The Mythology of Being a Woman: Perfectly Flawed

The question, which I can see coming every time, makes me clench my insides and mentally brace myself.  “So, do you have any kids?”  It seems like an easy question to answer – either you do or you don’t.  But as a middle-aged woman who doesn’t have any kids, it’s actually an answer wrought with emotion and complexity.  Over the years, I have learned the best ways to answer.  Either I say “No”, smile and quickly change the subject or I say “No, but I have cats (or a husband). And they laugh.

Most people are polite, but there is the after-lingering in the eyes of the questioner thinking “why not?” and then there’s me for a minute, stuffing various emotions back down my throat while I think of something else to say.  As a teacher, I get this question a lot from my students.  And sometimes they aren’t polite, or at least they don’t know any better, and they ask “why not?”

I used to ask that too. 

When I was little, I believed in the mythology of women that we are taught as girls:  1.  I would be married.  2.  I would be a mom.  That’s the perfect woman, right?

In my early 20s, I remember the day I truly realized that myth number 1 might not be everyone’s reality (including mine).  It was a little bit like learning that your parents are Santa Claus.  But I finally got it -- not everyone gets married and that’s OK.  I eventually was married in my late 20s, but here I am divorced now.  It’s not quite what the mythology implied would happen.  But things happen in life that you don’t expect.  It is good for me now to be divorced.   

What I have still not gotten over completely is myth number 2, that I would be a mom.  At their house, my parents have an enormous dictionary that has several different parts to it.  One of the most interesting to me was a section with pages and pages of first names and their etymology.  I used to pore over this dictionary, looking at the names and would actually make a list of names that would be good for my future children.  I still know those never used, never needed names.   

My personality leans toward being a nurturer.  In high school and beyond, my main source of income was babysitting.  In college, I worked at a summer camp.  Currently, I teach high school and at my church, I teach elementary-aged kids to sing.  I like kids and I get along with them for the most part.  I always thought I would be a pretty good mom.

And yet, here I am, childless.  There is a variety of reasons why a woman might be childless.  For some, it is a choice to not have children.  But for me, it was not my choice.  I spent some years trying to get pregnant, but according to my doctor, I have a condition that makes it difficult to become pregnant.  And then if you have that difficulty, you also need a spouse who wants children at least as much as you do and is willing to go through the extra effort to make it happen.  So, if you don’t have that spouse . . . .

Various pregnancy tests bought over the years . . . always negative, always disappointed.

Sometimes, when I say I don’t have kids, people will reply, “Oh, lucky you!”  Well, I don’t feel lucky; I actually feel the opposite, like all my womanly parts failed me and now society judges me that I’m not a mom.  Others have said, “Oh, it’s good that you didn’t have kids, now that you’re divorced.”  Hmmm.  Maybe.  Maybe it’s easier on those ghost children that I never had . . . .     

When I had breast cancer at age 40, this was the time that I finally closed the chapter on being a mom.  The doctors asked if I wanted to freeze my eggs before I had my treatments.  I thought about this, but only for a few minutes.  There were too many unanswerable thoughts: How old would I be when I stopped treatments?  But even then, it would still be a struggle to become pregnant.  My life was the definition of chaos at that time.  It was time to be done with the idea.

How do I feel now, five years later?  I’ve come to terms with it.  What does it mean for me to be a woman?  I am not married, nor do I have kids.  But, I am happier than I have been in a long time.  (And I’m going to actually admit this: occasionally, I even enjoy the fact that I don’t have kids because I can do whatever I want, whenever I want – it’s a little bit of a luxury that my friends with kids don’t have).  Does this make me less of a woman?  In society’s eyes, yes.  People still ask me if I’m going to have kids –however that might work for a single 45-year-old.  People still don’t know what to say when I respond that I don’t have kids.  There is judginess – for sure.  But, here’s what I know now:  I am smart and sometimes funny, hard-working and dependable, girly and powerful, helpful and loving, perfect and flawed. I am not a mom, but I am the best woman I know how to be. 

That is enough.