Not a Mother, Not by Choice
Mothers – we all have them. But not all of us are one.
Some women choose not to have children. Some of us don’t make that choice and – for many different reasons – never become a mother.
I am not a mother. It wasn’t a decision I made. I just wasn’t with the right partner at the right time.
It took me decades to come to terms with that. To get over my disappointment, and to adjust to a different life trajectory to the one I’d imagined for myself.
In my thirties, I bought loose dresses from op shops and secreted them away in my wardrobe, saving them for a pregnancy that never eventuated. Around me, friends were having children and I lived vicariously through them, full of a private yearning for a child of my own.
As the years passed, hope slowly gave way to despair. I had so much love to give, and nowhere for it to go. I listened to mothers complain about how exhausted they were, and how they couldn’t even go to the toilet alone. I envied them. I never told them how silent my house was, and how empty my life felt. As a single woman, I felt embarrassed – believing that I had no claim to such deep disappointment.
I also struggled to cope with the disparaging comments that frequently came my way. I was told that I had no family and no right to be tired, that I was selfish and too thin, and that my life was easy because I had no responsibilities. These upset me immensely, and served to confirm that I – and my life – were wrong. It wasn’t until a lot later that I understood that these unhappy mothers saw me not as childless – but as childfree. Not as someone who had missed out, but someone who had escaped. I wish I had realised this at the time; I would have saved myself many sleepless nights of distress.
My mother, too, helped deepen my sense of failure. Motherhood was of paramount importance to her life, and she expected it to be the cornerstone for all women’s lives. When her grandchildren arrived via a sibling, her focus shifted entirely to them, and their mother. There wasn’t any space left for a disappointing daughter whose life she didn’t understand.
And frankly, I didn’t understand it either.
I had no idea what a life without children could be. Growing up, there were no examples – only one single childless older woman my mother spoke about with pity, and often ridiculed. I feared that kind of future for myself, but didn’t know of any other.
It took me a long time to accept and be happy with my own, different path.
These days, I sometimes look back and wonder – not whether I wanted children, because I did – but how much of that desire was also shaped by what I believed a woman’s life was supposed to be. And by fear, by not knowing what a life could be like as a woman without children.
Some people say that I made my character Jess in my novel Nikki vs Jess in my own image. I didn’t. I wrote her to be the young woman I wish I had been.
I gave her the courage to question what’s expected of her. To push back against the assumptions about who she should be. To stand up to pressure from her mother – and from the world – and say: Accept me for who I am, not who you expect me to be.
That was something I didn’t learn until much later.
Today I write this for all of us women who are not mothers, and not from choice. I’m grateful to have you in my life, to know that I’m not alone. Our paths have not been easy and it’s been a massive struggle, both internally and externally. But somehow we have managed to make a different kind of life for ourselves than the one we expected, and the one that society expected for us.
And for the young women of today, we stand here as proof that a woman can – without children and grandchildren – live a life full of love, happiness and meaning.