I have your back. Your other single childless friends have
got you too. And some, if not many, of your mom/dad friends want you back in their
lives. They also have your back.
I’ve just had a great vacation in a family-friendly holiday
village in the south of Turkey, and I had a blast. Sure, the crying
and the whining was a bit much sometimes, but overall, it was cuteness overload.
I waved at them, cooed at them and made their parents happy (and reassured them that
yes, their baby was indeed as adorable as they believed).
I like kids when they are all being smiley and spreading joy
around almost as fast as a combination of chocolate and coffee.
However, while seeing them play around made me happy, I realized one more time that I don’t want to have kids now or in the near future.
Moreover, I might never want them.
I’ve read a lot of posts written by moms. Some filled me
with joy. Few nearly brought tears to my eyes. And I definitely believed them
when they said you can’t really know what it is like until you experience it
yourself, the good and the bad.
Why was I reading all the posts? Well, I was reading with my
three different roles in mind:
1)
As a writer, I was doing market research. Do the
publications that published these posts accept posts from non-mom writers that
did their research? Or did they only publish writers with first-hand
experience?
Also, as a fiction writer, I wanted to read the real
experiences of real women, as opposed to just reading and watching fiction.
That would help me create more realistic characters.
2)
As a single woman who might as a twist-of-fate
change her mind about having kids, I wanted to see what would await me.
3)
As a friend who drifted away from her married
friends with kids, though not by choice, I wanted to see if all mothers really
wanted just mothers as friends, or were they missing “me” - me representing the
single friend whose life remained more or less the same- too?
I have to say, I got satisfactory answers for all these
three roles and the burning questions each role brought.
Now, to the “you’re not alone” part:
I keep reading about how lonely a lot of pregnant women or (new)
mothers felt, and it baffled me a little. After all, I'm surrounded by moms of all ages, with kids of all ages.
Expectedly, it is hard for me to empathize with moms and the
sacrifices they make, especially when it comes to the lack of rest and the
abundance of workload/responsibilities.
I haven’t felt my biological clock ticking since...well,
never.
I haven’t felt the urge to create a helpless human being who
will need me for a very long time, whose life I might enrich in some ways or
screw up in others: If life taught me anything, I’d probably do both as a
parent.
As a writer, I can’t offer new-mom stories to what seems
like an increasing number of mom-centric publications. (In my defense, I feel
the same about technology, finance and economy publications: way out of my
comfort and knowledge zones).
I find myself, maybe selfishly, thinking: “Great, another
magazine or blog I can’t pitch.”
But as I try to live my 30s to the best of my ability and
with more baby pictures on my social media feeds than I can keep up with, I
feel alone.
I feel alone, because I’m the only woman I know who most
definitely doesn’t want kids. I have friends who seem lukewarm but aren’t
exactly ruling the option out, friends who want to start trying, friends
wanting a second baby, friends who might be persuaded given time and some more
experience into their married life, and friends who know they will have kids
but are too young to consider it.
But friends who are 99% sure they don’t want kids? I don’t
have those. Okay, maybe one. But she lives far away.
So yes, I feel alone.
I have some good male friends, but most of them fall into
the categories above. I have maybe one friend who seems sure he doesn’t want
kids, but he has changed his mind a lot about a lot of things, so I don’t know.
I just wanted to give a shoutout to anyone who don’t want
kids now or ever, you are not alone: We exist.
Maybe there aren’t that many of us. Or maybe we are strategically
placed so it seems that way. But we are here.
Whatever reasons you have for not wanting kids, remember
that it is okay to feel that way, whatever your well-meaning friends and family
might think.
Of course it’s okay to want kids too, but I can’t pretend to
know what that’s like. I can support the decision and feeling, but I can’t completely
understand.
And it is fine.
