deliberately barren

Intriguing...?

2011-11-27T19:13:00.000+11:00

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

2011-11-26T15:13:00.002+11:00

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

2011-10-19T14:36:00.003+11:00

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?

Being childfree shouldn't be an issue…

2011-10-11T16:43:00.007+11:00

Why then is it looked upon as being wrong by many in society?

Most people I meet whom I have chosen to share details with such as this go quiet and don’t say much. I would love to know their honest thoughts?

For those who do say something and there was one instance of that this past week gone where it was remarked that “you are still young enough to have children yet.” I just laugh and wonder what drives them to be so righteous regards procreation?

Is it a desire to pass on their bloodline, is it that it is just accepted to breed, are they lonely in their relationship and need another mouth around…I don’t get it?

My blood pressure rises slightly sometimes and I think about getting political and questioning their thoughts on population and our management of the planet thus far...but I don't.

But, on to our situation. I met my partner years ago, in our late 20’s to be more precise. We were meant for each other and to this day love and respect each other completely. As for not having children…well, that just sort of happened. There wasn’t any earnest discussion, we just woke up one day and one of us mentioned it and the other agreed…voila, the matter was settled.

The girly has pretty much always stated that she doesn’t feel maternal and I respect that decision completely. As for me, I could go either way, but having experienced life without children thus far I am pretty happy with the decision not to breed.

As for our families, well…both have been pretty quiet on the issue and no one has really dared to question our choice thus far but we have received our fair share of silent scorn for choosing not to breed and carry on the lineage. Especially from my side of the family although we live on opposite sides of the country so distance has been a wonderful cure to that ailment. One of my brothers has questioned the choice and stated that we might find ourselves lonely when we are old with no one to care for us. Fair point, but I don’t agree because there is no guarantee your children will actually give a stuff about you when you get old and crusty.

Life though has a funny way of serving you up the next course and for whatever reason we found ourselves with a fur-family instead. Let me take this opportunity now to make it clear that we didn’t choose one over the other…it just happened so very naturally.

First came a Siamese and Tonkinese cat, both of whom had our hearts the first night they were ours. Then came a snooty Burmese male cat and his little partner in crime another seal point Siamese. Unfortunately his desire to be wild was too much for us to keep close and he got out and was mauled by a stray dog. We still have his ashes on top of the wardrobe and have not as yet chosen to spread them somewhere but the day will come when we put him to rest finally upon the earth.

Next were Dachshunds, a boy and a girl both from the same litter who have equal love and scorn for each other. They are wonderful companions to be with in this life and yeah the house is a bit doggy smelling but the payoffs are worth it. Case in point, every day I come home from work they are there at the door jumping up and down happy to see me. That is a magnificent feeling and makes me happy instantly no matter what sort of day I have had. Then when the girly gets home we all rush out to the garage to meet her which also puts a smile on her face.

Has not having kids affected us in any way thus far? No. We still have bills to pay and mortgages to service just as anyone does so no, there isn’t any real change. I have taken to SPOILING my niece and nephew with presents on their birthdays and at Christmas in the hope that they come to understand the gift of giving. That and an occasional phone call to reinforce that we love them and will be there for them come rain, hail or shine is also the message I make sure to impart before hanging up.

My youngest brother is getting married in early 2012 and I would expect that they will be expecting children before the year is out as they have had their fun traveling etc, thus I will expect a phone call sooner or later.

The small act of giving and being an Uncle who cares makes me feel good and I look forward to conversation with either brother's children if they choose to question our choice later on down the track.

They will be answered honestly and given an answer that reflects the whole argument, not just parts of it. From there it will be up to them.

Clyde

p.s. Thanks to Another Outspoken Female for the invitation to write about something we think very important. Might drop another post on you IDC.

Reproduction: choice not censure

2011-10-05T14:29:00.003+11:00

Excuse me for posting on behalf of the breeders, bear with me, I do have a point.

WOMEN who delay getting pregnant until after their late 30s are unfairly burdening their offspring with geriatric parents, a leading obstetric physician has said.

Barry Walters, of King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, said women who planned to get pregnant after that age were ''selfish and self-centred''.

Quoted in today's The Age

Good to see it’s not just the barren copping a serve in the media for their selfishness. These days mothers, or at least the growing demographic of “older” ones, are also earning the moniker.

But Barry Walters is strangely silent on the selfishness of “geriatric” fathers. As a silvertail himself, he makes no mention as to the impact being a dad over the age of 36yo would have on the fragile lives of their offspring.

''The medical side is only part of it. It is selfish and self-centred of older women to have babies because they are not just babies - they are babies for a little while and they become people.

'They are starting out in life, having a family, working, getting mortgages and have to deal with geriatric parents. It's just not fair,'' he said.

Which seems very odd considering that women are still usually younger than the men who father their children. Given the amount of men, not just in their 40's but 50 and beyond, that are pushing the pram these days, the geriatric parenting demographic seems to have a higher percentage of testosterone than oestrogen.

Barry also seems oddly quiet about the increased risk of abnormalities including autism, bipolar disorder and even dwarfism in children fathered by men over the age of 40.

Barren or not, unless you conform to the outdated norm of dutifully popping out children at a young age (but not too young, I’m sure Barry has a thought or two on teenage mothers), women remain easy targets for the unquestioning media and old men like Barry. Reproduction is a choice. Whatever you decide.

greetings to a recent visitor to deliberately barren land

2011-09-29T17:27:00.004+10:00

To the Nigerian gentleman,

Who asked Google to,,,

"connect me to a barren lady for marriage".

You're barking up the wrong tree.

Respectfully,
AOF

Pup vs baby

2011-09-12T12:06:00.004+10:00

"Pet Art" Fitzroy, Vic. September 2011

olley, krasner: childfree artists

2011-07-31T17:15:00.010+10:00

Three of my favourite artists have died of late, all of them in their 80's, painters, all, and each with their own sense of style. Living, as I do, in a house of art-interested people, we've been collectively mourning the loss first of Cy Twombly, then Lucian Freud and, late last week, of Margaret Olley, a woman who was, right to the end, still chugging back the cigarettes as though she'd never heard of lung cancer. Each was unique, but Olley was for me rather interesting being, of course, that still (though far less so, these days) rare beast: a woman who painted for a living. I used to see her out and about in Sydney when I was at art school and have long-admired her decision to choose career over kids in a time when it was, I suspect, far harder to make people understand that choice. She was always her own woman.

We pulled out Pollack on Saturday afternoon, arguably the best film about art ever made, one I've seen countless times but that still manages to throw up something new upon each sitting. This time, and with Olley's recent departure in mind, I was blown away by Marcia Gay Harden's portrayal of Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollack's wife who championed his work above her own, who made managing his career, hers. Harden's performance is excellent - Oscar-winningly so - but this time I noted just how well she plays someone for whom having children was simply not an option.

Two scenes worth noting: the despairing turn she makes on Ed Harris' masterly Pollack when, on seeing her work for the first time, he proclaims, "You're a damn good woman painter." The other is when Krasner has taken her alcoholic genius husband away from the drunken distractions of New York to the Hamptons where he is, at long (bloody) last, living up to the tag genius. Their lives are calm, things are looking up and in a moment of marital bliss Pollack announces he wants a child. Her response is heart-breaking, blows the film wide open, and I can only paraphrase, "You want to bring a child into THIS?" The "this" being, of course, his wild and often vicious genius, but there's more than that to Harden's performance, some unspoken business that makes the film so incredibly good - she chose not to be a mother because it would have got in the way of what she felt she needed to do.

There is no such chasm of choice these days, and women really can "have it all", but I like that Krasner, and Olley, made the choices that they did. I wonder how they felt about their decisions as they got older.

birth, death, shame, compassion and comments

2011-06-26T11:45:00.003+10:00

I awoke to an odd comment on another of my blogs. Early on a Sunday morning, someone in an outer Melbourne suburb had been visiting the site of a local blogger, clicked my non-de plume in his links and got redirected there. From there they chose just one title in the recent posts, an entry that consisted of just two sentences, and felt compelled to comment.

The two lines mentioned a Guardian article and my friend Lucy’s response to it on Deliberately Barren. The visitor did not read either piece, instead they vented their spleen, presumably driven by the title of the post Is child-free the new black?

Anonymous wrote

“Cecent (sic) people who have never had children - never truly know what it is to love somthing (sic) or someone more than life itself.

I feel sorry for all the barren, self centred types.”

Someone I don’t apparently know felt an overwhelming need to connect with me, to us, to tell us we are wrong, inadequate, lacking the ability to love and are driven by ego.

I stopped myself picking apart the inaccuracies in anonymous's comment (who am I to judge someone else’s equally as woeful spelling?) and remembered Brene Brown.

You see, last night I found some podcasts I’d downloaded 2 years ago and spent a couple of hours listening to the wonderful Dr Brown talk candidly about shame resilience. Did I feel that anonymous was trying to tap into some seam of shame within me, that I wanted to attack them (I keep wanting to write “her”, there is something feminine about this response) in return?

Brene Brown says many wise things about the difference between guilt and shame, and also empathy and compassion.

Taking a step aside from myself and anonymous for a moment, I’m a little overwhelmed by the judgments that are continually made about people who don’t have children. Regardless if this is through choice or circumstance. Over the last few days I’ve done my best to wade through the comments on Clem Bastow’s piece in The Age last week. But I find the volume and intensity of emotion somewhat alarming. To summarise the majority fall into two camps – those that negatively judge Clem with scorn or pity for saying she doesn’t want to have children and others who say 'ho-hum this topic is done to death, this article is so last century'.

But you see from anonymous being driven to comment on a mere headline, the issue of not having children is still relevant today. Why else would someone who doesn’t know me, or Lucy, feel compelled to name and shame the “barren” as being self-centered and incapable of experiencing love?

I want to sit and have a chat about those two points for a minute. No attack. No judgment. Just virtually toss them around with anonymous, without assigning a value. Is that possible?

Anonymous is alluding, I believe, to unconditional love. When I sat with my dying brother through his final weeks I believed I experienced this holy grail of love. There was nowhere else I wanted to be. My small business ceased to exist. I’d happily have moved to the end of the earth indefinitely (or at least the city he was dying in). To some extent all my needs evaporated. There were irrational thoughts of what I’d barter to save his life (for a while I considered giving up sex forever, yes unconditional love is tinged with an element of insanity). I’d eat and sleep occasionally but my life revolved around him. I could not think of any other time in my life I felt this way about my brother.

As messy, noisy and scary as death is, there’s such a privilege to sit with someone while they are dying. To be permitted, or welcomed, to be with them for their final breath.

Though this process was privileged and life changing, it was also utterly private. It’s not been something I’ve felt the need to share so publicly before. But when I meet people who find death scary, when people I’ve known have run from these experiences, I don’t judge them. I don’t believe there is weakness in that. Not everyone wants to witness the death of a stranger or a loved one. I feel compassion for their fear. I hope that in their life they become less afraid of death and dying. I don’t wish them to be shamed by their feelings around it.

At the times in my life when I desperately wanted a baby. And yes, desperate is the most appropriate word to describe the longing. It was all about having MY baby. A piece of ME. A person who’d ensure my immortality by ensuring my DNA, MY essence, perpetually through time. (Reading the words as they pour out, I’m struck by the fact that I have just written about fearing death. Coincidence?) Perhaps that proves anonymous’s point, that I am self-centred after all. Because I could dress the desire up in so many other clothes, but deep down, the essential ingredient in this yearning to reproduce was me. Perhaps my selfish craving was unique and that all the other men and women who become parents have never had an inkling of that desire.

The TED talk below has nothing to do with being child-free. It’s a thank you to anonymous, for helping me get in touch with my vulnerability. Enjoy.

Is motherhood the pinnacle of a woman's life?

2011-06-21T08:05:00.007+10:00

The lovely Clem Bastow, Melbourne freelancer and hip chick about town, celebrates her 29th birthday today with an opinion piece in Fairfax about the plans she has for her uterus.

So many parents (particularly new ones) look with pity on those who are childless through cruel circumstance, and with scorn on those who remain so by choice.

Often I'm chastised, by those who have had children, about my "choice to remain single and childless". When I respond that it was likewise their choice to have a family, they fall mute or change the topic.

I refuse to subscribe to the idea that having a child is the pinnacle of a woman's existence. We're constantly told that people didn't know true love, or understand the meaning of existence, and so on, until they had a child.

Read the full article in today's Age.

Happy Birthday Clem!

Update 25.6.11

This article garnered a lot of varied responses, not the least from the comments on Fairfax. The hornet's nest was well and truly stirred. The following comment was not atypical of the majority of those who felt compelled to tell Clem what they thought of her.

Miss Bastow, you would be best to simply stay silent rather than use your words to spread your own negativity, weirdness and confusion. Too many young women (and men) have been encouraged to supress their natural inclinations by the likes of you to their regret latter.
William

A more thoughtful (and useful) ripple can be found in the local blogging community. I really valued Penni Russon's post on her blog Eglantine's Cake.

I wanted to say something here, about choices. About the many women I know who have chosen not to have children, and those of us who have chosen it. I wanted to say that choices pretend to be bipolar, especially in mainstream media, but they are actually nuanced, complex and as individualistic as the individuals who struggle with them.

And as a mother of three Penni continues, "Motherhood is nuanced too".

Parenthood is something other than the pinnacle of existence. But this is because existence is a continuum too. There's no pointy end. Motherhood doesn't have to negate ambition, creativity, professional success, sexual desire or individualism(as Clem Bastow comes dangerously close to implying). But neither does the desire to be childless negate a sense of family, community, love or selflessness and I support both Clem Bastow's choice and her need to write about it.

Beautiful post Penni.

Two billion minus one

2011-04-30T09:54:00.005+10:00

No sneaky peaks, no dirty little secrets. Last night I did not watch the wedding of the century.

I admit there was a time when I thought I’d be tuning into the extravaganza on Friday night. The Chaser crew announced they were going to do an alternative commentary to the royal wedding on ABC2. It felt like we’d come of age as a colony and I looked forward to their irreverent wit ripping to shreds an outdated convention. But sadly it was not to be. It turns out we do not live in an enlightened age after all and an edict from on high, via the BBC, made it clear such insubordination would not be tolerated. Only reverential, non-ironic coverage of the event would be permitted.

Perhaps if Hans Christian Andersen had been born a Brit rather than a Dane, The Emperor's New Clothes would never have been published either. These days, while the House of Windsor can’t chop off the head of a commoner who has a different worldview, they can and will chop off their news feed.

However it’s not 1837 and strangely 174 years later, the Princess Myth is alive and well.

Back in the 70’s when I was a growing up, I hankered for hot pants not wedding dresses. At my first primary school disco I donned flared cords, not the frilly dresses of my peers. De facto couples were a new phenomena and rather than feeling bereft that this may mean I’d never walk down the aisle, I embraced it.

I don’t know what went wrong in the last 40 years. It had begun so well but in this new millennium we seem to be going backwards. Royalists are trumping republicans, new right wing political parties are emerging and marriage and babies for all are back on the agenda.

Weddings after all cannot be divorced from their primary function – welding two people together for the purpose of propagation. And that is exactly what two billion viewers world wide tuned in for, an archaic fertility ritual where they all but got to sit at the end of the bed to watch the carnal consummation.

In an age when “til death do us part” is the exception, with only 22% of Australian women being married at the time they die, marriage is disproportionally popular. The wedding industry flourishes, with magazines and party planners, feeding young girls dreams of The Dress, The Flowers, The Song and oddly The Church (in a time when congregations dwindle). In a way the groom is optional, as weddings are still all about the bride. It’s her big bang before morphing into another entity. Her last act as a single woman before she hands herself over to a greater force, that of wife and inevitably mother.

The hoop-la around gay marriage still hinges on the popular perception that the primary function of such a union is for a man and a woman to have children. As a man and a man or a woman and a woman cannot “naturally” reproduce, then they have no rights to the sanctity of marriage according to the opponents. It is children that the laws of marriage attempt to protect, both directly and indirectly; and it is that protection of children that justifies the recognition of marriage as a legal status.

This of course implies, not just homosexuals but also the barren (intentional or otherwise) have no right to holy matrimony. Personally find it hard to understand why anyone, gay or straight, wants to buy into the marriage myth. But if weddings ring your bell they should be for all, obviously.

At the handful of weddings I’ve attended more often than not I’m a “plus one”. I’ve witnessed the nuptials of more strangers than friend because like me so few in my tribe find the convention relevant. But this time, when yet another young woman I didn’t know was going to have her Princess moment, I declined the virtual invitation. For once in my life I decided to be minus one. But then again, why break the theme of a lifetime?

Bambino joy

2011-04-12T13:50:00.006+10:00

A nephew arrived in my life this January, a child long-awaited by his grandparents, one that's apparently turned my younger brother's whole life around. I can hear it in his voice when we speak. The very fact that we even speak the way we do this year is completely down to this tiny little person, and that, people, that is a miracle.

I met him at a lunch by the harbour in my home town, drinking posh tea from silver pots and sweet, old lady china, watching my parents very different reactions to their first, perhaps only, grandchild. Dad - proud, jolly, assured. Mum - standoffish and totally disinterested. Perhaps in mum's response there's an inkling of how the disinterest in small people of my own arose.

Did my own bodyclock start sounding an alarm in response to all this bambino joy?

Not at all. Not a sound. In fact, I felt incredibly light afterward, assured, yet again, that I made all the right choices.

The Guardian has a great little affirming piece well-worth a read this week, for the childless among us.

when power is a cause for pity, not an aphrodisiac

2011-01-27T14:31:00.002+11:00

Congratulations to Lara Giddings on taking over the reigns as Premier of Tasmania, the first woman in that state to get the top job. As a 23 y.o., Giddings was the youngest women to enter an Australian parliament. Now at 38, with almost 3 years as being Deputy Premier under her belt, ABC News Radio described her as a “career politician” in one of the earlier updates regarding her premiership. Though technically true, it seemed they were struggling with how they’d describe her without employing the usual sexist clichés.

That didn’t last for long. The media pack barely listened as the newly announced Premier outlined serious policies. The question they all wanted to ask was "As a single woman taking on the role, do you, are you concerned perhaps you're giving up the potential to have a family? Is it compatible?"

How many times must Giddings, and all childfree women of fertile age, be asked this question? This certainly wasn’t the first. Under “Private Life” in her Wikipedia entry are two short sentences, “Giddings is not married. She has acknowledged that her political career may mean that she never has children.” (Quoting this unenlightened Hobart Mercury piece entitled, ”Giddings: Politics over family”.)

Needless to say single/child-free male politicians are never subjected to this line of questioning, nor ever will.

For more eloquent writing on the stupidity of this situation, take a look at Anne Summers piece in the Fairfax media and Helen’s wonderful post over at Cast Iron Balcony.

childfree couples have a healthier diet

2011-01-09T16:56:00.002+11:00

Fascinating UK study finds that childfree couples eat more fruit and veg and have a generally healthier diet than couples with children.

Wonder if an IQ study between those who breed and those who don't will be next?

Love, marriage and the baby carriage

2010-10-31T15:07:00.002+11:00

Please don’t think less of me when I confide that hovering somewhere over the Tasman Sea a few months ago, I watched Sex & The City 2 .

And enjoyed it.

When you’re bored with a small console and a handful of movies to choose from, sometimes it’s easiest to go for the lowest common denominator and select the one you have the lowest expectations of. I had heard it was desperately bad, so it egged me on to find out just how awful it really was.

But I surprised myself and laughed at times at the two dimensional characters on the screen. Each woman locked within the old roles that defined them: I screw/work/nurture/write, therefore I am.

The less than subtle subtext of the film was about marriage. What makes a real marriage? Is a gay marriage a real marriage? What about a heterosexual one without children?

I watched Carrie deal with the judgement of others who took offense at her decision to be married and childfree, despite her being forty-something with a satisfying life. She met other women who saw their age as no barrier, just rent a womb, buy an egg and be handed a baby at the end of it. The married late in life “friends” being horrified that Carrie and Big had no intention of following suit. After all, marriage is about babies, not self, not just being a couple.

And somehow, I was reminded of that plot point today while stumbling on Catherine Blyth’s blog.

Blyth is adamantly pro-marriage but has been more than a bit ambivalent about children. Unlike Carrie whose husband was on the same page as her regarding children, Blyth ultimately gives into her husband’s baby hunger. I find her words rather painful and smacked a lot of the conservatism Carrie was up against in SITC 2.

And yes, the mournful eyes of my husband, as we spoke of our lovely nephews, nieces and godchildren, they got to me. Having researched marriage for my latest book, I was aware that family studies all conclude a marriage with children is less happy than one without*. On the other hand, how could I deprive him? More to the point: what if he stopped loving me and looked elsewhere? Would that be so unreasonable? When we married I took a vow to honour him. The deal was to put ‘us’ before ‘me’.

Marriage versus babies

It’s not a spoiler to say that their child is due any day.

But at what cost? As an educated woman she doesn’t see motherhood as the route to fulfillment, yet acquiesces to maternity out of fear – “what if he stopped loving me and looked elsewhere? Would that be so unreasonable?”

She talks of taking a vow to honour him but what of his promise in return?

The take home message is that marriage hasn’t really changed that much in recent centuries (as an aside, Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage is an excellent thesis on the subject). Women are still expected to subjugate themselves to their husband’s wishes.

If you wish to remain childfree and want to love and honour your partner in the ritual known as marriage, you’d better make sure you’re on the same page FIRST.

* Can anyone point me to this research, it sounds fascinating.

designer babies - Sydney

2010-10-26T07:35:00.003+11:00

Newtown is awash with small children zipping on scooters around their latte sipping parents perched on curbside stools in the pram cluttered streets in the inner city.

I get the feeling not all of the locals are happy to see the gentrification of once grungy King Street.

The election campaign with the inevitable question

2010-08-11T20:04:00.005+10:00

So it's 2010 and the persistent, burning question asked of our recently promoted Prime Minister's is about her ability to really know what families need, her being barren and all. The recent ABC Q&A episode had audience members firing off a number of tragic attacks but it saddens me that this is the one that continues to get airtime. Bugger the environment, education and health - the biggest issue remains her childless status.

It was a delight to read an eloquent rebuttal by a Sydney psychotherapist in The Drum.

Apart from wondering if there are perhaps more pressing questions to ask, I was struck by how insulting, hurtful and unimaginative this question is. Not necessarily to Ms Gillard who seems to be accustomed to it, but to every man and woman who, for one reason or another, has found themselves living their lives without children.

I'd encourage you to read Siobhan Hannan's eloquent article Childlessness, a parent's best friend.

Another gem from Hannan.

Apart from wondering if there are perhaps more pressing questions to ask, I was struck by how insulting, hurtful and unimaginative this question is. Not necessarily to Ms Gillard who seems to be accustomed to it, but to every man and woman who, for one reason or another, has found themselves living their lives without children. target=-blank>the value of childfree adults in the lives of children

.

...and let's all move on from the inevitable question.

Family

2010-07-26T10:48:00.003+10:00

A few weeks ago I attended a dreaded interstate "celebration of family", one focused on my brother and his pregnant partner, and the fact that they were announcing, to the "family" that they were, indeed, pregnant. I should, perhaps, have popped in here to this quiet, family-free space to think aloud about it sooner, but I needed to sit alone with my thoughts (and the houseplants (and a whisky)) for a bit.

Now, nothing makes me happier than the fact that my brother - long unhappy and troubled - has met such a vibrant, delightful woman and that they are, at long last, procreating. The news has made my mother in particular ecstatic as a baby brings a whole bundle of new shopping opportunities and potential baby-and-grandmother outings. The planning has already begun. I too am happy, because despite the Barren nature of the writing here, I think children - and having them in your life in some capacity - are vital to a good life. I'm looking forward to being an aunt immensely.

Halfway through the (microwaved) lunch, my brother dropped to one knee and proposed in front of her HUGE family (and our much smaller one). The Honest Woman comments that followed were appalling, but to be expected (for some reason, vast amounts of people seem to think that marriage makes a woman honest and insist upon repeating it, in joking fashion, ad nauseum).

What I wasn't expecting was the following comments, made to me, by two incredibly lovely women who would be devastated to know I was upset by them.

"At last", they said, "your parents have something to be happy about".

I took the comment on the chin - it was my brother's moment, afterall - but it smarted. These women ARE lovely people, but their experience of life is limited; small and very, very suburban. My partner may not have been invited (another post, that...) but we have been happily co-habiting for 9+ years. We are interesting, we are well-travelled, we are creative and can converse with anyone and everyone equally well. To think that all of that is irrelevant - and that out-moded models of behaviour are all there is to life - is absurd.

My question is this: why do we women do this to one another?

Australia's first deliberately barren PM!

2010-06-24T09:49:00.003+10:00

Congratulations to Julia Gillard, the patron saint of the deliberately barren, on becoming this country's first female prime minister.

How exciting to have an unmarried, child-free, outspoken woman at the helm of the ship for a change.

What me? One dimensional?

2010-01-28T10:12:00.003+11:00

I've tried to ignore the latest media flurry created by our leader of the opposition, well known for his devout Catholicism and equally well known for his own sexual romps before the sanctity of marriage (due to a very public paternity test), regarding the sanctity of virginity. In 2010 I find it frankly ludicrous that any want-to-be Prime Minister is playing the girls-should-be-virgins-til-they-marry card. I mean, marriage? In 2010? Surely we've entered the age when the State or church having any rightful place in an intimate relationship is irrelevant?

Obviously (and sadly) not.

But now the whole parliament has gotten in on the act and as Our Julia (Patron Saint of the Deliberately Barren) has been attacked once more for her child-free status - I have to cough up the old fur ball.

Senator Brandis (The Hon George Brandis, Liberal Senator for Queensland) is all his wisdom has denounced Julia for being "one dimensional" by not being a mother.

Senator Brandis said: ''Julia Gillard, who … has chosen not to be a parent - and everybody respects her right - in the vehemence of her reaction in fact shows that she just doesn't understand the way parents think about their children when they reach a particular age.

''Although Julia Gillard is a very clever politician, she is very much a one-dimensional person and I do think her reaction, her overreaction to the quite unexceptional remarks Tony Abbott made as the father of daughters, is not something she would have said if she were herself the mother of teenage daughters.''
Source The Age

Almost every friend I know with a teenage daughter has not expressed any desire for their offspring to remain an eternal virgin, til kissed like sleeping beauty and awoken by a husband. Most have bought them a double bed, given a pep talk about choice versus social coercion, discussed safe sex and said - if its going to happen its better here where we know she is safe.

It's Tony Abbott who resides in a single, out dated dimension. It's Abbott whose shown himself unfit to lead a progressive country.

And Julia whose shown wisdom and multi-dimensionality by not taking the barren bait and spitting it back in the oppositions face.

Who'd you prefer to lead the country?

even barren ones can be too busy to blog

2010-01-09T13:39:00.002+11:00

Phew Christmas is out of the way. Just how much plastic, non-recyclable crap got wasted on the kids who have too much around the globe, I wonder?

Sorry, that last statement may lumber me in the bitter and twisted barren camp but actually I’m not, hence my decision to not join the facebook group entitled “Not Having Children: Let's make a deal: You keep your little monsters under control, and I will continue to slow down in school zone.” But just for the hell of it I’ll post some of the wall links from the group, you decide if it’s bitter or funny.

7 helpful tips for the child who made my flight hell: Oh we’ve all been there, got snuggled in for a long haul flight only to find next to us, across the aisle or behind us is the child from hell. No let’s rephrase that. There are no “bad” toddlers, only bad parents who should not be allowed to travel on long haul flights with their children until they’ve been appropriately trained.

Why the fuck do you have a kid?: A very scary site depicting the parents to be and the kids that could have been avoided with decent contraception education.

STFU, Parents: for those who want to rant about their once fun friends, now boring parents, kid-centric FB updates.

Breeder bingo (will need a Facebook account to access graphic) Actually, I found this one hilarious.

For the record – all my friends’ children are absolutely unique, darling individuals. I don’t critique their parenting and I’m glad so many of my stunningly intelligent and artistic peers have done their bit to enhance the gene pool. It’s other people’s children that I wouldn’t want to sit next to on a long haul flight!

decking the halls

2009-11-25T09:51:00.002+11:00

Some of us might not be christians but you can be assured that if you suggest skipping the commercialism of the season by not giving Christmas presents this year then you’ll be about as popular as a foreskin at a synagogue. If you really want to shit people off, give them an Oxfam unwrapped voucher instead. You might feel a little smug that your socialist friend’s had a piglet donated to some far flung village in their name but they’d really have preferred a bottle of wine.

But Christmas is all about the kids, isn’t it? Even if you’ve pared the extended family’s adult gift list back and gone in for a kris kringle, it’s still likely that you have to buy every child a present as well. As one friend remarked recently, “…even if the “children” are now in their 20s”.

Why is it that we reinforce the notion that Christmas is about buying as much plastic crap for small kids that they either break or forget about them the next day? Or because you’ve been a bad aunt and not kept up to date with the trends you’ve given them something they already have or it is so 2008 and they don’t want it any more.

As I don’t have children, I feel I am not allowed to voice my thoughts on the season. So thank the goddess for this blog!

So you are a non-church-going family but do the full-blown Christmas thing. There’s an advent calendar for each of the kiddies but that’s about the chocolate not the religious message, right? They are learning carols about “Christ the saviour” but it’s ok that’s just tradition. Then we throw capitalism into the mix and have to buy them a pile of presents. Not just one or two but a truck load of “stocking fillers” because you love them, right? What messages do you really think you are teaching them?

The festive season is a great time of year to raise a little consciousness. I recently met a family that have a strict policy around gift giving – everything must be homemade. That’s right, they have these kids who are turning into well-adjusted teenagers who’ve grown up without the latest dolls, toys or gadgets. They make their own cards, sew, draw, paint and re-fashion recycled items. They’ve learnt to have Christmas without the angst of last minute shopping and draining the piggy bank. The parents nurture their own creativity along with their childrens’. Spending more time together and less money – now that’s a Christmas equation worth exploring.

I’ve watched so many friends with young families get into debt at the end of every year, just so they can give their children a swag of gifts. But what is the real cost of debt? Working more hours, feeling stressed and ultimately being less “present”, distracted by the growing credit card bills?

Look I’m just a jaded old barren bitch, what do I know? But I do remember my own childhood. I wanted more time with my workaholic dad. I wanted my mum to not have to apologise for his absence or his over worked, cranky moods. I wanted more barbecues on the beach or Sunday afternoons fishing together on the jetty. My favourite holiday was the one where we all went camping instead of going to a motel.

I can’t remember a single “stocking filler” I was given in my childhood but I do remember the little bowl of cherries more than the bowl of sweets, that were beside my bed “from Santa” and have deep affection for the fruit for life.

Sure we had a stack of presents but there is only one I remember. A bike. A much wanted and didn’t think I’d get one – bike. For a kid not keen on sport a bike taught me that being active was fun. The bike was never forgotten by Easter.

What do you remember about childhood Christmases? How do you teach kids about the season (look I’m figuring if you read this you are not a died in the wool christian)? What are you sick of compromising? What would you like to change?

cross-posted on deliberately barren

to hell in a carbon neutral hand basket

2009-07-06T09:22:00.002+10:00

Single, familied, young, old – I know the demographic doesn’t define us and within each there will be those who go out of there way to conserve water and reduce their carbon footprint and those who won’t.

But when I seen my octogenarian neighbour invest thousands in solar panels or talk to 40-something single women who delight in the pleasures of bathing but have denied themselves a bath for over a year I wonder, “Why bother?”

It’s not about “us” and “them” but when it comes to those who will inherit this ailing earth, breeders take note – it is your children who will feel the direct impact of your carbon excess wantonness and your grandchildren who won’t know what it is like to have a leisurely shower let alone a long soak in the bath. The earth is going to hell in a hand basket. Stephen Fielding may head a political party called “Family First” but is a climate change denier. How can some people love and defend their own family so much but treat the environment with such disrespect?

So when I shiver a little and put on another jumper rather than turn the heater on during the day, walk and tram more often than drive a car, bucket the vegetable washing water to feed the plants, pay more for organic produce, don’t eat meat, cut out unnecessary air travel – I do so because I want there to be a healthier environment for your children. Not my own. I don’t have any.

I do have some friends with families who are much more eco-conscious than me but the worst offenders to date are also parents and intelligent ones at that. They drive 4x4 from suburb to suburb, eat meat excessively, top up their swimming pools with potable water and then throw a bunch of chemicals in. You don’t find them ripping out the plastic window in envelopes to separate the recyclables from landfill, carrying linen bags when they shop or caring about the provenance of their food. These people love their kids, would do anything for their children – other than take responsibility for the earth that they will inherit.

So why do I bother?

simply barren

2009-05-24T11:52:00.001+10:00

I’m not living the life I thought I’d lead. In a way I am experiencing a richer existence, it is just different to the template I had subconsciously adopted.

Being a child born during the advent of feminism I figured I’d have the glamorous career, the gorgeous talented partner, a couple of gifted children and a groovy home to boot. My life would be spent swanning around in a relaxed but meaningful manner, the man I lived with would happily burden half the domestic load and we’d both be free to pursue creative endeavours to boot.

Now in my forties I can look back at the plan and laugh at its naivety. If any woman is living that lifestyle, complete with regular time out in a day spa, I would love to meet her. With a dance card that full, something has to give. For me the biggest pain comes from holding on to that ideal, not the discomfort of letting it go. When we don’t revisit our aspirations and instead choose to cling desperately to our dreams, the mental muscles clenched tight are the ones that hurt the most.

Obviously something had to give in this scenario. For me, unexpectedly, it was children and to some extent the career as well. At its essence, I asked myself one seemingly innocuous question “What would make my life simpler?” The first step was letting go of something I could not have, or was not prepared the risks required in the hopes of achievement. For me that was having children (or as I got older, “a child”, singular, one being better than none). To turn circumstances into a choice may for some be considered a mental dance, but it worked.

I have met enough men and women who are childfree yet live complicated lives to know that obtaining inner peace is not about simply failing (or rather choosing not) to reproduce. It is about the choices we make. It is about claiming both the joys and the disappointments that occur in our daily existence and taking responsibility for them. In short, deciding to not be a victim of fate.

Being childfree, for women in particular, tends to fall into one of three categories: an innate desire to never have children, ambivalence about parenting or infertility biologically or socially. The greatest hurdle for the first category is dealing with the opinions of others, the second is the risk that either way you jump it will ultimately feel like the wrong choice but the third group is the trickiest to claim as choice.

Social infertility is about being in the wrong place at the right time. The plumbing is working but the right donor or dream husband/partner is not part of the picture when required. Books have been written by women who feel duped by feminism, that they believed they could have it all and came away angry at being shortchanged. Personally I don’t buy that. Yes I bought the dream but realised it was just that, a modern day fable of sorts. I mean, even the men who called themselves feminist rarely do 50% of the domestics. Perhaps living in shared houses was my first reality check. *

Being childless, rather than childfree, through circumstance is a growing demographic for women. This has as much, or possibly more, to do with the choices of men delaying parenting rather than the cop out of “feminists promised us we could have it all”. With the advent of more reliable contraception and the decreased societal pressure to get married, why should blokes curb their freedom by fathering children in their 20’s or 30’s? So often in this subset of men I have observed that it is the light bulb moment when they get an inkling of their own mortality that prompts them to reproduce, rather than in response to the request of their partner alone. Of course, there are men of all ages who deeply desire having children but the group voicing their ambivalence about it seem greater amongst the comfortable middle classes.

Biological infertility is rampant and IVF is not as successful as we’d be lead to believe. Sperm has increasing rates of abnormality and donors are in short supply in Australia since legislation was introduced ultimately allowing an adult child to trace their donor. It is hard to get a realistic statistic regarding IVF success as it is dependent on so many factors including the type of reproductive issue and age of the mother. But other issues arise when trying to assess the true accuracy of these rates, that being IVF is largely a private industry. There are many ways that a clinic can massage its data. Lets just say it is naïve to expect IVF to solve the problem and optimistic in the extreme once a woman nears 40,

Making infertility of this nature some kind of “choice” is very difficult. All I can offer is stressing the importance of grief counselling, so often overlooked in what can be a long and fraught quest for a child. Through that process, when blame, loss and sadness has been acknowledged and released, an upside can be found if you look for it.

I am sick of judgements being made about my perceived selfishness or regret that I may feel regarding a very personal aspect of my life. But just as a pregnant woman become misguidedly fair game for her luscious belly to rubbed (often by strangers and rarely by request), so too those of us whose uteri remain apparently empty.

My simple life is my greatest ally in claiming “free” over “loss” as the suffix of choice. I have a certain freedom that few of my friends with children have. I am not saying it is a better life but, hell, it certainly is an easier one!

* See the illuminating stats from the ABS regarding gender and housework

photo credits

2009-05-21T13:57:00.003+10:00

The delightful Lucinda Dodds has updated the DB banner. Don't you just love it!

Lucy also sells some of her great photos/cards at Red Bubble.

On Mother’s Day and Growing Up

2009-05-11T09:50:00.002+10:00

House One: My mother is very religious!
House Two: is she a fanatic?
House One: No, a church!

Boom Boom.

- Full text from an old Muppet Show Sketch (the Paul Williams Episode)

My mother isn’t religious, so she worships herself. Thus, Mother’s Day is a Big Deal in our family.

I got away with just doing a lunch this year, so while 11-3pm were taken, I gleefully planned to check out a friend’s gig at 4pm. But then we went and had a banquet Greek lunch, mum and I shared two bottles of champagne and I got a severe case of the CBFs. When will I learn? NEVER MATCH MOTHER DRINK FOR DRINK.

Anyway. I was thinking about my lovely sister in law, celebrating her second mother’s day. I know a few people who have ‘crossed over’ to the celebrated, rather than the celebrator, a few of whom are younger than me. And it makes me feel like they’ve made this big adult step, since parenthood = your ticket to being a real adult.

I’m never going to have children, so Mother’s Day for me will always mean I’m the kid. Can you properly be considered an adult, especially by your parents, if you never partake in that final rite of passage?

It doesn’t bother me, since I’m already going to go down in history as the World’s Oldest Busted Drag Queen Manchild, but I wonder how proper, sensible child free adults handle it? Is it harder to be looked upon as an adult if you’re always celebrating Mother’s Day as the kid?

From Desci

knee jerks, materialism and bad editing

2009-04-26T18:56:00.002+10:00

Last weekend The Age nabbed a Guardian columnist’s rant on “dummy mummies” and set the cat amongst the pigeons. The journalist, Rachel Cooke, is 39 and doesn’t want to have children. What is more, she is rather bored by some women who can only talk about their kids.

When people who know me well ask me, as they very occasionally do, why I do not, at this point, want to have children, my instinct is always to give a flip answer. "I'm worried that I won't have enough time to read" is what I usually say, reading being not only one of the things that I like most in the world, but also one of the very few things at which I can honestly say I am quite good. This quip is not dishonest: though I have several friends who have combined novel-reading with motherhood very successfully, in my own head I hold a convoluted equation, one based on the approximate number of hours I have left to live versus the number of good books I have left to read, and it is very anxiety-inducing. But nor does it tell the whole story. I don't fancy having children for all sorts of reasons, some deadly serious (global warming), some practical (Can I really afford to? What if I lose my job?), some historical (I have three much-loved, much younger sisters, so perhaps I've always had outlet enough for my maternal instincts), and some borderline neurotic (where will his or her toys live? Will they all be made of coloured plastic?).

Mainly, though, I might as well be honest and say that, right now (I am 39), my refusal to have children is also connected to the sense of horror and fear that I feel when I encounter a certain kind of mother. What kind of mother is this? She is the kind of mother I talked to at a party the other night, who told me - with no word of prompting from me - about her ante-natal classes, in detail, for approximately eight minutes. At the end of this monologue, I asked, dead-eyed, if this was her first baby. I mean, presumably it was. "Oh, no," she said, cheerily, "it's my second." At which point, she segued into a lengthy account of how excited her small son was at the imminent arrival of his sibling.

Rachel Cooke

The original piece, ”The rise of the dummy mummies” is up on the Guardian site. What appeared in our Sunday magazine was heavily edited to remove UK references and rather strangely, didn’t have any acknowledgment of it first being published elsewhere.

In The Age’s haste to appear to have local product, they snipped some very relevant issues from Cooke’s rant. For example, examining the role of materialism in manipulating women into dummy mummies.

How did it happen, this loony excess of maternal feeling? Because I know, thinking about my own childhood and, a little bit later, the childhoods of my sisters, that it wasn't always like this. Partly, it's yet another product of late 20th-century high materialism (and, perhaps - here's hoping - it will wane just a little as we move deeper into recession). On baby websites such as Mumsnet, Babble (yes, really) and MumsRock (the latter is taglined: "Because there is life after birth", as if anyone ever said there wasn't), you can read endless reviews of baby buggies and strollers.
When my mother had my sister, there were approximately two kinds of buggy, Maclaren and the other sort, whose name I forget, and you bought one or the other, depending on cost. Job done. The status symbol of owning the "right" buggy had yet to be invented (while we're on this subject, I once heard a friend describe a certain buggy as being "too chavvy", a statement that was, and is, wholly baffling to me). Money, and the ugly way it flows, has made us so disgustingly extreme: just as half the world starves while the rest of us stuff our faces until we are ill, so half the world's children are horribly spoilt and the rest shamefully neglected - and the two things have to be connected, somehow, don't they? Can't we find some middle ground? Mostly, though, it is my conviction that such excess is the result of women having their babies far later. Thus they feel grateful, a gratefulness that gives them the zeal of the convert. And it is this zeal, I am assuming, that prevents boredom from setting in as they ponder the pros and cons of the Bugaboo Bee.

The backlash to this article has been predictable, with the usual sanctimonious responses on parenting blogs and in the paper’s letters to the editor

Dummy spit
DEAR Rachel Cooke ("The rise of the dummy mummies", Sunday Life 19/4), I was blown away by your article. Good for you for not wanting kids and, at 39, it's probably a good thing you're clear on what you want.
But why write an article about mothers who love what they do when you're on the other side of the fence with no intention to cross it? If it's your way of telling your mum and dad you're not having kids, maybe you should have called rather than put it in print. It does nothing but insult women.
I would rather that women are interested (or "obsessed" as you put it) in their own flesh and blood, their little beautiful creations, than not care and be happy to put their children aside to continue on their own selfish path through life.
We are now more open with our communication, language and lifestyles and with most aspects of our lives; so if women want to talk about something that you don't like, maybe you need to excuse yourself politely instead of storing it up as ammunition for your writing.
What is wrong with identifying yourself as a mother? Is it less than being a lawyer/doctor/teacher? No, it's the hardest job in the world and bully for someone if they are proud of it. Sunday Life and other Fairfax publications give multi-page spreads to fashion, celebs and other fairly meaningless events, so why are you shunning mothers?
Seems a bit mean and bitter to me and until the shoe is on the other foot you will never get why all these women are banging on.
ANTHEA WARD, Greensborough
Boring and bought
AFTER reading this useless article ("The rise of the dummy mummies"), I was about to write some words to apologise to Rachel Cooke for having to endure so many boring stories from mothers when she could be talking about Michelle Obama, books, movies, TV and her latest trip to Yemen.
But after a Google search I found she is in the UK and you just bought the article. So my question is now for Fairfax: why bother?
Aren't there enough intelligent journos in Oz to write something interesting?
SEBASTIAN TOPET, Ivanhoe

There has been no positive feedback to the local version of the article that I can find, however searching the article under the UK title “The dummy mummy decade” amongst the usual knee jerks, there is the odd, enlightened woman commenting on blogs or forums for parents who got the point that Cooke was making. For example:

I think Cooke's point about how the fetishism of motherhood ties in with our relentless consumerism in other areas of life is really interesting. I've often been baffled by the number of threads both here and elsewhere, dissecting the pros and cons of various branded baby paraphenalia in exhaustive detail. She's bang on about the buggy-as-status-symbol: I see the prices of Quinnies and Bugaboos and the like and wonder if people have succumbed to some sort of collective insanity.

And surely anyone with eyes and ears would agree with her that parenthood frequently is competitive. You can choose to opt out of that whole thing, for sure, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and doesn't bear commenting on.

Lazyemma on Mumsnet.

The Age article just stirred up some old barren versus mother shit that is of no service to anyone. The way motherhood is sanctimoniously promoted is just a nifty form of viral marketing and it is about time we blew the whistle. Yet again this once quality rag has cut too much off the editing budget, removing context and meaning the original.

Of course, next time they could just commission a local for the job instead.

“Mother of the Year”

2009-04-06T17:23:00.003+10:00

“Mother of the Year”
Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009

It may seem perverse to find mention of a comedy show focused on parenting here, at a site dedicated to the musings of the childfree life. But bear with me. There were two major factors that influenced my decision to rock up to the Melbourne Town Hall at 5pm on a Sunday.

Firstly, one of the mother’s in question is Catherine Deveny (or The Dev as I tend to the think of her). Hero worship is too strong a word to describe my admiration for her work, more I recognise the pack she runs with and feel an affinity.

Secondly, it was free. Yes. I admit I was baulking at the thought of forking over hard earned cash to find myself amidst a gaggle of women on a mother’s group outing (and they were there in droves) but a freebie is hard to turn down sometimes.

On stage, each making their pitch for mother of the year was Nelly Thomas, Catherine Deveny and stand up veteran Christine Basil.

Nelly kicked it off with the horrors of mother’s group bitches and concluded with miming her labour from hell. I’m sure it was funny enough to bust the stitches of a recent C-Section but despite her apparent skills (she is funny) this was exactly the kind of routine that the Deliberately Barren attempts to avoid.

The Dev and Christine however did a damn fine job by making me laugh at their children as much as themselves. It’s not as if a routine about a three day labour makes you want to go out and pop a sprog but the second two women jumped the baby stage and dove into the horrors of living with sons and grown adults who won’t leave home.

The Dev won the day of course, quite literally in an applaud off at the end of the show. Her staged contempt for her children is refreshing and somehow inclusive of the Deliberately Barren without even attempting to. The spiel about her upbringing and sibling rivalry, likewise Christine’s inclusion of the downside of a 23 year marriage touches on more accessible ground, that the rigors of birth and the baby business leaves out.

These women do deserve a medal – for their professional skills not for the fact they are mothers. But the best I can do is to say, don’t be put off by the subject of the show, there are laughs to be had.

Even better I left the show more pleased than ever to not have had children!

strangers at a fair

2009-03-29T14:07:00.001+11:00

I was at a school fete, so the conversation that followed was not unexpected.

Chatting to an old friend about politics, the economy and the like, a mate of his rocked up. Introductions were made, their daughters are best buddies. In the small talk that followed the obvious question arose, “How do you two know each other, through your kids?”

I smiled, “No we go way back. Twenty years or more. “, I looked at the man I’d known for half my years on earth, “His life before children.”

The unknown guy’s eyes kind of glazed. Life before children, I could almost hear his mind muttering. A wistful, nostalgic look.

Without children, there are not these convenient demarcations. Our entire life is pre, or rather without, children. No bookends. No previous life suspended in animation, ceased to be.

It’s times like these, I don’t miss having children at all!

Outrageous sums of money

2009-03-09T13:19:00.002+11:00

Often I wonder just how much I, childless, can say about my partner's teenage step-children. Overwhelmingly generous and caring, it's not that I am afraid of broaching (sp?) the subject with him; rather my concern lies in how much outrage I can show over certain expensive financial decisions he makes without me.

The eldest, having recently finished school, is off overseas. You know, the familiar 'gap' year that 18 year olds apparently need because they've worked so hard. (I wish there was a sarcasm icon I could merrily insert at the end of that sentence. It's not hard work, completing a VCE or equivalent and I don't care what anyone says). The 'programme' he is on cost us, for 'our' half of the payment, close to $10, 000.

If you think that's an outrageous sum of money to spend on an 18 year old, please remember that that amount is only half of what was required. Half.

When the email from his ex came in, I felt sick. I didn't mind forking out for a flight to Israel; perhaps some spending money for the boy but that amount and all the zero's at the end made me feel physically ill. We don't own a house and that sum could have easily helped us toward the deposit we so want. Could have helped us realise a few things that need realising. Having been struck recently with horror financial/work-related woes, I began to feel...angry. Angry because this is money going out over which I have no control.

Not even the most severe of sour faces would stop the fact that the money HAD to be paid. Spoilt-brat stuff, I reckon. Most people I know who travelled after school saved for the trip themselves and worked when they got there. Child number 1 is selfish and invariably lazy in regard to such things. All the cash he earned in the run-up to his trip is being 'saved for the future'. Hmm...

Next time, I'll open my mouth earlier. Thing is, child number 2 is far more like his dad. He is, at 15, saving up for his trip. Which he may very well need to do.

budget advice for the barren

2009-03-05T08:59:00.001+11:00

Another Outspoken Female is back on deck for another serve.

Been a bit quiet around here, hasn’t it.

As a woman without a family, I should have lots of time to pop out tri-weekly pithy posts for a blog, or four. Shouldn’t I? Well, life – children or not, has a habit of getting in the way.

Not that I don’t have a backlog of barren inspired rants.

Like, just last week when one of the many, older Italian women in my street managed to buttonhole me for a decent working over. She has lived half a dozen houses away from my for a decade now and we nod and say hello in passing but til now that has been about it. We found ourselves at the tram stop together and in halting English I got a full serve. Children? (No). Why do you have no children? You must have children! What does your husband do? (What husband, oh that man I live with? He’s a wannabe, unemployed artist).

I can be remarkably polite sometimes but it did put me on a slow simmer for the rest of the day. It’s like a stranger telling you that you should go on a diet, wearing orange doesn’t suit your complexion, that they can do great things with plastic surgery these days or you are really getting too old to get away with dying your hair that colour.

Not. Your. Business.

I pick up a magazine focused on ‘women’s issues’, for research purposes. Have you noticed how finance, computers, porn and sport are men’s issues but cooking, craft and budgeting are quarantined in the domain of the women’s section? I know everything old in new again but in 2009 this popular Australian rag is as fresh and innovative as something out of the ‘70’s. The cover features a young, thin, blond woman in a floaty dress frolicking through a paddock of impossibly placed flowers. The big feature is “your finances in your 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s and beyond”. I have not hit the “beyond” category yet but the one I chronologically fall into bears no resemblance to my life. I’m told this can be a very expensive time for a woman managing a home and growing family. Actually my family is shrinking. Cat number three died last week. She was a big, bouncy ball of fluff that scoffed more than her fair share of the feline food budget, as well as needing a squirt of those costly de-fleaing treatments every month.

I read about needing to get on top of my superannuation. I don’t have anywhere. Double fail. A house, yes, I am top of that. Much to my accountant’s initial disgust, as a self employed person I decided when I bought a home to put any saved money into the house instead of super. She has conceded over the years that an inner city property has been wiser than trusting it to the experts to gamble my future on a failing stock market.

One piece of advice these magazines dare not publish is that not having children can do wonderful things for your finances! No loss of earnings from extended maternity leave, reduced hours to fit in with the school days and the horrendous expenses of childcare, education, food and clothing – not my problem! Truly, my advice to a single woman in her early 30’s – bugger the babies, go for a modest mortgage and budget an overseas holiday every few years instead.

But hanging out at the tram stop, it’s just too hard to explain this to an elderly Italian woman with a stubbornly limited understanding of English.

And that magazine, I guess really is the domain for some ‘70’s housefrau dreaming of a frolic through a field of daffodils.

I think I’ll just stick to my own garden instead.

Time and Place

2009-01-05T09:39:00.002+11:00

From Desci

I was in hospital with Gastro From Hell, my mum and Boyfriend waiting with me.

Around 9pm, mum started sighing. Looking at me, slack from pain and exhausted from vomiting, she whined, 'see, we should be getting a child out of this!' Referring to 'me having a painful stay in hospital'.

She said it a few times, to Boyfriend's snorts and my 'display model only! Display model only!' moans.

Time and place, mother, time and place.

Having said that, for my birthday she *did* buy me a puppy picture book and make jokes about her grandchildren being in there. Baby steps.

I Don't Like Children. No, Even Yours.

2008-12-03T10:29:00.000+11:00

Welcoming Desci back into the chair

I think more needs to be said about the Wonderful Specialness of Children.

Everyone thinks their child is extraordinary. It's sweet. To the parents, the child is their work of art, a product of their genes and nurturing. So often, whenever they can, they take the time to discuss said wonderful masterpiece. To the exasperation of everyone else.

The consternation isn't an exclusively childless person's thing: my mother, and other breeding people I know, have usually been the most vocal post-meeting mockers of the proud parent in question. It's a thing, it will always happen, get over it.

What I take umbrage at, (though I know I shouldn't - patience is my weakest trait) is when people think that THEIR child will 'convert' you.

I don't like children. Yes, there's something wrong with me, fine.

They wreck your stuff, touch things with their filthy little hands, ask relentless questions and are just boring. They're all the same. Some are fun for ten minutes or so. My cousin's kids are gorgeous and it's fun to hear stories about them, but more than 20 minutes with them and I'm shooting dust. It's weird, since I get along great with all different types of adults. But children - can't do it. Don't like them.

So I get the 'it's different when their yours' speech, obviously. But I also get the 'well, look at MY kids, though, see? SEE? NOW you see it, DON'T YOU.'

I was at breakfast with a few of my friends awhile back, and my friend's fiance had bought a workmate. The talk turned to children (the aforementioned fiance wants to have a family quickly - she's unbotheredly clocking in at around 155 kilos, so I don't think it's medically possible). The work friend asked me about when I wanted children (!) my partner laughed, we (he or I - I forget who) said we're not having them.

She asked why, of course, and I didn't have the energy to educate her, or play mind games like bursting into tears and telling her we're infertile. Yes, it's awful. But how dare she? If I had, maybe next time she'd think twice and save an actual situation like that happening, from a couple who'd been trying for a year and had just found out.

So I just said I don't like them. Cue 'Oooooh, how COULD you?' diatribe about the wonders of children.

Then, she showed me a picture on her digital camera. She whipped it out with a flourish that said 'here, now I have the ace up my sleeve that shall win this debate!' It was a picture of a child. From her colourings (blonde, blue eyed, pale), it probably wasn't hers (Mediterranean, olive-skin, dark/curly hair), but I'd bet it was related to her in some way. A niece, perhaps.

Anyway, it was a child. Not ugly. Not a cherubic angel. Just a child, like in a random google image search for 'child sitting with toy'. Fuck this, I thought.

'Eh,' I said. 'Oh! You pest!' She said, taking the camera back and trying to keep it all very light, but annoyed and taken aback a little. My partner, who had been talking with his other friend, turned around and asked what the picture was. 'Just some generic child' I said, to the consternation of the work mate.

She was expecting me to play the game. To say, 'oh, you're right, she is VERY cute, yes.' No, fuck that. I was hung over and this woman was getting right on my tits. If you choose to challenge my opinions, I should have the right to challenge yours.

Yes, I know, I should be more patient and humour people. And I know AOF would have handled the situation with dignity, grace and respect. But I just get so bloody sick of it sometimes.

womb with no view

2008-11-11T08:58:00.001+11:00

What happens when through surgery or just age we have to accept the finality of our fertility and how that impacts on others?

I dreamt last night that a client (the husband of a late 50’s couple I see semi-regularly) said pointedly, “I’m worried what we will do when you and that nice man of yours have a baby. Who will we see when you are not working?”

In the dream I reassured him there was to be no maternity leave for me. I felt neutral as I placated him but awoke with a feeling of sadness.

Then I read Ampersand Duck and her thoughtful pre-hysterectomy piece and I feel her grief and guilt because it mirrors my own.

Once I have no choice about my fertility, I have to work on the guilt of having failed to provide such a wonderful man with a baby of his own. He hasn't contributed to this guilt in the slightest, except for a bad habit of wandering around the house with a cat cradled in his arm, murmuring 'now, you have to be sure to support the head' that makes Bumblebee laugh but tweaks my tearducts slightly. No, the guilt is all mine, but I have to learn to knock it on the head, as I've tried my hardest, and also offered him many alternatives: leave me, & find someone fertile; have an affair; donate sperm to some lovely lesbian couple who will give him visitation rights; adopt; donate sperm generally & allow the result to look for him down the road; whatever else he can think of. He's thinking upon it, but his general philosophy is that he has a wonderful partner who pushes him to think differently, and a fabulous stepson who entertains him mightily, plus cats who fulfil his need for nurturing, so who is complaining? See? BestBeloved.

From Womb with a view over at duck’s.

The baby, not conceived, not born, is grieved in so many ways.

Being barren, deliberate or otherwise, has ripples.

Just plain rude

2008-10-27T14:20:00.003+11:00

Jo rang me, one lovely Sunday afternoon, from the bus-stop. The sobbing that proceeded, from the moment she heard my voice, came from deep inside and took ten minutes to calm. The party she’d attended was chock full of what Bridget Jones would (cleverly) call ‘smug marrieds’, couples glowing with adoration for each other and their ‘darling’ offspring. Glowing so damn much that it spilled over to the inevitable, dreaded line of questioning that some single, childless women in the latter half of their thirties and beyond fear. I hate that conversation. I hate it even more when there is a vague sort of smug underpinning to the query, one that leaves one person feeling happy and the other – sensible, grown-up and with a big smart lawyers job - crying at a bus-stop on a beautiful afternoon.

I was left wondering why people are so thoughtless. Smug bastards.

I have never imagined myself as a mother. Not for me the romantic dream of getting married and having a bunch of small people that resemble me. My dolls never enacted a single wedding ceremony and, though I did briefly at twelve flirt with the idea of a glamorous pop-star marriage to a member of Duran Duran, the thought of either hasn’t grabbed me since.

Why is it so damn fashionable to have children? What on earth possesses normally rational people who are lucky enough to have children to pity – I have been pitied on more than one occasion – those who, either by choice or circumstance, do not?

Sheesh.

My name is Lucy, I'm in the latter half of my thirties and, ordinarily, I write about food here. The fact that I am both a little, well, on the curvy-side shall we say, and in my late thirties means that I am asked more often than I like if I am pregnant. For the record, I am not.

I feel that I should disclose here that I do in fact have children in my life to avoid any confusion, but I must add that they are not mine. I like them both enormously, both are in fact well into their teens and very good-looking, well-mannered young men, but I'm exceedingly glad that they came ready-made. Plus their mum (with whom I share a surprisingly good relationship) takes them for half of the week, which makes things very nice for us all, thank you.

I also have a small scruffy dog which I do not, thankfully, treat as my child.

the pressures of trying to conceive

2008-10-21T09:08:00.007+11:00

The whole will we/can we have children thing can be a little stressful. I've touched on the issue of others feeling they have an investment in the decision, adding a little pressure to the whole equation.

People react differently to stress.

I tend to rant, cry, talk, write, walk my way through the tough spots.

I'm a woman, I can't write on behalf of how this makes a man feel.

Today's Age reported one man's response to the pressure-to-conceive.

Rape.

Yes.

Repeated sexual assaults and a couple of digital rapes.

Responses people? I am too flabbergasted for words right now.

Snipped from Other Rants

Melbourne massage therapist, Adam Alikakos, is up on five charges of indecent assault and two of rape. He doesn’t appear to be denying the accusations and expects a custodial sentence according to The Age.

Mitigating circumstances? Stress.

Julie Sutherland, for Alikakos, said her client and his wife were under pressure from family and friends to have children and during the time of his offending he had become stressed out about their failure to do so.
"He said that over the years he felt more and more at fault as a man and more and more emasculated," she told the court.

Socially infertile and very, very vulnerable

2008-10-18T11:12:00.002+11:00

"Socially infertile".

That’s the latest phrase to call a growing number of women in our society. Single or gay, we are the ones that got missed in the tsunami of heterosexual coupling. While the term is still too contemporary to have it’s own wiki yet, some more enterprising Assisted Reproduction Technology companies have identified a lucrative niche market to exploit or offer hope to. Depending on how you read it.

According to today’s Age report, for $3,000 plus ongoing storage costs, a woman can have eggs harvested and stored til she finds “Mr Right”.

The piece is quick to point out that the procedure is experimental. Although young women undergoing cancer treatment have had access to the technology for some time with very limited success. The problem is due to the fragility of the ‘shell’ of the ova, 98% are unviable on thawing. This differs from current IVF statistics, which uses ova that have then been successfully fertilized and frozen after a few days of cell division.

But without “Mr Right” there is no semen to fertilize the eggs of the future dream child and this is the problem in the first place.

So, considering the odds of the eggs jumping the first hurdle let alone the next step of fertilization with “Mr Right’s” seed, are the two clinics in Australia offering these services to single women saviours or exploiters? The director of the Queensland clinic bandied more hopeful statistics for women up to 37, however there appears to be no peer reviewed published research to back this up. Overwhelmingly the current research negates the clinic’s optimistic statistics.

Perhaps this was what offered hope to the woman featured in the article to go through with “one of the more harrowing experiences of her life’, when she was 36. Some would find the ethics of that transaction highly questionable.

I found the article disturbing on so many levels. Beyond the exploitation of barren women for commercial means and the increasing medicalisation of fertility, the persistence of the myth of finding “Mr Right” troubles me.

Does the soulmate phenomena help our hinder our search for a partner? In a similar vein the Sunday Age last week ran a cover story on it’s colour supplement about single, financially independent women in their 40’s. The take home message is that after the rush of the late 30’s settling for “Mr He’ll Do”, at the biological cut off age for maternity, these women could afford to be fussy while they hung out for “the one” to appear. A contemporary take on the fairy tale of the tall, handsome man bounding up on his white charger to sweep us off our feet. A modern day Mr Darcy, oozing wet shirt sexiness, a sizable asset portfolio and stunning wit. Pre-made children an optional extra.

Once more women are portrayed as being incomplete without a man. We are left in some kind of holding pattern while we wait for our soulmate to recognize us in a crowded room one day and save us from our singleness.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to the soulmate theory. Maybe that is just a symptom of middle aged cynicism. Perhaps we have many perfect partners, or none at all. There have been many ‘right’ people at the ‘wrong’ time in my life. I’m aware now that we can’t put them aside for a rainy day and access them at will later on, only accept the situation for what it is at the time and make a choice to stay or leave.

But I wonder if the mythology of “Mr Right” hobbles our search for a partner or liberates it. I salute women who choose being single over a relationship that doesn’t meet their needs but does perfection exist, especially when none of us are perfect in the first place?

And do we really need a relationship to feel complete. What’s more is a relationship the consolation prize for not having our own children?

But back to todays article with the beautiful, single woman pictured in the romantic cliché of walking on the beach. While frozen ova may be a possible fertility option for a meager handful of women who access the technology before their mid-30’s, her odds are extremely slim. ART could offer her an option in the here in now with donor sperm and fresh eggs, plus a lot of medical intervention. But waiting for the picket fence and perfect man to complete the picture changes the odds entirely.

it takes a whole village to (not) raise a child

2008-10-16T11:56:00.005+11:00

My family is a pretty understanding lot. Or at least they remain hands off over matters they mightn’t fully comprehend. The childfree issue has been a choice, or serious of circumstances, my grandchildren-free parents have never hassled me about.

I didn’t know how lucky I was.
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Update: it has been pointed out to me that if persons anonymously portrayed in this post read my blog, then it could pain. That was never my intention. All I wanted to do was tell my story about pressure to have children. Unfortunately this may be misinterpreted by others so I have removed the bulk of the post.

Sorry if it no longer makes sense. I rather liked the way it was written. Instead of removing entirely I am keeping fragments here to remind myself to be mindful.

After all, it really does take a whole family to not have a child. Even when you think it is a purely personal decision.

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But instead of bonding in our grief, I felt I was being accused of deliberately wrecking someone's happiness. But really, I felt like a failure. That I had let down another family, other than my own, as well as the wider community.

Who knows the NB may yet have children. His sperm's probably still up for it and he doesn’t believe in monogamy.

While I can focus on the benefits of an unencumbered life, I have little desire to raise other people’s children. So if that is the choice he makes, good luck to him but I don’t intend to be a traveller on that journey.

When a woman has no children, or in the case of commenter Docwitch, only has one – a whole community feel they have a right to question the “choice”.

I don’t like feeling judged. But in a family with multiple children, I think it is unfair that one outsider should be expected to shoulder the burden of the failure to create a further generation.

That said, both the NB and I are sitting on the last branches of our respective family trees. His sister is also in her 40's and single. Mine is 50 and unpartnered. My brother died at 33, on the verge of commitment and children. Both our families have a right to grieve about the lack of future generations.

But as a whole.

Not a punishment.

Sometimes, I wish My Soulmate didn't happen to be a Bio-Boy.

2008-10-14T19:30:00.002+11:00

I love my boyfriend. We honestly believe we're soulmates, and that we will be together forever. This isn't some kind of first love pillow talk. Nor can it be blamed on the honeymoon period, as we near our four year anniversary. This is real, in-it-for-the-long haul love, without jealousy, resentment or baggage and with the benefit of experience and complete honesty and respect. Also, a healthy dose of real expectations.

For example, being that we will be together until one or both of us expire, we are realistic about monogamy. He's not poly, but we've discussed the inevitability of attractions to and crushes on people outside of our union. Also, me being queer presents other obstacles to only being with one person for the rest of my life - that they only have the one type of genitals. I won't go into our ways of dealing with it all; it's not for this forum.

My friends in same-sex partnerships are asked, in passing, if they ever want children. Some do, some don't. I can't but think that those who don't, don't get the scrutiny afforded to my partner and I. Why is it a given that people in same-sex relationships won't want children, while those in M-F partnerships are assumed to set up house and start popping out kids like a wet mogwai?

I can't tell you why. I just know that while I would not change a thing about my boyfriend, (nose hair included) sometimes, I think it'd be easier to explain away our disdain for having kids if he wasn't a bio-boy. Or indeed, if I wasn't a bio-girl. But try as I might, he's not even a little into dudes, so the latter's a bagatelle.

Anyone have any thoughts as to why this may be the case?

Desci is a writer and editor in Melbourne. Her blog of vapid ramblings and hissy fits is here.

not-so barren feminists #1

2008-10-13T12:22:00.002+11:00

While far from barren, there are some broads who deserve some positive attention for services to feminism. Roseanne Barr is an outspoken woman, feminist and mother of five. She relinquished her first born, in her late teens. Check out the interview, below, in last week’s Guardian.

Roseanne on antidepressants:

She believes that society wants women "on anti-depressants so they are no longer creative or fierce". Has she taken anti-depressants? "Oh, hell yeah. There isn't anything that I haven't done. They dull your rage. People don't like angry women so they say, 'We're going to have to drug that bitch to get her to shut up. We will humiliate her and disenfranchise her, but first she has to shut up.' Oh yeah, I did those anti-depressants the last time I was famous. I needed to dull the horror of it."

Interview in The Guardian with Chrissy Iley, 8 October, 2008.

She also blogs like a blogger, with kooky photos, spirituality, poems and short explosions of rage. Fortunately, she still gets angry sometimes.

Barren myths

2008-10-09T15:39:00.002+11:00

Barren Myths #1 – if you don’t have a child then you’ve never been pregnant

When that friend is swooning with hormones and gives you the pitying look or the mock sincerity of “oh lucky you, you wouldn’t know what this is like” - she is often wrong. Miscarriage, abortion, foetal death, still birth and relinquishing children for adoption amounts to many unaccounted for pregnancies.

Just how many pregnancies end this way for Australian women, we don’t know. Not all States are required to keep such comprehensive data. Early miscarriage alone is almost impossible to track as not all require medical intervention.

Not all women want to talk about their miscarriages; especially repeated ones when well meaning acquaintances didn’t even know they were trying to conceive. Recovering from an abortion is a bit of a party stopper; such information is usually shared only with those who are trustworthy.

But giving a child up for adoption, particularly in an era of being removed from the public, family and friends (usually to a state or church run institution) and go to full term, then hand over a child after birth is something else. In many cases women never get to see or hold their child removed from them at birth. Then it is back out in the world before the breast milk has dried or ligaments shrunk back into place. While such homes for "unmarried mothers" tended to close by the early 1970's, some families still choose to seclude pregnant teenage daughters. I have met more “relinquishing mothers” than I ever suspected.

Good reading on this subject includes Merryl Moor’s PhD thesis “Silent Violence: Australia's White Stolen Children” (which can be read online).

Try not to make assumptions about your seemingly barren friends. They might just know even more than you do.

You'll Change Your Mind

2008-10-06T22:37:00.007+11:00

Introducing Desci to the Deliberately Barren team.

I'm 26. For the last decade or so, I've been wrestling with people's assumptions that I'll breed one day.

Because everybody does. And if you decide it's not for you, then there's either something wrong with you, or you'll change your mind.

Sure, you don't want kids now, but you will in the future.
Once you're older, you'll realise.
Oh, right, I was just like you, and then I woke up one day, and everything changed!

Frankly, it's becoming a chore. Why is it my job to explain to people that actually, having children isn't some mystical thing that everybody wants to do. Nor is it an essential step in life.

My partner, 28, feels exactly the same way. To avoid the constant debates of others, our team line is 'We're not ruling anything out, though it's extremely unlikely.' So unlikely, in fact, that I actually chose to be put to sleep in hospital so I could get the most effective - and long term - contraceptive solution available to me (Mirena. More information about it once I've adequately test-driven it for a few months). And when I was on the pill, skipping periods regularly to better suit my gym addiction, I was doing a pregnancy test every month.

I should point out that I'm most likely infertile anyway, thanks to my Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (infertility is reversed once I shake the syndrome, it's not a permanent affliction).

But honestly, do these measures seem like the actions of someone who will 'change their mind one day'?

Don't get me wrong, many of my beliefs are fluid. Some things I felt at 16, at 20, even at 23, I cringe at now. That's normal. But... seriously, it's been a long, long time. I don't even know if I ever 'wanted' children when I was little, or if it was just a given assumption everyone placed on me, like finishing high school or going to uni. But the assumption that one day, a switch will flick in my head and suddenly I'll be a slave to my biology? It's a little annoying.

I say to my partner, I just want to fast forward time until I'm 36 and he's 38. By then, people may accept that the decision is final, or nearly so. By then, when people ask about children, we can just say that we never wanted them. (Except, of course, in the case of my grandmother. We'll have to avoid breaking her heart by just lying and telling her we're infertile). By then, they won't roll their eyes and tell us that they were just like us, and then everything changed at 25, 30 or 35. And if people think we're odd by breaking some bloody convention that states every male-female couple must squeeze out progeny, fuck them. We'll be living the life we wanted to, free of the sacrifice and boredom parenthood brings.

I have friends who have children, or want them. Sure, it's a drag, since everything changes once they've bred. They have kids, and, justifiably, their priorities change. They become less fun, harder to see, and all that, but I respect their decision, because that's what it is. They have weighed the pros and cons, and decided, you know what? I want to grow something inside me and have it crawl out and then take care of it.

I make the decision the other way, for so many reasons I've outlined at length, and I'm met with patronising tsk-tsking, eye rolls and head shakes.

Then, of course, there are the people that breed on instinct, like a fish squeezing out a sack of eggs. They did it because it was expected of them, without thought as to whether they were suitable as parents, or even if they wanted to. I have nothing but contempt for these people, mixed with a healthy dose of pity.

You know what? I know some people whose parents didn't have the luxury of deciding to have children. They did it because it was expected of them. And the product of such a household is always affected, often in ways which may not even be undone after years of therapy (as is the case with a close friend of mine). This lack of decision also may or may not lead to some pretty drastically bad phenomena.

I have made the choice to not have children. This is apparently unacceptable, as I am of breeding age and in a long term relationship. Such is the way people challenge me on it. I don't go up to people with kids and quiz them on when they decided they wanted children, why they made that decision, whether they'll regret it - that's their business.

It becomes surprising when my own parents challenge me on it. They know me, they know what I'm like. Many a family joke relies on how selfish I am, how impractical, how resentful I am of responsibility. And yet my adamant stance is met with heartbreak (and optimism that I'll change my mind). These people know how badly I'd suck at being a mother, and yet in the face of that they still inexhaustibly challenge me on my choice. What the hell? I know they spend the better part of their life stoned or drunk, but Jesus Christ, family.

Sure, several hundred years ago it was important to instill a message that it was imperative to have as many children as possible, since the mortality rates were so high. And a few decades ago, if you liked sex you pretty much were resigned to a litter, whether you liked it or not. But nowadays, we have the choice not to have children, and if we take that option it doesn't mean humanity might die out. Then why is choosing not to have children still so shocking a choice?

Desci is a writer and editor in Melbourne. Her blog of vapid ramblings and hissy fits is here.

the hot topic of the week here in Victoria

2008-10-06T15:25:00.002+11:00

The abortion reform legislation goes before the (Victorian State) Upper House this week and The Age continues to run it’s series of uncritical, clearly anti-abortion, “human story” style pieces that have been peppering the paper for the last couple of months.

The latest is all about little Thomas who was born at 26 weeks (a full 3.5 months early). Now six years old there’s a picture with his loving mother with the caption, “Thomas Sharples and his mother Deborah, who is disgusted by the idea of a 24-week termination”. With Deborah’s willing consent Thomas’s story has been part of the case delivered by Labour MP Marlene Kairouz against the Bill.

The story, no doubt supplied by the anti-choice lobby, is lazy and uncritical in its reporting of the facts. What was the cost of Thomas’s 3.5 months of post-natal hospitalization, much of it in NICU and ongoing special care? Not a mention. Has Thomas suffered for being kept alive ‘against all the odds’? The story glosses over his deafness and makes no other mention of the physical problems.

Thomas’s story does not address the issues of the Bill or the fact it is looking at abortion up to 24 weeks. At that stage of prematurity each day makes a substantive difference to likelihood of survival. While the medical advances in the past decade are increasing the odds for those born at 26-plus weeks gestation, there have been no significant changes for survival of 23 week old fetuses, which stays hovering at around 20%. It would be rare for the 1:5 who do survive to do so without blindness, deafness, brain damage, digestive problems, sleep apnea, heart irregularities and an inability to be fed naturally.

While I love a good survivor story and am not an eugenicist, the sloppy reporting does little to tell the whole story.

Catholic, and some other chrisitan, doctors or medical personal believe it is against their individual human rights to perform a termination on a woman who’s own life may be at stake if she continues the pregnancy. A strange lack of compassion in anyone’s book to choose a fetus that may have little chance of survival, over a functioning adult.

The Age continues to fail to bring it’s stories on this legislation back to the point which is to allow safe, legal access to abortions up to 24 weeks' gestation and remove unlawful abortion from the Crimes Act. While a small percentage of women may choose to go through an induced labour at 23 weeks for lifestyle reasons, the vast majority who seek a termination at this time is in response to the devastating news that their much wanted baby, if it was to survive birth, would have major brain or internal organ damage. I’ve met no woman who has been confronted with this to take the decision to terminate lightly. Nor has a single one of them forgotten what it was like to labour in vain and hold their child until it dies.

For those of us who support the final passing of this legislation, all we ask is that when for whatever reason, a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy of up to 24 weeks, that it can be done so legally and safely. In short, that no woman die or be damaged from the consequences of an out of hospital abortion, or that she or the medical personal go to prison for pursuing an abortion up to 24 weeks.

What is so wrong with that?

"A number of people have asked me, 'Who speaks for the baby?' The answer, I believe, is that the mother speaks for the baby, and we need to respect that right, whether we agree or disagree with the decision they make."
Jeanette Powell, Victorian Nationals front bencher, speech to the Lower House. The Australian

Cross-posted at Health Philosophy Politics and Other Rants

but what about the blokes?

2008-09-25T14:00:00.002+10:00

I know it is a foregone conclusion in some quarters that a hairy legged, childless, self-confessed feminist like myself, must be a man-hatter.

Actually no.

Let’s get the blame game out of the way once and for all.

Do I blame men, as some women do, for my childfree state?

While I openly envy the wide biological window that most men have to pass on their genes, it has never tipped over into hate. While at times I would have loved to think that my ability to reproduce was not bordered by my forties, I wouldn’t want to trade places with the new dad in his late 40’s(or even 50’s), on baby duty. Babies at any age are tiring, I feel exhausted looking at some older parents struggling baggy-eyed through the haze of the first year.

Can I blame any of my ex-partners for not choosing to have a family with me, when I was toying with the idea? It was my choice to be in those relationships and as the two or three that I seriously considered playing happy families with are not in my life now, would children have made it any better? In fact, I am absolutely relieved to not have to deal with custody issues with any of them, as child or not, there is no way we could be together and happy at this point in our lives.

Not that they have all been against the idea. I entered a relationship briefly at 39, specifically lured by a man who dangled the cosy notion of family before me. To be honest, I can think of few childless women I know, who’ve made great new relationship decisions as forty breathes down their single necks. Far from anger at this man, he is the reason that the following year I embraced my state on non-parenthood, as a true choice. I’d woken up to my vulnerability and chosen to be single once more, at the price of not having a child, if the only option was to be saddled with a manipulative, needy man for the rest of my life.

Blame comes from the feeling that we don’t have a choice. When we feel disempowered we attribute blame – sometimes to ourselves, sometimes to others. In the last few years some women in their forties have vocally blamed feminism, or even Germaine Greer, for their nulliparous state. Women who appear to live rich and empowered lives.

Others blame men for being commitment phobic, hankering after younger women or just not wanting to grow up. To be honest, I don’t care about those men. If we choose a bloke like that it is as much to do with us, as it is them.

But I do have an issue with the absence of men, as the potential father, in the abortion debate. Blokes waving pro-choice placards may be visible but rarely the impregnators. When there is talk of doctors, nurses and women who wish to end a pregnancy being fined or jailed in a system where termination through choice is criminalized – the other half of the genetic material amassed in that bunch of cells is not part of the blame picture. If men who did not want to become fathers took 100% responsibility for contraception it would be ok. But for the ones that fly by the seat of their pants or even proudly claim they are “allergic to condoms” (meaning they dislike their perceived change in sensation) in a world of criminalized abortion they should also be standing in the dock.

But back to my life, as it is, it is sweet. I am happy, loved and cherish my slightly selfish life with leisurely mornings and spontaneous gatherings after work. I will defend it, celebrate it and own it. Just don’t ask me to blame anyone, for it is the life that I choose.

slowly coming to life

2008-09-25T09:39:00.001+10:00

In this slow process of birthing this blog I had discounted the fact that it already had some readers, even with the few scant posts. A bit like the koan of the tree falling in the forest, a blog owner may not be aware that others notice it too until a statcounter is added and email of comments turned on.

Apologies to previous commenters for lack of acknowledgement, I now know you are there and am listening. The feedback has been lovely.

I have had a couple of nibbles from those who’d like to be part of the collaboration. Though words have not come with it as yet.

Contact me at the email below to take part, or just keep reading and commenting.

I hear you now!

invitation to join deliberately barren

2008-09-22T09:48:00.002+10:00

I’ve hidden this blog away like a treasure to be explored on a rainy day.

That day has now come (though there is more wind than rain) and I am opening deliberately barren to become a collaborative blog with any other women who are child-free, child-less, infertile or just didn’t quite get around to having children, to join in.

The title is in honour of Australia’s first female deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, jibe from the enlightened Mr Heffernan – stating she was unfit for leadership because she was ”deliberately barren”.

This forum is open to be read by all – men, women, parents, step-parents, bereaved parents – with contributions by women who fall into the category of barren whether through choice or circumstances, deliberately or not. There is the opportunity to celebrate, grieve, laugh, rant, raise awareness and much more. But most of all, it is time for us to come out of the shadows.

If you would like to be part of this collaboration email me – otherrants (at) gmail (dot) com.

not so deliberately barren

2008-05-11T08:28:00.000+10:00

While I take the shortest of moments to silently congratulate my friends on their attainment of motherhood and a much longer one to talk to my own mum, across the sea, cloaked in the early stages of Alzheimer’s (she know who I am and I hope she will spend her remaining years on this planet being cognisant of those who love her) - I’d like to put it on record that I hate Mothers Day.

Ok, poke a stick at me and call it envy. Actually it is not; rather it is my annual day of mourning. In this post-falling-of-the-Twin-Towers world with the resurgence of family values, crafting and apple pie I’ve been left a little stranded. Like Tracee Hutchison, I missed that boat bearing the fruits of my fecundity. While I’m equally annoyed that some of us are invisible to the politicians, I don’t begrudge provision of greater maternity leave and childcare, I may not be a parent but I am still a feminist. But please if you are the proud friend of a late-30s or early-40-something female without children could you just take a minute and read her piece about being on the receiving end of careless questions and comments. They must be universal because I have had them all and too often from people who mean well but should know better. The “just go out and get knocked up by a stranger” line got a beating throughout my 30’s reaching a frenzied peak as the end of that decade came into sight. My gorgeous GP at the time crowned the notion with the nifty moniker “sperm bandits”. No, neither of us saw wilfully stealing someone’s DNA as an ethical thing to do. But oddly people who wouldn’t (these days at least, now they are trying to install values into their own offspring) lift an item off the shelf and slip it into their bag without paying would suggest a much more elaborate form of theft. The ‘hopeful’ stories of ridiculously old women bearing children, dropped like crumbs as if I was a starving creature, leave me bewildered and overwhelmingly tired. The patronising assumption that I had never wanted children (untrue), pity or even exclusion from certain child-centric events continues, even now.

Though my mother has been gracious about her lack of grandchildren it is very, very difficult to witness someone else’s parent sharing her sorrow on the subject. How much understanding or compassion would it take to consider that perhaps having 2 grown children, even if they haven’t produced offspring, may be better than the alternative? It can be very tough when something so personal and private becomes public property, with a bundle of assumptions and expectations.

I don’t mind when a good friend asks gently over a bottle of wine how I feel about the kid thing, respectfully acknowledging the status quo without presumptions, as one did recently. We all have our journeys of grief and pretending they they don’t exist is worse than never going there.

So while I’ll send up a cheer almost any day agreeing that maternity is a wonderful thing and every mother I have ever met has done or is doing a fabulous job, especially for enduring those endless hours of domestic, mind numbing drudgery – I’ll just try and avoid the cafes and restaurants today. Even the galleries and movie theatres and other such public spaces where families tend to gather. After all it is just one day, I have my garden and for once the Not Boyfriend is in Melbourne today, so I don’t feel quite so alone.

But I’m not trying to garner pity. I've had a quiet coffee on the deck listening to birdsong already this morning, there is a warm body waiting in bed for an undisturbed cuddle and have no demands on my time til tomorrow. Life really isn’t that tragic.

The myth of monogamy

2007-08-21T15:38:00.002+10:00

There was a bit of a stir recently when a Sydney woman wrote about her experience of being a ‘kept woman’ for a year. In 2005 at the age of 35, the pseudonymous Holly Hill advertised for a sugar daddy outlining what she had to offer – yes sex but also gourmet dinners, massages and a professionally qualified ear for listening.

That blog in The Age ran with the story last month and chatted with Holly not just about the concept of offering her various services at $52,000 pa but also her thoughts on monogamy.

Though there was the odd comment in favour of Holly’s experience, overwhelming there was vitriol. It was as if the very fabric of society was being threatened by one woman’s experiment. The common form of attack was character assassination.

There was the slut taunt from women like “A Grumpy Grown-up”:

So what then has Holly really got on offer? I suppose Holly prefers to think of herself as a corporate service provider possessing a constructive relationship with her client.

I'd say it was more of a high school hottie moaning "everybody says I'm a slut" after she's done the entire football team. Naw. She's just Miss Popularity.

Or let’s just call her a whore, as voiced by “radman”:

A whore is whore. You can colour it any way you want it, or justify it any way you want. Same dog different street. If they're happy with the arrangement, then good on 'em. Doesn't change the fact.

Or for those who are ‘not a prude’ like “Ms L” – labeling her as a prostitute became a focus of the commentary:

Because being a prostitute is not being engaged in a relationship. I am the last person on earth who could be described as a prude and I've been involved in all manner of decadent behaviour. But people who look to involve money when it comes to spending time with another person, they're fooling themselves.

Semantics aside, I don’t think Holly Hill mentioned anywhere that she wasn’t a sex worker (for the non-prudes, this might be a better term to describe the arrangement). There is nothing to suggest she has an issue with that. She was asking to be paid for sex (along with other skills) and made no bones about it. Because she decided to do this exclusively with one man at a time, rather than a whole battalion on the same night, is purely her personal choice of how she wanted to work.

In another forum, I would have expected a feminist debate but the “f word” didn’t get a look in. It does remain a conundrum, whether selling sex liberates women, belittles men or makes either a victim or oppressor. I suspect it all comes down to choice. In this case Holly not only defined her job but also got to choose her client/provider. Both parties entered the agreement freely and were equally at liberty to end the arrangement. Not all sex workers have those kinds of choices. But this didn’t seen to be the point of the blog discussion.

The whore debate aside, she also used the book to question society's values around fidelity. Perhaps questioning the honesty of the average relationship was more likely the cause of the venom behind the name-calling. Clearly some people are threatened by the thought that their partner may pay lipservice to sexual fidelity but may not be actually living it. They don’t like people, especially Other Women, questioning the foundations of their relationship. Like the single gal viewed as a potential pariah at a couples dominated 70’s dinner party, in the 21st century a female in charge of her own sexuality is still viewed with suspicion.

From some of the responses to the post, it becomes clear we have a lot invested in longterm relationships. Rob, for example, saw it as a way to assure companionship when he’s older and no longer attractive.

Call me old fashioned, but whatever happened to love? You know, the kind where you grow old with someone and still hold hands when your (sic) in your 90s? Life carries on long after you're young and pretty, and it's nice to know that someone will be there with you through thick and thin even when you're old and wrinkly and no longer desirable to the opposite sex.

But can any of us assume that a marriage vow or a declaration of love assures companionship for life? If Rob stops providing his side of some unspoken bargin, will Mrs Rob really stay with him when he is ugly and impotent? While some responded to Holly’s suggestion of ‘negotiated infidelity’ by dismissing it for lack of romance, it does put honesty back on the agenda. So many couples claim they are truthful with each other yet tell “white lies” about seemingly minor issues. Money is a classic example, especially when all income is pooled in a joint bank account. Even how or with whom time is spent can be fudged in a happy relationship.

So when we make our private commitment to another - do we hand over the rights to our sexuality as well? As a couple dances up the aisle arm in arm, are they both thinking "Fantastic, I'll never have another lover ever again!?" While life may be less complicated if neither partner ever has the desire for flirtation, intercourse or a parallel relationship outside of their primary commitment - annecdotally the odds are against that. The notion of 'negotiated fidelity' perhaps raises the underlying question - do we want to be honest with each other, or will we tacitly agree to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy? Sometimes just the psychological freedom of knowing fidelity is negotiable is enough.

The myth of monogamy has begun to fascinate me in recent years. I have got to talk to an extraordinary number of happily coupled people who have had sex outside of their marriage/de facto relationship. One man talked of it in terms of the secrecy being almost as much of a buzz as the actual physical activity. He described it in terms of being a ‘naughty boy’ again. For him the myth of monogamy was very importat in his marriage, her knowledge of his extra marital sex (if she ever choose to forgive him for it, which was unlikely) would take most the fun away. Others, both men and women, tend to talk about it in terms of it reassuring them of their attractiveness, not just sexually but also of being intellectually of interest to others, when in a long term relationship that leaves them feeling taken for granted or unappreciated. Few talked about leaving their marriage. In fact, non-monogamy, whether negotiated or illicit, appeared to actually be a tool to keep the status quo within the relationship.

So I’d disagree with the conclusion Holly made that infidelity is purely about sex. Her thesis being that if a partner (and here she has singled out women) don’t deliver the goods often enough, it is fair for the one wanting more to outsource it. In my random survey, there were as many women as men who were frustrated by the lack of sex in their relationships. But overwhelmingly the reasons went way beyond the pursuit of orgasms.

Perhaps a more rational view of relationships is to not expect monogamy. What needs to be negotiated is honesty in all facets of the relationship - from shared money to shared beds.

First published in Larvatus Prodeo