You Don't Need A Baby To Feel Complete
My inbox was going insane. Every second, a new ping! Every refresh, another 10 emails. It was December 2018, and I was doing some research for a project about women who had decided to not have children.
I wrote a tweet asking people to get in touch: 'For a thing! I am looking to speak to a range of women who have zero desire to have kids (by choice!) who might talk to me, please reply or slide into one’s DMs – thank you.'
Within an hour I had 180 public replies, 200 private DMs, then non-stop emails – for weeks afterwards.
'I’m 48 now and neither of us has had a change of heart,' said one.
'I’ve long let go of the distraction of giving a fig about what society thinks, and it is freeing,' said another. 'There are obvious positives, such as having more independence and money, but these aren’t really reasons why I wouldn’t want [children]. I just simply am not interested.'
I gulped their messages down, savouring every last word. Sometimes I read them late at night for comfort. Their stories were not the ones the world tells us about childfree women: that they are sad, bitter, in denial, consumed with career or lacking a ‘natural’ instinct. These women were joyful, open-hearted and deeply unapologetic about their choice to skip motherhood.
As their messages stacked up, I felt something akin to a high. For years, I had struggled to articulate why I felt so differently about being a mother compared to other thirtysomething women I knew.
I realised it was because there had never been a language that moved beyond the claptrap and cliché to explain why women had decided to opt out of parenthood. (The stereotypes being that we were selfish, narcissistic, hedonistic, even.) As I replied to each message, it felt like a cloud had been lifted. That, finally, the decision to say no to being a mother could at last be celebrated.
I never really gave much thought to babies when I was growing up. They were there, on my periphery, but never front of mind. When I looked at them, my heart didn’t skip a beat. I just saw what looked like a lot of hard work… and a lot of crying. I was more smitten with the idea of independence: living with friends, having a job, carving my own path – but nothing beyond that. Motherhood was never a dot on the horizon that came into focus the older I got. It was just never there to begin with.
Which was fine, until I hit my late twenties and suddenly, just like that, motherhood was everywhere. It infiltrated my social circle’s conversations – who was feeling ‘broody’, who wasn’t. It was in the books I read, the podcasts I listened to.
It was there, lingering, in conversations with new acquaintances and on the tip of the tongues of well-meaning relatives. Everyone my age, it seemed, knew with absolute certainty that they wanted to be mothers, in the same way that I knew with the same resoluteness that I did not.
At times, it can be difficult living with this knowledge, because it feels like you are constantly on the defence. It can make people feel uncomfortable, hearing this sort of thing. Being 'childless' is different to 'childfree', you see. The 'less' implies you have no choice; the 'free' implies bloody mindedness.
I’ll give you an example: recently I picked up my 18-month-old nephew at a family gathering. I slung him on my hip and gave him a big wet kiss on his edible cheek. I love feeling the weight of his warm body in my arms. I love being an auntie. Suddenly, there was a gentle elbow in my side as a friend of the family said, 'Getting in some practice for when you have your own, eh?'
She meant no harm. I was holding a baby. She was being nice. But my throat tightened, my body stiffened. It was the directness of the assumption that did it. I love the children in my life deeply, but I know I do not want one of my own. So I decided to tell her, casually, so as to not make a big deal out of it. Suddenly she looked very sad for me.
'Oh…' she simply said.
Because saying you are childfree feels more like an admission than a fact. For years, I have had to take a deep breath before I tell people, mentally preparing myself for their reaction. (Will they look confused? Alarmed? Will they pat me on the arm and assure me ‘I’ll change my mind when I get older’?) It can throw people, in the same way that a single woman attending a wedding once did.
I came of age in the early nineties, a whole decade after the phrase,'having it all' was coined. That meant I watched as an entire generation ahead of me battled it out to have everything: the family, the career, the fulfilling sex life, the bountiful friendship circles… And, from where I was standing, it looked exhausting.
I wasn’t sure I could, or indeed wanted to have it all. But the one thing I knew I could live without was the one thing society believed I couldn’t: motherhood.
A lot happened during my twenties to get me to this place of certainty. I left university. I moved to London. I left my job in PR. I created a blog. I started my own business. I wrote three books. I launched an award-winning podcast. I got to know – and like – who I was becoming, and the life I was carving out for myself.
I also met my partner Paul. Paul is amazing with kids; he has a face that can pull a million different expressions. Children love him. And he loves them. Which means that throughout our entire relationship he has always been met with: 'Oh, you’ll make a great dad some day!' But we are content just as we are. They say when you meet the right man, you’ll change your mind. But I didn’t. I just knew I wanted to nest with Paul. No one else. We didn’t need a baby to make us feel complete.
We were complete as we were.
Paul and I never had the 'children' conversation, by the way. Not because we were skirting around it, it just never came up. Until one evening when we were at home, cooking pasta, and he turned to me and said: 'What do you think you’d be like if you couldn’t sleep, read, travel or do your work in peace?'
I hesitated.
'I think I’d be miserable,' I replied, pouring us some red wine.
'I really think you would be. Those are your favourite things,' he replied, laughing while continuing to stir the sauce.
'But I’m 80 per cent sure I don’t want them…' I trailed off, because I knew what he was really asking me.
He paused. ‘I’m... 75 per cent sure.’
'I’m pretty sure, though,' I added.
'Same. But I guess we can’t say for sure,' he said, switching on the TV.
And that was it. Our 'children' talk.
Paul feels it, too; the sense that we have to 'defend' our decision. It is hard when culture insinuates that childfree couples are self-centred or hedonistic, while couples with children are homemakers. Paul and I are homemakers, just in a different way.
Here’s the unpalatable truth: I can’t see a world in which having a child slots into my life.
I don’t want to take time off work. I don’t necessarily want a new or different identity to the one I already have. I like my life as I have built it. It’s taken years to say this without feeling guilty. But I now realise that guilt belongs to society, not me. Being truly selfish is bringing a child into the world when you have no desire to make real space for it.
Of course, knowing you feel a certain way doesn’t mean you are completely at peace with it. When I first said out loud that I didn’t want children, it felt like some huge revelation, even if just to myself. Going against society’s deeply entrenched grain isn’t easy when human instinct is to follow the crowd. That’s why we need a new conversation and a new crowd. This isn’t an exercise in picking sides – the child-bearing on one, the childfree on the other – it’s about us all having the option to choose the path that best suits us. And it means shining a light on the path that is least spoken about: the childfree one.
That’s why we need more examples in media, culture and real life showing what it is to live a wonderful childfree existence. The more examples we have, the more it becomes understood. (It is, in fact, why I have based my first novel, Olive, on a young, childfree woman.)
But I do believe that my generation and Gen Z, the one following mine, will finally settle this narrative: that we shouldn’t be 'expected' to want children by default. The movement is about being childfree, not childless.
As the actor Kim Cattrall says: 'It’s the "less" that is offensive… it sounds like you’re "less" because you haven’t had a child.'
For those who are childfree by choice, there’s nothing missing from your life. You’re still surrounded by all the relationships and plans and things you love. You can have your own 'family' without having children. You can live your own version of 'having it all'. And it will be full of life and love.
Olive by Emma Gannon is out July 23. This article appears in the July 2020 edition of ELLE UK.
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