Five years ago, while I was going through my midlife crisis in a big way my friend and colleague, Maryanne Pope starting a blog called "Mothering Matters" and asked me to write a piece on my decision to go child-free as well as my professional take on this important decision in my client's lives. It appeared here originally and since I've never shared it with you, my dear readers, I share it now with the hopes that it will help you in your own decision-making process re: mothering
Child-Free By Choice
Being in my forty-first year, I can finally start relaxing about the whole 'motherhood question'. I am happy to say that for the most part, people have stopped asking me if and when I am going to have children. I am a happily-married (13+ years!) woman who consciously decided not to be a mother and I feel that this has been a wonderful decision and don't feel any regret whatsoever. However, I didn't always feel this peaceful about the whole thing. Since I met my husband when I was 27, I had a number of years to reproduce and felt a lot of confusion and angst about the whole thing.
Child Protection Opened My Eyes
When I met my husband, I had just graduated with my Masters in Social Work and the only jobs available at the time were in child protection with the government. So for a very stressful eight months, I slogged it out full-time being a Child Protection Social Worker. It was my job to assess whether children were getting their basic needs met in their homes, and whether they were safe. This was a horrendous position to be in, and at times, very dangerous. The worst thing I ever had to do in that job was remove a newborn baby from the hospital and into a foster home the same day. While I did this for the baby's well-being and safety (dad was a pedophile), I nearly broke down in tears when as I was carrying this sweet little babe in my arms on the way out of the hospital, a few people smiled at me and said "congratulations" assuming that I was the actual mother of said baby.
I learned about countless cases of child abuse and neglect, reading horrific stories of young children who had burned to death in their homes due to parental negligence. In short, that job made me face the absolute worst-case scenarios re: parenting gone wrong. I think that the timing of this job and the fact that I was 27 at the time and considering options for my future, combined in such a way that I began to feel that parenting wasn't exactly fun, easy, nor necessarily rewarding. I also become highly aware of how easy it is to mess up a child's life and that parenting was thus, a huge responsibility if one were to do it as conscientiously as possible.
Being a Parent as a Child
Another huge reason I didn't desperately want to be a mother was because I felt like I had been mothering for most of my life within my own family-of-origin. In therapy jargon, I was your typical "parentified" child from the age of four when my parents divorced and both fell to pieces physically and emotionally. As an only child, and being a wise little girl, I, for whatever reason, felt responsible for my parents' mental and physical health (including one parent being put in a psychiatric ward for 6 weeks, and the other one starving and drinking nearly to death). I literally thought that if I didn't "save" one or both of them, that I would be an orphan and that was a terrifying thought. And while they weren't exactly model parents, they were the only ones I had and my survival depended on them.
Child-Free By Choice
Being in my forty-first year, I can finally start relaxing about the whole 'motherhood question'. I am happy to say that for the most part, people have stopped asking me if and when I am going to have children. I am a happily-married (13+ years!) woman who consciously decided not to be a mother and I feel that this has been a wonderful decision and don't feel any regret whatsoever. However, I didn't always feel this peaceful about the whole thing. Since I met my husband when I was 27, I had a number of years to reproduce and felt a lot of confusion and angst about the whole thing.
Child Protection Opened My Eyes
When I met my husband, I had just graduated with my Masters in Social Work and the only jobs available at the time were in child protection with the government. So for a very stressful eight months, I slogged it out full-time being a Child Protection Social Worker. It was my job to assess whether children were getting their basic needs met in their homes, and whether they were safe. This was a horrendous position to be in, and at times, very dangerous. The worst thing I ever had to do in that job was remove a newborn baby from the hospital and into a foster home the same day. While I did this for the baby's well-being and safety (dad was a pedophile), I nearly broke down in tears when as I was carrying this sweet little babe in my arms on the way out of the hospital, a few people smiled at me and said "congratulations" assuming that I was the actual mother of said baby.
I learned about countless cases of child abuse and neglect, reading horrific stories of young children who had burned to death in their homes due to parental negligence. In short, that job made me face the absolute worst-case scenarios re: parenting gone wrong. I think that the timing of this job and the fact that I was 27 at the time and considering options for my future, combined in such a way that I began to feel that parenting wasn't exactly fun, easy, nor necessarily rewarding. I also become highly aware of how easy it is to mess up a child's life and that parenting was thus, a huge responsibility if one were to do it as conscientiously as possible.
Being a Parent as a Child
Another huge reason I didn't desperately want to be a mother was because I felt like I had been mothering for most of my life within my own family-of-origin. In therapy jargon, I was your typical "parentified" child from the age of four when my parents divorced and both fell to pieces physically and emotionally. As an only child, and being a wise little girl, I, for whatever reason, felt responsible for my parents' mental and physical health (including one parent being put in a psychiatric ward for 6 weeks, and the other one starving and drinking nearly to death). I literally thought that if I didn't "save" one or both of them, that I would be an orphan and that was a terrifying thought. And while they weren't exactly model parents, they were the only ones I had and my survival depended on them.
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