Yesterday brought a lot of my past back to the surface of my memory. First, I watched the latest episode of Momversation, Child-free by Choice, in which Heather, Dana and Rebecca discussed how women today have the option to have children or not and we should all respect each others’ choices, regardless of our own personal opinions on the matter.
Amen to that, Sisters.
But somewhere in the middle, it turned a little…I don’t want to say nasty, because it wasn’t quite that bad…I’ll say, touchy. Somehow the conversation turned from “We all have choices – Yea Options!” to “Just because you don’t want kids, don’t look at me funny if I do.”
I know that was directed at some fringe community of childless people and some comments made on one or more of those blogs but it came across badly on the video. I’m just going to blame it on bad editing.
And then, I read Her Bad Mother’s post for the day.
Whoa. And not for HBM’s response to Cooke’s article (because she was much more eloquent about it than I would have been) but seriously? Are women still attacking women for their choices?
Are we still here?
———————————–
Twenty years ago, I was sitting in a pizzeria having a slice and a salad with my friend, Connie. At the time, I was 24 and dating a great man. The fact that he was 44 was irrelevant to me but it did cause my friends some angst. Connie was one person who didn’t judge me so I shared a lot with her during the years he and I were together.
Her only concern for me was that I hadn’t considered the option of children enough to know for sure that I would be okay if I never had any. He was already a father of two grown children and certainly didn’t want more. Connie worried that if our relationship lasted, I might regret not having a baby. I assured her that I had thought about it. Completely. From a very early age, I knew that having babies was not in the cards for me.
You see, I come from a long line of bad mothers.
My mother is a kind, supportive person and a great mother now. But when she had me at the ripe old age of 20, she wasn’t. My childhood was not so horrible that it would be considered Movie of the Week material but her love was conditional and I knew that from very early on. The turning point for me, and when I knew I wouldn’t be a mother, was when I was 17 years old and she told me, in no uncertain terms, that she did NOT love me and if she could do anything about it, I would NOT be her daughter.
Thankfully, I have a father who loves me no matter what and has always told me so. And also, thankfully, he was able to mend the relationship my mom and I had so that we have been able to change it and grow it into something pretty amazing today. But then, maybe the reason it is so good now is because I haven’t given her any reason to be disappointed in me lately. See, that doubt that she really loves me still exists.
And I have never forgotten those words or the look in her eyes when she said them. Could you?
But even at the worst of it, I couldn’t blame her. Her mother was even more cruel to her. And great-grandma? OMG, I can’t even put into writing the horrible things she did to her children (before and after they were born) because I don’t want to attract that sort of Interwebs attention and besides, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.
So by the age of 24, I knew that I didn’t want to bring a child into the world if there was any possibility that I might inflict that kind of pain on it. I knew I was a good person but how could I know if I wouldn’t someday, somehow, lash out like my own mother had and say something so malevolent that my own child could recall it vividly decades later? I related all of this to Connie, who said something that brought me to tears and still is the most touching thing anyone has ever said to me.
“You love your children so much that you are choosing not to have them. I think that is amazing.”
I have never forgotten those words or the look in her eyes when she said them either.
The reason for sharing all of this is to say that my great-grandmother did not want to be a mother. But back in the day, she didn’t have, or didn’t feel she had, a choice. Consistently reliable birth control wasn’t available, spousal rape was not considered a crime, and primarily, society dictated that women who married had babies, if physically possible.
And because she didn’t want to be ridiculed or worse, she had a baby. And treated it poorly. And that baby grew up and had a baby and treated it poorly. And so on.
Because even back then, women attacked women for their choices. For selecting an option different than their own.
Do I love children? Yes. Do I love and respect mothers? Of course. Could I do what they do? I chose not to find out. And decades after making my choice, I can’t believe that I still feel a need to explain it to anyone.
I just can’t believe we’re still here.
