CATTRALL DISPELS MYTH OF CHILDLESS WOMEN
Time to challenge notion that motherhood means fulfilment, writes Nina Steele.
‘Do you have children?”
It’s a question any woman over 30 will have to field fairly regularly, followed by the (not always) unspoken addendum: if not, why not?
It’s an inquiry I used to find uncomfortable but, now I’m nearly 40, I love answering: “My husband and I couldn’t have them. No, please don’t be sorry! We’re having the time of our lives instead.”
I recognized the same contentment radiating from Kim Cattrall, who recently appeared on the BBC to dispel the myth of the miserable childless woman.
Her biggest issue appeared to be with the word itself. “The ‘ less’ in childless,” she argued, “sounds like you’re ‘ less’ (of a woman) because you haven’t got a child.”
For all those roundly applauding Cattrall for tackling the issue, whatever you call it, there were a few who were dispirited that she spent much of her 60-minute slot discussing (or defending) her decision not to have children in the first place.
It’s a fair point. How often do we expect men to account for not becoming fathers?
You only have to compare the very public tick-tocking of Jennifer Aniston’s biological clock with the scant mentions of George Clooney’s to see this blatant double standard in action. British broadcaster Jane Garvey, in conversation with Cattrall, admitted it makes her shy away from the issue altogether in interviews.
But it’s a conversation that’s not going away anytime soon. It’s a debate we need to become as good as Cattrall at having if we want to challenge the narrative that being childless means being unfulfilled. I am not just childless but happily so, and have come too far in my journey to let a word come in the way of the peace that I feel.
It didn’t start out as a choice: I met my husband Robert in 2000, married a year later and decided to start a family three years after that. I was 29, he 38, and with no history of infertility on either side, we assumed that conceiving would be straightforward. But after trying naturally for three years, we had to seek professional help.
That’s when we discovered that he was infertile. He has a very rare medical condition called azoospermia, which affects about one per cent of men, meaning they are unable to produce sperm. In some cases, it can be collected through surgery, but this route proved fruitless for us, too.
Still, I clung to the thought that if other people had miracle babies, why shouldn’t I? It took five heartbreaking years of failed attempts at IVF and artificial insemination with donor sperm before I decided, in 2013, that enough was enough.
My husband would have given up long before then if he had his way, but he was willing to do whatever made me happy. I had bought into the idea that only having a family would do so. I finally realized that continuing to chase a dream would put at risk the marriage that already did.
Many mothers describe their children as blessings. Mine come in a different form: after 15 years, my husband and I are happier than ever, secure in the knowledge we’re staying together for the sake of no one but ourselves.
I read an article recently, in which the author compared her life with that of her friend, a mother of three, and claimed that hers was “poorer for its childlessness.” She was forgetting that true happiness isn’t relative — increasing or diminishing only in comparison to someone else’s.
We mustn’t make the mistake of assuming that having children can only bring joy, either. The opposite can also be true. Last year, on my way to the senior’s charity where I work, I came across a huge crowd in front of a very expensive looking house, guarded by two policemen. I later found out it belonged to Tania Clarence, a mother who smothered her three severely disabled children, after reaching the breaking point.
No one embarking on the path to parenthood would ever expect it to end here. But this is my point: who can control how their path will unfold?
We live in a world in which parenthood is fetishized as the pinnacle — the very meaning — of life, and the only true route to happiness. And although I do understand the impulse to procreate, I nodded fiercely as Cattrall explained: “I didn’t change nappies, which is OK with me, but I did help my niece get through medical school.”
As an aunt to 11 nephews and nieces (and counting) I can attest that there are many times when you can provide something that their parents can’t.
I have seen, first-hand, in my work with elderly people, that having children is no insurance against loneliness in old age. And I know, from all the children I love in my life, that you don’t have to have one of your own to mother others.