist society that demands constant productivity. It’s interesting this is also often framed as 'naval-gazing’, as if a woman who makes her healing and her personal growth the focus of her life is somehow searching for the missing umbilical cord.”
~Ruby Warrington
Warrington later goes on with this quote and in her book to discuss how those of us who have chosen not to have kids instead get to work on our mental and emotional development. We get to work at healing our intergenerational wounds and recognizing where our emotional inheritance lies to be able to heal it.
Given our patriarchal and capitalist society, domestic labor and emotional labor—since it is not paid—is not seen as “valuable” or lucrative. And yet, as she points out, if all women were to agree to collectively refuse to do this, then we would have a global birthing crisis on our hands. If were to demand more support and better conditions, more assistance, for mothers. Ie— guaranteed payment for the important job of birthing and raising the next generation, or at least legalized and guaranteed maternity leave, and job securement when you return afterwards, affordable daycare, a one-parent salary enough to cover basic needs with the rising costs of inflation, etc, etc.
It very much makes sense why we are not having as many babies, why so many women are voluntarily choosing to opt-out.
I have said it before—I don’t really love my culture and this world, what it would offer to future generations, to want to birth my own babies or to go into this parenting thing solo. That would be true even if I were a millionaire and money was not an issue. I still wouldn’t have family. I still would not have communities of support and an extended family to help raise the child. There are so many reasons why.
But another thing that Warrington focused on caught my attention—she discusses how some women choose a life of the mind and their own intellectual pursuits and their own self-development and emotional healing over kids.
I nodded adamantly in agreement with that. Very true for me as well.
I wanted kids at various points, I did. Then the suicide tsunami happened. Then I was traumatized. Then I had a narcissist as a partner. Then I had to prioritize myself and my own healing.
I had to care for me, instead.
I am so glad that I did.
But I also recognize that, perhaps, I have come from a family in which there was indeed too much trauma and wounds that needed to be addressed. Perhaps the loss of my two children is evidence of that.
My prayer for my unborn children was that I would not hurt them (beyond repair). I lost them both. Perhaps I was not meant to have them. They never knew hurt and trauma themselves, I choose to believe. For that I am grateful.
I am now a much better mother than I ever would have been had they lived.
But I also wonder if I would have been happy raising children. Oh my, the monotony, the sleep deprivation, the routine and structures and schedules. The bedtimes and naptimes and the stickiness and the mess. All that goes into having to care for and keep tiny humans alive and have them be your focus all the fucking time. No pause or off button.
I grow weary of it after a day or two of that life with my cousins. I enjoy that time with them and I love them, but I take in what my cousins’ lives are, in raising these kiddos, and I think—yikes. I am happy to go away, coming back to my childless existence and life, as it is.
Perhaps the biggest blessing in disguise: I was not meant to have kids.
I like my life now. I wonder if I would have if I had kids.
People say it’s so hard but so rewarding, the best thing I ever did with my life, that it gave me purpose.
But really, what are they supposed to say? You don’t want to appear to be a monster. It’s also really brutal and fucking hard. All consuming. Which isn’t to say that these parents don’t love their kids but do people—especially mothers—even admit when they don’t want them? Because that seems awful and taboo.
I never would have done so, but I do sometimes wonder, if I had had them, would I have been like Grandma Bishop, desperately wanting to have them go away? I wouldn’t have left them, but I may have wanted to, wished that I hadn’t had them.
We talk so much about regretting not having kids, but what about those who do—if even for periods of time when you are raising them?
I know that I think a lot about this. I have the time and luxury. Perhaps we are biologically conditioned to want to have them because the reality of what we’re signing up for seems like—wtf, what rational person would want to do that? Hormones and biological urge to procreate must be at play here. Hah. I get that we want genes to continue, but as Warrington point outs, we also don’t have a very sustainable world. Our globe is literally boiling. Tomorrow in TN we are reaching record-breaking temps of 76—in February. And with science-deniers, the future appears bleak for the next generation, and those beyond. We’ve got wars across the globe, ongoing for years.
Sometimes humanity seems oh so bleak.
I know generations have been making the same arguments, and yet we have continued to have kiddos.
I do think we all ought to be allowed to make our own choices. The point is bodily autonomy and a life of purpose in however we define those terms.
I realize that I go against the grain and stream in this, I find my purpose not in birthing and raising a next generation, continuing my genes and ancestral line, but in healing myself and the ones that came before me.
May we all be free to live our purpose and destiny as we see fit, without societal and cultural expectations. Women fought for centuries to achieve what we have now—personal autonomy. Let us stop projecting onto others what we think of as norms or fulfilled lives.