DIANA REPUBLIC

I recently read a bit about the “Child-free by Choice” movement (is that what it is? a movement?). On the heels of reading about women who want there to be child-free areas like smoke-free areas in restaurants (Illinois is completely nonsmoking, so it doesn’t look good for kids), I read that I might not be a woman if I haven’t given birth. It made me sad that of all things, children, could be so polarizing. It also made me feel left out. I am not a mom, but I am not exactly child-free by choice either. If childbearing has become a partisan event, I am apparently a member of the reproductive third party. I didn’t struggle with infertility. I actually wanted children at one point and then I didn’t and then I thought maybe I did again. I am child-free by indecision as it turns out.

But really it is more complicated than that.

I remember in a fit of teen angst telling my mother that I never wanted to have children because I never wanted anyone to feel about me the way I felt about her. Ouch, right? I apologized for that many times.I also remember saying that I wanted to be a mother because if I could bring one good person into the world with strong values and morals I would have done something significant. OK, so the indecision goes way back.

In my twenties I told my mother that if I didn’t marry by the time I turned 3o, I would have a baby by myself. My mother really wanted to be a grandmother, but she probably also knew that I was in my full of shit phase and that thirty would come before I knew it. As it turned out 30 came and went and that was actually when becoming a mother became a less interesting idea. Becoming a wife started to lose its luster as well. I had become self sufficient in many ways but what I didn’t realize was that I was developing a very unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

I was thirty-six when I met my husband, Bob. My hesitations about marriage disappeared. I never doubted that he was the right partner for me, although we definitely had some rocky times in the beginning. I was clear about one other thing, I did not want children and if Bob did or thought that he could change my mind down the road, he should bail. My mother had passed away a couple years before I met him and somewhere around that time I completely abandoned the idea of children (a psychologist’s wet dream).

As forty came barreling towards me, I realized that my window of opportunity baby-wise was closing. It made me rethink, albeit belatedly, our decision not to have a family. Bob and I discussed it; my gynecologist and I discussed it and then the three of us discussed it. No one was in favor of my “stop using birth control and roll the dice” approach. I thought we should put the decision in God’s hands. If God was trying to send me a sign, the big ass fibroid tumors I developed might have been it. I got a partial hysterectomy – decision made.

You would think that someone with all the ambivalence that I felt about parenthood would just move on from this. You would be wrong. The realization that I couldn’t have children hit me like a ton of bricks. I had always know that not having children would be a great regret in my life. I didn’t know that it would kick my ass. All these emotions hit me once again when I quit drinking. Once I broke up with chardonnay and Grey Goose, I realized I could imagine a life with children. Sober I actually did have what it takes to be a parent.

I have seen all the work that goes into parenting, but I have also seen the rewards. I always loved children. I still tear up sometimes when I think about not having my own. Of course we could have adopted – hell, we could still adopt. But what I’ve realized is parenthood is such a commitment that you either have to be a little naive or totally certain. We were neither.

We have children in our life in other ways: friends, neighbors and family. My baby brother and his wife made us the fairy godparents to my first nephew. (No dummies there – make the childless couple godparents.) And he is a joy – just really far away.

So I don’t fall into an easy category. No one does if you look closely. I am clearly not a mom, but I am not child-free by choice. I am child-free by accident or by indecision or maybe by procrastination. It is a constant process, but I am making peace with it. I feel so fortunate for all that I do have: Bob, my family, my sobriety and my sanity (OK that comes and goes). And of course I do have my two canine children and they give me Mother’s Day cards every year. And Hallmark wouldn’t make a card for me if I weren’t a sorta mom, would they now?