I loved this episode but was a little disappointed to find that that only real discussion of people who are (and have always been) not into motherhood was the reference to the horrible child free subreddit. While Claire can discuss motherhood and its challenges and sacrifices (and joys!) and Emma can comment on her ambivalence, I did miss seeing… I suppose, frankly, my own perspective. Which is that I know and have always know that motherhood isn’t for me. Not because I’m a rabid Reddit child hater. But because my own, not-particularly-interesting combination of personality traits makes it unrealistic. I like kids! I also like sleeping. I also have anxieties that would probably boil over and destroy me if I had a kid of my own.
I would have loved to hear from someone in a similar position who could identify with the challenges and real loneliness of that particular choice. It’s not all rah rah feminism and brunch and availability for happy hours. It’s being told you’re missing out on the most important aspect of life. It’s being told you’ll never understand real love. It’s having your parent friends drift away because they don’t think you want to hear about parenting. Like Claire said about feeling like her non-parent friends think she doesn’t want to hear about dating, oftentimes my parent-friends think I don’t want to hear about nighttime feedings or teething or potty training. I do! I can’t specifically relate but I can still listen.
Most people will eventually become parents. If you don’t, you’re expected to have a good excuse. Career. Travel. Mental illness in the family. Hatred of children. Money. It’s very exhausting and lonely trying to justify one’s unspectacular but pointedly child free existence.
I totally hear you on this. I don't remotely think every person who has chosen not to have kids hates them, but I didn't feel I could speak very well to the childfree perspective, since I've always wanted to have them (even though I love sleeping, and am anxious -- I don't think it's always a rational choice!). I don't think anyone should have to feel like they need to justify that choice, or that their reasons aren't good enough. The world is made richer by all kinds of people living all kinds of lives, with and without children -- there is so much value in your life just the way you have chosen to live it.
Apologies if the reference to the childfree Reddit was alienating. Again, I don't think it's at all representative, it's just the sort of thing that tends to be very painful and therefore memorable to a struggling new mom. I hope we can explore this more in future episodes, maybe with guests who would be able to provide perspectives other than our own!
I hear you! We know that speaking about something so personal and complex, we aren't going to represent every individual's perspective. I do relate to a lot of what you wrote here, despite being ambivalent rather than certain about not wanting children. I tried to speak to a few of the issues you mention here -- being told I won't understand "real love" and feeling removed from/left out of conversations. (And TRUST ME, I do not think that childfree people are child-haters.) But there's definitely a ton we didn't get into! I hope we will be able to speak more explicitly to these issues in follow-up episodes. There's certainly so much we didn't get into! Thanks for writing so thoughtfully <3
I relate to this so hard! I’ve also made the decision to not have kids and I really feel like I need to justify that by having something else take up a significant part of my life and prove that I made the right choice by being SO happy and SO extraordinary within that nonexistent something
Loved this episode so much and can’t wait for a pt 2. If at all possible I would love to hear more from someone who has decided to not have kids (and who does not have the word ”crotch goblin” in their vocabulary). As a 32-year old who has recently made that decision myself while all my friends are having multiple babies, I really miss that perspective being represented well, anywhere.
As a childless 20-something, I so appreciate this topic of conversation and all the personal perspectives offered by many of the other listeners. From my own friendships, I know that the subject of parenthood is so much more rich and complex than our culture allows. One thing that I often think about is how we can distribute the responsibilities of caring for children through a community. For the last three years, I’ve been in a grad program with a lot of folks who are parents and single parents and before the pandemic and because of childcare conflicts, their kids would often end up in the classroom or in our common spaces with us. Babies would get passed around, and other students would step in to distract and to surrogate parent their classmates’ kids. This was obviously a very specific and discrete experience, but it made me think about what raising children might look like if our boundaries of caregiving were more fluid because we had the trust and sense of responsibility required to care for other people’s kids. And this does demand a certain kind of parent. I have friends who value proximity (both in physical distance and in family ties) over any other consideration in who is most present in their kid’s lives. But I think if we were less rigid and heteronormative in how we perceive our circles of responsibility and our networks of parenting/child-raising, there would be less of a binary between parents and non-parents. And for someone like me, who loves kids but does not feel compelled to have any of my own, this makes the ‘choice’ of having children feel less binary and dire.
That's a really lovely and compelling idea to me, and something I'd like to talk about more! This is partly what I was dancing around in talking about building communities that keep families and childfree adults less separate -- but it does feel a bit loaded, as a parent, like I'm trying to foist my childcare duties off on people who have chosen other kinds of lives. I always feel very guilty when anyone else is "burdened" with taking care of my child, but I know it can be a joy for non-parents in my life to have an hour taking a toddler to the park or reading him some books. In my dreams, I would love a world in which parents and non-parents (at least those who were interested) and children were together more and sharing the load a bit more, as well as sharing the joy and the benefits.
This episode was a 10/10, and I can’t wait for more. I think about motherhood, what it means to be a mother, and what society thinks it means to be a mother ALL of the time. Would absolutely love to listen to a part 2…and a 3, and a 4, and a 5.
I appreciated it you mentioned that child care always seems to be shifted to less privileged individuals (from men to women, from white women to black and brown women). Along those lines, I’d love to hear more of your thoughts about women “having it all.” CAN women have it all? Can women have it all without outsourcing childcare and other labor to black and brown women? And if a women does choose to employ and person of color to do her childcare, laundry, housework, etc, is that exploitative? Or, is assuming it is exploitative simply infantilizing the women who are choosing to work in this domestic capacity?
I’m a general note, I appreciate your ability to sit in the gray. I’m convinced most things are good and bad from different perspectives, and I think you both do an amazing job of being comfortable with that.
I loved this episode so much. I have always enjoyed your commentary on The Bachelor franchise, but I really appreciate hearing you talk about other TV shows, books, and in this episode and hopefully in the future, topics that are generally of interest to young women. I moved halfway across the country to start a new job during the pandemic and I desperately miss being about to have conversations like these with my female friends. Listening to the two of you talk about motherhood and non-motherhood made me feel almost like I was having the conversation with a friend myself. I would love to hear more content like this!
Thanks for this great conversation. In terms of continuing it, I'd be curious to know what childcare experience, if any, you have had and how (if at all) that has played into your mom and undecided statuses. I worked with kids off and on for many years before changing direction, and I do think those years impacted my own parenting decision. Thanks again! :)
Thanks LeAnne! I'm a little embarrassed to say I had basically no childcare experience before having a baby (eek), but we should definitely talk about this. Since he was born I've been realizing how rarely I came into contact with babies since, well, being one, and wishing that I'd been in more multi-generational spaces where I could have had those experiences.
I’ve had so many convos, with others and myself, about this topic and appreciated your takes. As someone who was married at 23 and widowed by 35, both due to my late husband’s illness, I returned to contemplating the idea of parenthood and especially potential solo motherhood at a time when I was newly freed from caretaking for illness, but was unknowingly going to bear that responsibility again soon (for my mother). I read books like the compilation “Maybe Baby” and ones by Anne Lamott (I was also writing a lot at the time so “Bird by Bird” and the aforementioned compilation for which she wrote the forward brought me to “Operating Instructions”) and doing quite a bit of soul searching.
Finally, at the all important two-year mark of widowhood, I decided motherhood was truly an experience and responsibility I wanted to try for. I underwent fertility treatment to conceive using my late husband’s long-stored semen, then two years later with my boyfriend (who had been brand new during the prior process and went through it with me), and after many attempts and losses, we conceived...at the same time we bought a house to move my mom in because she could no longer be safe at her own home. Then we found out it was twins! Unfortunately my mom died before the twins turned a year old but thankfully we have beautiful children, now seven years old. However, those first years were the hardest time of my life (and I’ve buried the person I’d hoped to spend the rest of my life with so that’s saying a lot). I sometimes say that our children’s first two years were the longest five years of my life!
Being sandwiched in that way is something having children later in life also creates, especially as a domino effect, because there are no closer generations nearer in age to help out with either elder or child care. My dad is a spry mid-80s guy but doesn’t know (or have interest in learning) baby or even toddler care, my partner’s parents died when he was young, his only sibling is married and they’re happily childless by choice with a full social and travel schedule, I watched most all my other friends marry and have 2-3 kids and they had their own busy sports and school schedules...so we were on our own.
Not to sound like a martyr but we haven’t been on an evening date in 8 years nor ever had a babysitter aside from a little preschool and a postpartum doula (so I could get through triple feeds with both having undiagnosed tongue tie and also to visit my mom in the facility we had to move her into). Last year when they entered 1st grade was the time I was supposed to transition to my own phase of having more than 3 hours on a given day to myself while they were in school, maybe even return to the workforce in a limited capacity...? And then pandemic. /-: My partner works in healthcare so adding another outside Covid exposure was something we didn’t want to do, and we have the privilege for me to continue to be home with them as caregiver and virtual classroom assistant. I’m able but I’m still unpaid and uncounted labor, as so many others have been in even more drastic ways in marginalized communities. (I especially appreciated that part of your conversation.)
I also follow 2 Black Girls, 1 Rose where Natasha and Justine have a touched on the subject of ambiguity around parenthood desire, as prompted by Katie’s storyline, and the insights and commentary by all four of you has been wonderful to examine.
I’ll finally wrap it up (waiting for my oil change to be done and had WAY MORE time than I realized I would, and same for how much I wrote /-:) but, that topic of the “sandwich” phase or generation/s and how that affects ones consideration of, approach to, and/or decisions surrounding potential parenthood would be great to hear you two discuss. Especially as decisions to delay having children creates wider spreads between generations, and falling birth quantities/rates impacts number of caregivers available. Thanks again!
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing. I'm so sorry about the loss of your husband and your mom -- they're both absolutely crushing losses. The amount of caregiving you've shouldered is also immense, and I don't think it's being a martyr to acknowledge all the stress and sacrifice that you've endured. The question of the sandwich generation caring for both aging parents and young children is a very real one, and so many of those responsibilities fall on women. Definitely will need to discuss this.
I was kind of surprised when Emma said she had heard people saying ‘if you’re in doubt to have a kid so you don’t regret it.’ As a parent, my advise to people on the fence is always ‘make sure you really want them!’ I love my kids dearly, but they are just so much work. They take so much time and so much patience. Having had kids, I would never judge anyone for not having kids.
And Claire - don’t worry, the happy hours come back after a couple years :)
I have been listening to you guys for years and this is my favorite podcast that you’ve ever done. I loved hearing both of your perspectives and finding my own being reflected in different ways. I’ve sent this to multiple friends of mine so that we can discuss this more. it’s a really difficult topic and I appreciate you guys tackling it with such honesty and candor. I love hearing about your lives and experiences in these kinds of ways. I might have come for bachelor recaps, but I’ve stayed for you guys. I don’t even watch the bachelor anymore!
I loved this episode so much, I could have listened to hours! As a woman who recently had a baby (in pandemic no less), but spent a lot of time living in expensive cities and seriously considered being child-free, I really enjoyed exploring this topic. I’d love to hear more about Emma’s ambivalence, and Claire’s decision making process.
I loved this episode but was a little disappointed to find that that only real discussion of people who are (and have always been) not into motherhood was the reference to the horrible child free subreddit. While Claire can discuss motherhood and its challenges and sacrifices (and joys!) and Emma can comment on her ambivalence, I did miss seeing… I suppose, frankly, my own perspective. Which is that I know and have always know that motherhood isn’t for me. Not because I’m a rabid Reddit child hater. But because my own, not-particularly-interesting combination of personality traits makes it unrealistic. I like kids! I also like sleeping. I also have anxieties that would probably boil over and destroy me if I had a kid of my own.
I would have loved to hear from someone in a similar position who could identify with the challenges and real loneliness of that particular choice. It’s not all rah rah feminism and brunch and availability for happy hours. It’s being told you’re missing out on the most important aspect of life. It’s being told you’ll never understand real love. It’s having your parent friends drift away because they don’t think you want to hear about parenting. Like Claire said about feeling like her non-parent friends think she doesn’t want to hear about dating, oftentimes my parent-friends think I don’t want to hear about nighttime feedings or teething or potty training. I do! I can’t specifically relate but I can still listen.
Most people will eventually become parents. If you don’t, you’re expected to have a good excuse. Career. Travel. Mental illness in the family. Hatred of children. Money. It’s very exhausting and lonely trying to justify one’s unspectacular but pointedly child free existence.
I totally hear you on this. I don't remotely think every person who has chosen not to have kids hates them, but I didn't feel I could speak very well to the childfree perspective, since I've always wanted to have them (even though I love sleeping, and am anxious -- I don't think it's always a rational choice!). I don't think anyone should have to feel like they need to justify that choice, or that their reasons aren't good enough. The world is made richer by all kinds of people living all kinds of lives, with and without children -- there is so much value in your life just the way you have chosen to live it.
Apologies if the reference to the childfree Reddit was alienating. Again, I don't think it's at all representative, it's just the sort of thing that tends to be very painful and therefore memorable to a struggling new mom. I hope we can explore this more in future episodes, maybe with guests who would be able to provide perspectives other than our own!
I hear you! We know that speaking about something so personal and complex, we aren't going to represent every individual's perspective. I do relate to a lot of what you wrote here, despite being ambivalent rather than certain about not wanting children. I tried to speak to a few of the issues you mention here -- being told I won't understand "real love" and feeling removed from/left out of conversations. (And TRUST ME, I do not think that childfree people are child-haters.) But there's definitely a ton we didn't get into! I hope we will be able to speak more explicitly to these issues in follow-up episodes. There's certainly so much we didn't get into! Thanks for writing so thoughtfully <3
I relate to this so hard! I’ve also made the decision to not have kids and I really feel like I need to justify that by having something else take up a significant part of my life and prove that I made the right choice by being SO happy and SO extraordinary within that nonexistent something
Loved this episode so much and can’t wait for a pt 2. If at all possible I would love to hear more from someone who has decided to not have kids (and who does not have the word ”crotch goblin” in their vocabulary). As a 32-year old who has recently made that decision myself while all my friends are having multiple babies, I really miss that perspective being represented well, anywhere.
As a childless 20-something, I so appreciate this topic of conversation and all the personal perspectives offered by many of the other listeners. From my own friendships, I know that the subject of parenthood is so much more rich and complex than our culture allows. One thing that I often think about is how we can distribute the responsibilities of caring for children through a community. For the last three years, I’ve been in a grad program with a lot of folks who are parents and single parents and before the pandemic and because of childcare conflicts, their kids would often end up in the classroom or in our common spaces with us. Babies would get passed around, and other students would step in to distract and to surrogate parent their classmates’ kids. This was obviously a very specific and discrete experience, but it made me think about what raising children might look like if our boundaries of caregiving were more fluid because we had the trust and sense of responsibility required to care for other people’s kids. And this does demand a certain kind of parent. I have friends who value proximity (both in physical distance and in family ties) over any other consideration in who is most present in their kid’s lives. But I think if we were less rigid and heteronormative in how we perceive our circles of responsibility and our networks of parenting/child-raising, there would be less of a binary between parents and non-parents. And for someone like me, who loves kids but does not feel compelled to have any of my own, this makes the ‘choice’ of having children feel less binary and dire.
That's a really lovely and compelling idea to me, and something I'd like to talk about more! This is partly what I was dancing around in talking about building communities that keep families and childfree adults less separate -- but it does feel a bit loaded, as a parent, like I'm trying to foist my childcare duties off on people who have chosen other kinds of lives. I always feel very guilty when anyone else is "burdened" with taking care of my child, but I know it can be a joy for non-parents in my life to have an hour taking a toddler to the park or reading him some books. In my dreams, I would love a world in which parents and non-parents (at least those who were interested) and children were together more and sharing the load a bit more, as well as sharing the joy and the benefits.
This episode was a 10/10, and I can’t wait for more. I think about motherhood, what it means to be a mother, and what society thinks it means to be a mother ALL of the time. Would absolutely love to listen to a part 2…and a 3, and a 4, and a 5.
I appreciated it you mentioned that child care always seems to be shifted to less privileged individuals (from men to women, from white women to black and brown women). Along those lines, I’d love to hear more of your thoughts about women “having it all.” CAN women have it all? Can women have it all without outsourcing childcare and other labor to black and brown women? And if a women does choose to employ and person of color to do her childcare, laundry, housework, etc, is that exploitative? Or, is assuming it is exploitative simply infantilizing the women who are choosing to work in this domestic capacity?
I’m a general note, I appreciate your ability to sit in the gray. I’m convinced most things are good and bad from different perspectives, and I think you both do an amazing job of being comfortable with that.
Thanks!
Ahhh, these questions are so hard (and important)! Thanks for raising them -- will make a note for future chats.
I loved this episode so much. I have always enjoyed your commentary on The Bachelor franchise, but I really appreciate hearing you talk about other TV shows, books, and in this episode and hopefully in the future, topics that are generally of interest to young women. I moved halfway across the country to start a new job during the pandemic and I desperately miss being about to have conversations like these with my female friends. Listening to the two of you talk about motherhood and non-motherhood made me feel almost like I was having the conversation with a friend myself. I would love to hear more content like this!
Thanks for this great conversation. In terms of continuing it, I'd be curious to know what childcare experience, if any, you have had and how (if at all) that has played into your mom and undecided statuses. I worked with kids off and on for many years before changing direction, and I do think those years impacted my own parenting decision. Thanks again! :)
Thanks LeAnne! I'm a little embarrassed to say I had basically no childcare experience before having a baby (eek), but we should definitely talk about this. Since he was born I've been realizing how rarely I came into contact with babies since, well, being one, and wishing that I'd been in more multi-generational spaces where I could have had those experiences.
I’ve had so many convos, with others and myself, about this topic and appreciated your takes. As someone who was married at 23 and widowed by 35, both due to my late husband’s illness, I returned to contemplating the idea of parenthood and especially potential solo motherhood at a time when I was newly freed from caretaking for illness, but was unknowingly going to bear that responsibility again soon (for my mother). I read books like the compilation “Maybe Baby” and ones by Anne Lamott (I was also writing a lot at the time so “Bird by Bird” and the aforementioned compilation for which she wrote the forward brought me to “Operating Instructions”) and doing quite a bit of soul searching.
Finally, at the all important two-year mark of widowhood, I decided motherhood was truly an experience and responsibility I wanted to try for. I underwent fertility treatment to conceive using my late husband’s long-stored semen, then two years later with my boyfriend (who had been brand new during the prior process and went through it with me), and after many attempts and losses, we conceived...at the same time we bought a house to move my mom in because she could no longer be safe at her own home. Then we found out it was twins! Unfortunately my mom died before the twins turned a year old but thankfully we have beautiful children, now seven years old. However, those first years were the hardest time of my life (and I’ve buried the person I’d hoped to spend the rest of my life with so that’s saying a lot). I sometimes say that our children’s first two years were the longest five years of my life!
Being sandwiched in that way is something having children later in life also creates, especially as a domino effect, because there are no closer generations nearer in age to help out with either elder or child care. My dad is a spry mid-80s guy but doesn’t know (or have interest in learning) baby or even toddler care, my partner’s parents died when he was young, his only sibling is married and they’re happily childless by choice with a full social and travel schedule, I watched most all my other friends marry and have 2-3 kids and they had their own busy sports and school schedules...so we were on our own.
Not to sound like a martyr but we haven’t been on an evening date in 8 years nor ever had a babysitter aside from a little preschool and a postpartum doula (so I could get through triple feeds with both having undiagnosed tongue tie and also to visit my mom in the facility we had to move her into). Last year when they entered 1st grade was the time I was supposed to transition to my own phase of having more than 3 hours on a given day to myself while they were in school, maybe even return to the workforce in a limited capacity...? And then pandemic. /-: My partner works in healthcare so adding another outside Covid exposure was something we didn’t want to do, and we have the privilege for me to continue to be home with them as caregiver and virtual classroom assistant. I’m able but I’m still unpaid and uncounted labor, as so many others have been in even more drastic ways in marginalized communities. (I especially appreciated that part of your conversation.)
I also follow 2 Black Girls, 1 Rose where Natasha and Justine have a touched on the subject of ambiguity around parenthood desire, as prompted by Katie’s storyline, and the insights and commentary by all four of you has been wonderful to examine.
I’ll finally wrap it up (waiting for my oil change to be done and had WAY MORE time than I realized I would, and same for how much I wrote /-:) but, that topic of the “sandwich” phase or generation/s and how that affects ones consideration of, approach to, and/or decisions surrounding potential parenthood would be great to hear you two discuss. Especially as decisions to delay having children creates wider spreads between generations, and falling birth quantities/rates impacts number of caregivers available. Thanks again!
Sarah
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing. I'm so sorry about the loss of your husband and your mom -- they're both absolutely crushing losses. The amount of caregiving you've shouldered is also immense, and I don't think it's being a martyr to acknowledge all the stress and sacrifice that you've endured. The question of the sandwich generation caring for both aging parents and young children is a very real one, and so many of those responsibilities fall on women. Definitely will need to discuss this.
Great conversation!
I was kind of surprised when Emma said she had heard people saying ‘if you’re in doubt to have a kid so you don’t regret it.’ As a parent, my advise to people on the fence is always ‘make sure you really want them!’ I love my kids dearly, but they are just so much work. They take so much time and so much patience. Having had kids, I would never judge anyone for not having kids.
And Claire - don’t worry, the happy hours come back after a couple years :)
I have been listening to you guys for years and this is my favorite podcast that you’ve ever done. I loved hearing both of your perspectives and finding my own being reflected in different ways. I’ve sent this to multiple friends of mine so that we can discuss this more. it’s a really difficult topic and I appreciate you guys tackling it with such honesty and candor. I love hearing about your lives and experiences in these kinds of ways. I might have come for bachelor recaps, but I’ve stayed for you guys. I don’t even watch the bachelor anymore!
I loved this episode so much, I could have listened to hours! As a woman who recently had a baby (in pandemic no less), but spent a lot of time living in expensive cities and seriously considered being child-free, I really enjoyed exploring this topic. I’d love to hear more about Emma’s ambivalence, and Claire’s decision making process.