When you're a boy...on Mother's Day

I’d begun writing about Mothers Day last week, as if to psyche myself into the inevitable choice on the day of either brazening it out in the world on my own or cowardly retreat instead.

But today I’ve been diverted, by David Bowie no less, and realised when you’re a boy – Mother’s Day is no biggie.

And David, while you’re about it – when you’re a boy:

You don’t have to form your own Women in Science group at work.

You don’t have to justify why white men just like you are always the best candidate for the job.

You don’t consider it's offensive to call a woman in her early 30’s an "older women" and think it’s actually a pick up line…

But that was last night’s delightful dinner conversation (and thanks M for not being offended by being the token male and bearing the brunt of it!)

So, if I was a boy I doubt I would have written the following in the lead up to Mothering Sunday (or the day that launched a thousand unwanted foot spas, as I like to think of it).

For the past two decades I’ve hated Mother’s Day.

Going forth into the world solo on such a day I feel more of a square barren peg in a round fecund hole than usual.

Public spaces are populated by family groups, the movie queues snake with mothers accompanied by dutiful offspring and forget about catching up with a friend for Sunday lunch, even if they’re free of family duties, finding a table it tough. 

But something changed last year. My mother died. The first mother-less Mother’s Day approached. I cringed, fearing an onslaught of grief, and waited.

Nothing.

Somehow Mother’s Day became oddly sanitized. No longer did it memorialise my own lack of being a mother or living in a country without my family of origin, but a day when I was no longer mothered.

Two negatives really can make a positive

The world is full of mothers and children regardless of the date. I’ve reached the twilight zone where I’m mother-less on either end of the axis. Somehow the sadness from both directions has cancelled out the bulk of the pain.

...and if all else fails today, I'll think like a boy and get over myself.

ABC Lifematters, Shelly Horton and childfree by choice

Excellent discussion last Friday on ABC Radio National's morning show Life Matters. You can currently listen to the podcast and read the comments on the show's site.

One of the interviewees was journalist Shelly Horton, discussing an article she published in 2011 "Childless by Choice".

If pressed on the subject I retort:''Did you 'just know' you wanted to be a mother? Well I 'just know' I don't''. I'm sure there are other women who feel the same way as me but don't speak up.

I've now travelled to 47 countries. Is that bragging? Yep. Is telling me your son was voted class captain bragging? You betcha. Is one worth more than the other? I don't think so. 

I feel like I have to apologise for my choice. Reassure people I don't lack compassion. I give to charity, I donate blood, I've offered to donate my eggs to a girlfriend and I'm in the process of creating a mentoring group for young female journalists. It upsets me that my choice seems to disappoint people. I don't want people to think I'm selfish. I'd just like my choice to be respected. 

One of the positive surprises related to the article is that Horton mentioned of the hundreds of comments, only one was negative (similar to the experience we've had at this site).

The program's presenter Natasha Mitchell made the point that according to the Australia Bureau of Statistics one in four Australian adults live on their own. Single occupancy houses are on the rise, while the nuclear family continues to show signs of decline. Mitchell commented that with the upcoming election she expects this rising demographic to be ignored by politicians once more, with tax cuts and other voting ploys being targeted at families.

If you're part of this new demographic, what message would you like to give to the political parties. Should they continue to only encourage those who choose to breed and ignore the tax payers who remain childfree?


Update March 2013: Horton's revised and reprised her article on this theme in the Fairfax media. No Baby on Board is a good read for the childfree, childless and parents alike. As always, the comments   are as meaty as the article.

Gateway women

All these wonderful women have one thing in common. Thanks Cindy for passing this site on.

Check out Gateway Women on Pinterest. And if you like the role models, you'll love Jody's Gateway Women website.

even the Guardian references deliberately barren

With Julia Gillard stirring up the House of Representatives, tongue lashing the opposition leader this week, her feminist speech on misogyny has gone viral.

And so it deserves to. Did you know 'to Gillard' is now a verb in the US?

Even the Guardian editorial got in on the act and resurrected Heffernan's epithet. A week to be proud of Barren Ones!

Deliberately Barren at the Sydney Biennale

Deliberately Barren (the blog) celebrates the choice to be child-free. A lifestyle that has it's share of both pleasure and complications. But for some it's a scar, a wound and a pain that never heals. I was taken by this piece at the Sydney Biennale, on Cockatoo Island. I'm wondering if the contributor to this collaborative exhibition found any healing in stitching her canvas together?

Nadia Myre Nadia Myre works across the mediums of film and video, sound, the Internet, handwork, interaction and performance. She explores themes of longing and loss, and the essentially human desire to reconcile the two. Myre’s interest in scars stems from her concerns with identity and experience, and specific focus on ideas of pain and healing. Scars are a signifier of time, of lives lived, and Myre treats the blank canvas as a body with the potential to be damaged and repaired. The Scar Project (2005–12) is a collaborative effort in which audiences depict their own scars on canvas and write an accompanying text. Treating the cloth like skin, participants cut and stitch the canvas, disfiguring and healing it in turn. The result is an ever-evolving installation that portrays an often unsightly reality in a poignant and compelling light. For the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Myre will continue The Scar Project with a Sydney audience.

Smug?

This song added a smile to a barren woman's dial today.

Enjoy.

would Gillard cop less flack if she had children?

Julia Gillard, patron saint of the deliberately barren, under fire once more for her choice to be childfree.

And, to be frank, the fact that Gillard has no children perhaps also limits her exposure to what’s happening in the world outside the rarefied corridors of Canberra or the Melbourne dinner party set. If the PM moved in broader circles or had better political instincts then this would not be an issue but it seems as though she needs every avenue to the outside world she can get and kids can be a great – if often unwelcome – conduit to what’s really going on. Joe Hildebrand

And an interesting analysis by Tim Dunlop on why she’s copping so much flack.

Our little corner of the world seems to be growing increasingly more conservative. 

Intriguing...?

A short post today…

Can someone please explain to me why my opinion(s) on bringing up kids, that when I give it/them, (and just so we are on the same page here, I give it respectfully and calmly…)

Doesn’t seem as though it/they is/are valued?

Have put up a few points for discussion with a couple that I know and am very close too (and yes, this is only one example I know) and there pretty much is always a change in timbre of the voice and accompanying communication in return from both parents when I reply to something said to do with the children and how they are progressing with various challenges, and how one might intervene to modify this course slightly.

Why is this…?

Is it because I and my partner don’t have kids and thus we are deemed inappropriate in regards to opinions on child rearing?

That is my immediate thought and they say the first thing you usually think is probably correct.

And for my second piece of evidence, add to that my weird “bodylanguageOmeter” that I was born with which does let me down on occasion but I would argue is pretty bloody spot on for the most part, which usually picks the change quicker than the Bureau Of Meteorology can with their whizz-bang technology.

Hmmm…nothing I can unfortunately change but tis food for thought.

Clyde

It just is

I am possibly the most annoying kind of childless woman because there’s little reason to judge me negatively or find argument with my choice. I’ve simply never experienced a biological urge to bear and raise a child.

I am not making a statement in protest about a planet bursting at the seams, I’m not infertile to the best of my knowledge, I’m not so engrossed in a career that I delayed having a baby and Mr Right did come along. While most women know deep down that they want to raise families, I possess the same kind of calm certainty that I will never be a mother.

Sometimes I forget that years of knowing my own truth can be difficult for others to understand and accept. The most hurtful jibe was being called selfish during a conversation with another woman at work. I asked her to elaborate and was told it was my responsibility as a woman to have children. I walked away from the argument when she couldn’t elaborate on the basis of this responsibility but several years later her words still sting. When we shared a ride home occasionally I admired how her two young sons and husband greeted her affectionately and I respected the loving environment created for her children; perhaps her uncompromising view towards other women could have been softened and it wasn’t every woman’s responsibility to reproduce, but every woman who reproduced had a responsibility to be as committed as she was.

More recently, visits to the doctor’s office to discuss my irregular periods have concluded with advice regarding the start of premature menopause. My fertility clock is slowing but my reproductive clock is still jammed; there are times I fear that the urge to have a baby will strike while knowing the likelihood lessens each month I ignore my increasingly erratic cycle. I ask myself doomsday-like questions such as how I might react if my reproductive clock finally started ticking or what would happen if my partner decides he wants to have a child and I don’t. I can sit smugly at the keyboard today and say, “I’m a pragmatic type and will deal with the situation if it changes,” yet I know from other women’s experiences that ambivalence towards motherhood can turn into snarling desperation in a short period of time.

A friend’s urge to reproduce hit after the age of 40 with such force that she was more surprised than anyone. She booked herself for pre-pregnancy health checks and hormone tests to prepare for a child that wasn’t part of her or her partner’s plans only months earlier. After three years of trying naturally before facing her own perimenopause, they opted not to proceed with fertility treatment. Now, at the age of 47 and with the opportunity to bear a child long gone, I sometimes wonder if she looks back at her decision with regret or acceptance.

I also wonder when I reach the same age how I will regard my decision not to reproduce. It’s impossible to look back on a past that hasn’t yet been lived so all I can do right now is be ready to face my own truth when the time comes.

“Fussy” women swelling the ranks of the barren

According to The Age, Mr Right is Not Worth the Wait. That’s right gals; your reason for living is to reproduce. Modern women are too fussy and should lower their standard. It’s better choice to shack up with a loser, at a younger age in order to pop out sprogs more easily. End of story. Women are always incapable of making the best choices for themselves.

If you talk to an IVF specialist, the majority of whom are men you will always get the same story. Women are delaying pregnancy too long and increasing their chances of being infertile. But you’ve also got to remember that these professionals reason for existing is solely to assist the barren breed. They only see women who are desperate and in some cases, remorseful about not being able to have children unassisted or at all.

But perhaps a sociologist would see the situation differently. Women may be becoming increasingly fussy about who they shack up with, for good reason. Marriage is traditionally an economic transaction. Women offer their ability to produce an heir for a man and in return they are fed and sheltered.

Things have changed significantly since the bad old days when women who “lived without the protection of a man” were branded as witches. With economic independence has come choice. Many women genuinely choose to save their pennies, over rushing into an unsuitable coupling. Is independence such a bad thing?

With independence also comes the choice to reproduce or not. While the IVF specialists see the ones who may have regrets over that choice, or who may have been ignorant about underlying fertility issues (the over prescribing of the contraceptive pill at the first signs of any menstrual irregularities often cheats women from making choices around common conditions like PCOS and endometriosis) there are more females not fronting up at the clinics and are quietly going uncounted.

Being fussy but happy is not a headline clincher. Some women in their late 30s/early 40s actually choose to be in an equal relationship, with someone they are genuinely compatible with, over becoming a mother. Our woeful divorce and de facto separation rates belie the consequences of settling for less in a partner. Instead of settling for less, perhaps women would be better off setting their standards higher in the first place?