BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids When it is too late, it gets worse

Solalux, I salute you for your courage and integrity. I hope your husband appreciates what you've done for him. How sad that you feel so alone - if it's any consolation, I'm sure you're not the only woman who's felt like this.

I'm a newbie poster,*waves* but I seriously doubt anyone here will judge you. Your story made me sad. It's the 21st century - when will society wake up to the fact than not everyone wants to be a parent and quit pressuring them to reproduce?

Solalux, I too was very moved by your story and would like you to know that there are definitely other mothers like you out there. Oprah even had a show on the topic a couple of years ago and apparently it was one of her most controversial shows ever! And around the same time a book called No Kid : Quarante raisons de ne pas avoir d'enfant came out, written by a French mother who deeply regretted her decision. The other posters are correct, though: it is definitely not a commonplace opinion. Here in Canada, where we have one year of maternity leave, one co-worker told me that some women she knew felt pressured into taking the whole year off with their baby because going back to work too soon would make them look like bad mothers.

I personally believe that a good number of our own mothers did not enjoy motherhood very much and had other goals for themselves. However, the social and employment restrictions of the era prevented them from either achieving those goals or expressing their true feelings on motherhood. It is deeply disturbing to me how much pressure we put on women to conform to 1950s stereotypes of womanhood. I hope that you can draw enough joy from your son to compensate for your pain, and that you can build enough of an independent life of your own. Best of luck and feel free to chat further.

Hi Solalux.
I completely understand your feelings. I was in a similar sitution and I do have a son but sometimes I do want to return back and be child free.

Actually my story is somewhat similiar to yours Solalux. However there's a big difference that I'm noticing between me and you and many other women in general in the way I was raised. I was told growing up NOT to have children. I was never told that one day I would want or love children. I was instructed to stay far away from boys. Instead I was supposed to go to SCHOOL and WORK. Those were the values upheld in my household. Not one adult around me praised the virtues of parenthood. I can still hear my father saying "you have two or three kids and it ruins your life" and my mother telling me how much of a drain children were. My parents (tho I'm quite sure they wouldn't say this) were feminists.

My girlfriends every one of them did talk about looking forward to motherhood and big weddings. Don't ask me what I thought or said when the subject would come up I don't remember, but I knew that I did not want children. I wasn't raised to have children. I was raised to go to SCHOOL and WORK. (Parents have much more influence over a child than peers. I realize this now.)

While I didn't want children, I definitely wanted commited male companionship. So I met a boy in college we moved in together right after college, then married a year or so later.

And the strange thing is is that I married my husband knowing FULL well that my husband saw himself as a father--yet I did not want this. And what's really weird is that an issue as big as having children, was not something we ever talked about. WE NEVER, EVER DISCUSSED THIS EVER. It wasn't a priority. I can only remember the issue coming up a few times. Once, after we were married we watched this Eddie Murphy movie called Boomerang. In the movie a character said that she wanted 10 kids and my husband said "yeah, that's right." You would think that would have sparked a discussion but it didn't! I wasn't afraid, I wasn't nervous, I wasn't anxious, I didn't feel like I was withholding information. I just laughed at the jokes in the movie and forgot about it.

I was in complete denial. I heard what my husband said but it just didn't register or I didn't connect the dots. I know this sounds ridiculous, but my husband saying he wanted to have children seemed to have nothing to do with me at the time. I was groomed to go to SCHOOL and to PURSUE A CAREER not to have children.

We were together for about seven years and then I discovered I was pregnant. That's when the panic and horror set it and I had no choice but to express fully how I felt about the situation. But alas it was too late. I said I wasn't having the baby. But I was 28 and married so I did, then I had another 2 years later. I made peace with the situation. And it probably appears to the outside world that I planned this whole thing, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I love my children but have SERIOUS issues with the this society. Parents within a "nuclear family" have very little support. Let me say this again. Parents have VERY little support and any woman or man who says they don't want to be a parent and sticks to their guns--unlike me--I salute you. I SALUTE YOU!!!!

For those of us who were against it, but did not take a strong enough stand, all we can do at this point is accept it and give the children the raising they deserve to the best of our ability.

I love my children but for a long time I had regrets because I didn't fight for what I believed. And the sad part is is that I wasn't really under any pressure at all. My husband wasn't begging me to have a baby. While he'd said a few times he saw himself as a father, he never bought it up. In 1998 (the year our son was born) he was enjoying his life, coming home from work, going to lectures, bulding his jazz collection, collecting 1000s of books for his library, etc He was much happier then than he was when we were both miserable and in the thick of things cira 2001 when we had a toddler and a newborn. My parents sure didn't expect me to have a baby and my friends only talked about what THEY were going to do and never delved into my life to tell me what I should do, none of our siblings (mine and my husband) had children or seemed to want them. There was really no one on this earth, not a soul telling me that I SHOULD have or want a baby. I was in a perfect position to take a stand and I had a baby anyway--two of them.

Leah, your story is amazing. I do have a couple of questions, and these are true, honest, and respectful questions -- not intended to be adversarial or anything like that.

You mentioned that when you found you were pregnant with your first child, you had a sense of panic and horror. I was curious, if you don't mind me asking, why you chose to have a second child when it sounds like having the first one was pretty traumatic?

You also mentioned that parents don't have much support from society, and I wondered if you had a few specific examples of that? From my perspective, I feel like society does all kinds of things to accommodate the people around me who have children, so to me it has always felt that they have more support than I do. As one particular example, my employer's health insurance plan has two rates: single and family. I am on the "family" rate so that my husband can have health insurance, but that means I pay the same insurance premiums as someone who has children; essentially, my colleagues get "free" health insurance for their kids, most likely at my expense.

I thank you for listening to my questions, and I hope you do not find them to be insensitive.

Solalux, It is sooo beautiful and kind of you to share such a personal story. I think we are all in different situations that may or may not be of our making but somehow we learn to live with, hey? Whats that saying, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade". While you are not alone, I think you are in the perfect position to share your story, like an ambasador, who will enable people to understand "the other side", and help them to count the cost. I am 32 hald never wanted kids, but about 3 years ago...I had started to consider it. I have no idea what came over me, to be honest, I can't explain it, I just remember that I wanted to buy a car first. Anyway, after that relapse I came to my senses, and have really thought about it long and hard, its not been easy for me to come to this descision because I honestly though I was alone in this. I have never ever known someone who deliberately decided not to have children, so, where I came from it was a first so you can imagine the pressure. No-one tells stories like yours. Once I googled " I hate being a mother" not that you do, but I wanted to see if there are real people out there who feel really messed up by this, and spew, couldn't believe one blog, that had mothers venting like hell had broken lose. My point is though that its so hard to find people who share their stories with such honesty, and maybe consider it becoming your persoanl responsibility to share your story, for the sake of someone who may feel really out of place in society for thinking the way they do. Solalux, I hope you will be able to find a support group that meets your needs, to the last T like I have found MNK

The pressure to reproduce never ends! For a lot of people having an only child, depriving a child of the possibility of growing up with siblings, amounts to a horrible form of child abuse! That could be a topic for another forum :-)

Thank you Morrii and all others that showed their support. I also googled like crazy looking for people like me before, during and after my pregnancy. And almost all I got was information about post-partum depression. As if a real psychiatrych condition could be the only explanation for women not being able to bond with their babies right away!! And my only thought was always: There must be something between mothers who abuse and beat up their kids to death and mothers for whom having their children is the most beautiful thing that can ever happen to a woman. Nothing in life is black or white, why should this mother issue be different?. WE ALL ARE DIFFERENT! There must be women out there who were also forced into motherhood and do not love the idea and are not mentally impaired:

I must say I love my child deeply, I am a loving person and I would love a cat if I were forced to adopt one (the metaphore is horrible) But I still behave as a CF, I avoid moms all I can, I am always looking forward to meeting my childfree friends to forget about diapers and rashes and can only wonder when somebody I know gets pregnant, especially when I think she had a nice life.

Hi LoveChildfree:

Those are good questions!

Actually that second baby was MY idea and a PLANNED baby--despite how I felt about the first pregnancy. Once we had the first baby, I was adament about that child not being an only child. I just couldn't imagine how my life had been growing up if I did not have siblings. Even though I never wanted to have a baby (it took weeks of meditation classes while I was pregnant before I could even IMAGINE myself holding my own baby). Once I became a mother, I decided I'd give the child what I thought was right, and I thought a sibling was right. In retrospect I see that I perhaps should have had better reasons. Also I had the second baby 26 months after the first, which I read (after the fact) was not good developmentally for the first baby and not good physically or emotionally for me. But the second baby was here by the time I found all of this out. I had insomnia for about a year and when I did sleep I had nightmares about the children and childbirth. And all of this happened because I never took a definitive stand on anything until AFTER the fact.

In terms of parents not having support. You've heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child--which is an African proverb. In the African village, children are raised by everyone, so the pressure is on society, not on one or two people. But here it's much, much different and it's horrible I think. It's usually two parents and some extended family (if you're lucky) and that's it. From reading hundreds of self-help books as the life coaching editor here, I've read about case after case where the problems that we have can be traced to our parents who didn't give us what we needed as we grew up. That is so not fair. It's just not fair. As one of my gurus Queen Afua says, our parents "gave us what they had" and we can only give what we have. Where was the village when our parents needed some support?

In essence parenting has always looked like a tedious, relentless, thankless job to me--and this view of parenting was fostered partly by my own parents who told me parenting ruined your life and forced you to make unpleasant sacrifices. Also I'm obssessed with what bell hooks calls time and tiredness. I love hard work, but the idea of being responsbile for someone else's life terrified me. Still does to be honest. I pray alot and do what needs to be done.

I might also add that once I became pregnant with the first baby and took all of the classes, that's when I started to read a lot of self-help, which lead to my writing personal experience essays which lead to self-help writing. I also have certificates in child care and worked in a day care center. One day I'll write a book for parents who love their kids but don't like parenting.

I'm not saying all of this to say that others should do what I did and have babies when they are either indifferent or downright against the idea, but rather to say I did adjust and made the most of it. And still wholeheartedly support those who do not want to be parents. I think decisions--one way or the other--are great.

I have to add one thing here. Wanting a child doesn't automoatically guarantee that the person will know how to parent once the child gets here. And not wanting a baby doesn't mean that you can't learn how to parent once the baby is born. I took class after class, read book after book. Learning how to be a parent doesn't come naturally just from desire as some people seem to think.