In 2018 around 36% of women 20-50 years old were childless. It’s well documented that in the US birth rates are declining, and there are a number of reasons why — but one resonates with me the most. Because I’m at the crucial age where the OB/GYN starts eyeing your chart with a raised brow, and commenting on the health of your uterus.
I don’t know if or when I want children. I’m fortunate to have a community of female friends who are also not mothers and can join me for…really, anything at any time because we are not mothers…a conversation about what this really means and what it feels like. We are hard-working professionals and fun-loving friends, aunts, daughters, girlfriends, wives who don’t have an answer for that dreaded question, are you going to have children? We are adventurous, ambitious, committed, intelligent, and most days I’m convinced we could rule the world as a group until that dreaded question arises again. But will we have children to care for as we rule the world?
Don’t ask me, because I don’t know the answer.
Sometimes, totally unrelated to PMS my ovaries give me a hearty thump that stops me in my tracks and makes me put a shaky hand to my abdomen in despair- (PMS or unexpected baby– which could it be). It always ends up being just a benign reminder that those cute but painful little organs still exist and do in fact, work. Lately, I’ve seen it as a subtle reminder from my body to my mind that it has perfect good working parts which I so rudely, am not using.
Other times, I find myself drifting off in an office meeting dreaming of holding my pregnant belly and leaning across the counter at Whits to take an ice cream cone and hand it to my curly-haired, three-year-old eagerly reaching up to me. And I feel warm and happy and desire that moment. But when my attention is awkwardly required back in the room, the dream and feeling fade. I quickly go back to wondering when Caamp will be playing in Columbus again and will I get tickets before they sell out?
I don’t get the achy womb feeling that some women describe, and I have no long-standing desire to be a mother. I’m not fond of babies and don’t actively enjoy spending time around other people’s children (though children love me and I was a damn good nanny in College). I have a fairly active life with a rambunctious dog, a trash-digging cat, and a hobby-driven husband. That all seems to me like a pretty full life outside of work.
So when people ask me the question of babies and children, I have to look incredulously at them because it feels like a new consideration ever time. Do I? Do I right now? Will I later? And the ever-looming, geriatric pregnancy threat at 35 only adds dead weight to the unknown anchor. An anchor that I must note, my husband never gets saddled with. His friends want to know about as much about his home life as I do about NASCAR- a footnote in a conversation about something else. He has shed any responsibility related to the question of kids. I only slightly understand because it is my body. In the larger sense, it would also be his child, his responsibility for life, his little human walking the world stressing him out, and wrecking his car in high-school.
The truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure. And I don’t think my friend group will know for sure. I think some of us will fall, and babies will be added to our group, and some of us may try and fail, and some of us may adopt, and some of us may just keep plugging along child-free. But the key for me- to ground myself when my Mother-In-Law brings up my Frankenstein uterus (fibroid surgery) and the possibility of grandkids –– is that I don’t know. There has to be more women out there like me, that don’t have a complete answer for this. And that is just going to have to be okay with everyone from now until the end. What the end will look like — ha — We don’t know.
