‘My body felt beautiful’: Being Mum in a wheelchair
Being in a wheelchair hasn’t held Rachel Peterson back from being a mum, and she’s proud of her two daughters. But the journey hasn’t been easy, as Olivia Shivas reports.
When Rachel Peterson’s doctor found out she was pregnant, he assumed she’d want an abortion. It was a shock for the then-22-year-old, who was ‘‘super excited’’ to share her news. Instead, that first exchange was ‘‘horrific’’.
‘‘Straight away he sat down and gave us a card for a termination, and apologised at our misfortune, and said to Molly’s dad, ‘you’re a very good-looking man, I suggest you terminate this and go and find another partner to have a baby with’.’’
It’s experiences like this that have made being a parent with a disability ‘‘tricky’’, Peterson says.
‘‘All you want to do is buy pretty baby clothes and celebrate; it’s not the same as for some of my able-bodied girlfriends.’’
Peterson, now 44, was born with muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair; and she knew from a young age she wanted to a mum.
‘‘I was always really maternal ... being a mum was just how it was always going to be,’’ she says.
‘‘I didn’t really have fears it wouldn’t happen for me until later on in life when I had medical professionals telling me so.’’
There was a lot of pressure on Peterson as a young disabled mum.
Her daughter’s dad also faced a woeful lack of support, struggling with bipolar and mental health services. He died by suicide when Molly was just 10 months old.
It wasn’t just the attitudes of medical professionals; Peterson was also surprised by the negativity from strangers.
When she first became pregnant, ‘‘the idea of disabled people having sex or becoming a parent was quite mindblowing’’.
‘‘Twenty years ago when I had Molly, I would straight up have taxi drivers ask me how I got pregnant ... and these days, none of that happens.’’
‘‘The world is getting so much better, but for it to keep getting better we need more visibility, and we need role models so that disabled women know that they might have had a birth disability, or they might have had an accident, but they can absolutely go on to be incredible parents.’’
After going through six different specialists, she and her then-partner found someone who would lead her maternity care because she was deemed a high-risk pregnancy.
‘‘I don’t think it was so much discrimination,’’ she says. ‘‘I think it’s just scary, like a high-needs pregnancy. But it still does hurt, even though you can
The answer arrived a lot earlier for Auckland woman Eden (who asked for her surname not to be used), who says evolving conversations with her long-time partner had her convinced early that she didn’t want children. Raising kids didn’t align with her ultimate goal of travelling the world as much as she could. She worried about the world being overpopulated, and didn’t want to contribute to its impacts on the environment. At 25, she ‘‘put some finality around it’’.
‘‘I just never felt that maternal feeling people talk about. Most of my friends have this, they knew they wanted kids and I never felt that way. I thought maybe it will come, it will change.’’
And sure enough, that’s what people told her after she’d made up her mind. ‘‘Every person I told [said], ‘you will change your mind when you turn 30. Now I’m told, you’ll change your mind in your late 30s.’ [But], it’s definitely not for me.’’
Ongoing expectations that she would have children eventually saw her and her husband each sit their families down to tell them of their decision. Those discussions, especially with her parents, were emotional.
‘‘It was a hard conversation to have, given my parents love children, and they would love us to have kids. It was not easy. There were tears.’’
Most surprising to Eden was the assumption from even colleagues or acquaintances, who had no problem bringing up the possibility of children after she married. Even when she politely rejected the suggestion, Eden found some reactions insensitive. ‘‘They kind of look at you... it’s hard to describe unless you’ve seen it yourself, but it’s like a look of pity. Like, [they’re thinking] ‘you don’t know what you’re missing out on’. A few of them love making comments like, they’ve never felt more fulfilled. I’m happy for them, but they insist that I should want that, too. There’s a double standard. We have to sit there with people who have had kids and hear about them for hours over dinner.’’
These interactions have become harder, ‘‘even though I’ve become clearer and more confident in my decision’’.
Rushton interviewed dozens of people about whether to have children, including climate change scientists studying the world’s impending doom who were also deliberating. Many were conflicted about the world they could bring a child into, others analysed how they were raised and what mark that might leave on them as a parent, and some worried about stability and finances.
But in spite of all that, Rushton was surprised how many who expressed doubt did go on to have a baby, and how the answer for many remained the same – you’ll risk regretting it if you don’t.
‘‘The default is still that you should have children, particularly if you have a uterus. You can’t overstate that. It felt like, ‘we’re expected to have children’, and if they didn’t, they had to have a really good reason. Really, the only socially acceptable – and it’s not, we judge women who do this – path is if you completely prioritise your career.’’
Rushton says the question for outsiders becomes, if not children, then what? Like Danni Duncan, she notes there can be few examples of what a fulfilling life without children can look like. In the celebrity world, people like Jennifer Aniston are scrutinised and ultimately their decisions chalked up to being unlucky in love, being too career-focused, or hard of heart – comedian Chelsea Handler reportedly admitted she just didn’t like children.
Says Rushton, ‘‘There are people all over the world who don’t have kids and lead fulfilling lives, but we don’t have many social narratives of that. We have the social, hedonistic party girl and the ambitious career girl, and we don’t have much in between.’’
Eden has given the future a lot of thought. She describes she and her husband as financially savvy with lots of plans for the future, including retirement. She admits the one question she kept returning to initially was, who will look after me when I’m old? But the answer is often practical and simple: ‘‘We’ll have money set aside for a care facility.’’
Fertility Associates fertility specialist Dr Leigh Searle says the number of women asking about freezing their eggs doubled in the last three years.
She credits that proactiveness to much more awareness of fertility options and the decline in fertility with age. Where once she’d see women closer to 40 considering their fertility, women were more proactive now and visiting in their early 30s.
Three or four women a week pass through her door discussing their options, whereas in the past she was more often seeing people who were struggling to conceive.
While many women she sees are set on having children, just not right now, Searle notes that among the patients who are seeking fertility treatments to try and conceive, there is an undercurrent of hopeful families in the background.
‘‘Often there is pressure from parents who want to be grandparents, that adds to their stress,’’ she says. ‘‘There is a small number of women who say, my mum has encouraged me to come along. I don’t think it’s pressure, I think it’s more people wanting to know, for women to explore their options.’’
That said, ‘‘I’m sure lots of women have pressure to have a family from general society.’’
Rushton thinks society has a long way to go in accepting some people just don’t want to be, and will never be, parents – but that the change will come from current trends continuing.
Danni Duncan says feedback to some of her social media posts – her childfree specific TikTok channel she says is growing at a rate of knots – sometimes accuse her of shaming mothers.
She says there is an erroneous perception that she must dislike parents or children.
‘‘I think that the more we talk about it openly, as this is something people are doing, the more other people will feel safe talking about it... it’s comforting to know there’s a whole bunch of us.’’