Maybe I'm too afraid to have children
I'm 31, and the grief and longing of motherhood feels like too much to bear.
Trigger warning: this post talks about miscarriage, infertility, and the loss of a child.
“I don’t know if you realise this, but whenever we mention kids, your body language changes.”
I was sitting at dinner with two of my dearest friends, one to my left and one opposite me. Both had their eyes fixed on me as the friend opposite said, not unkindly, that she’d noticed my body shift every time babies were mentioned. I thought I’d hid it better: my cocktail of confusion and hope and grief.
My girlfriends and I are all in a similar phase of life. Married for a few years to good husbands, in or near our thirties, homeowners. Things are steady. Things are good. Things are primed for the start of a family. Nearly all of my friends have either had babies or are talking about having babies soon. I’ve shot two maternity sessions for friends of mine in this last 12 months alone.
Others, though have endured the pain of miscarriage, heartbreaking adoption stories, infertility, hysterectomies, or singleness into their late thirties, and I’ve walked with them and cried with them as they navigate this version of themselves that is so different from what they expected – because every. single. one of us feels a certain inextricable part of our identity tied up in our motherhood status. The feminist in me may struggle to admit it, but whether you choose to have children or not, the very fact that you HAVE to make a choice is something which the male sex simply cannot understand. I say this with no malice. It’s simply true. We carry this choice in our bodies. We feel the effect of it every month, often by enduring extreme pain, and watching our flesh bleed out as a reminder of what we are and what we are not.
The reality is that whether you’ve made a firm decision about having children, every woman is faced with the societal expectation of making that decision. Every one of us has to navigate the confusion of whether we want to sacrifice our own body to bring life into the world; whether we want to endure the societal reproach of being child-free; whether we want to invite the joy and grief of bringing someone into our life who we love so much that our souls will be forever tied to their own wellbeing; whether we want to grow old and know that we will never have grandchildren.
To start trying for a baby is to invite hope, and hope by its own virtue invites a risk of grief at the chance of beautiful joy. To choose, on the other hand, not to have children is to claim a certain type of freedom at the expense living in a world which will always remind you of what you’ll never have. I once was visiting a church in which a congregant asked me first if I was married, then if I had children, and when I answered “no,” proceeded to enquire when (not if) I’d be having them. I don’t think she’d even asked me my name yet. In short, when it comes to making a decision about children, for women, there is no easy option.
In essence, whatever decision we make (or is made for us) regarding motherhood is a little piece of our identity that we have to come to terms with. Not our entire identity, mind you. I will be the broken evangelical record reminding you that your identity is ultimately in Christ – in the wholly loved and deeply known person whom he has declared you to be. But we’re kidding ourselves as women if we don’t acknowledge that we live in a world where our motherhood status makes up at least part of who we are.
For me, that part feels like it’s in limbo.
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