The Path
a lot of people ask when I knew I didn't want children. The truth is, I never did.
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I learned about how babies were made when I was towards the end of second grade. My parents were giving me vague answers when I asked, so I went to the library (the grown up one) and took this book home in my little backpack without checking it out, like a common thief1.
I read the book over the course of several days, at night, with a flashlight under the covers. I was, to put it mildly, horrified. My parents only found out I had read it when they got a phone call from one of my teachers that I was telling my classmates the real tea on what their parents were up to when they went to bed. Needless to say, my poor mother had to have a conversation she was not in any way ready for.
The sex part was not the worst of it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I found that absolutely revolting. But nothing revolted and horrified me more than learning that a baby came out of a vagina. I already knew childbirth hurt from watching soap operas. How could such things be possible? I asked my mother why on earth she let anyone do that to her. She told me it was because she wanted to. I said I would never ever ever ever let that happen to me.
As I grew and learned more, I came to the conclusion that every woman had to have a baby. Every single TV show, film or book I watched set up the expectation that, at some point, an adult woman would have a baby. If she couldn’t, it was for tragic reasons. It was just what women did.
I started baby sitting when I was around 12, because that’s what girls did to make money. I loved babies, but once they became actual children, they annoyed me. I was the eldest female cousin and the vast majority of my cousins were boys. I was always put in charge at family gatherings, and I resented it. I hated the constant vigilance, the sticky hands, the smells, the noise, and breaking up fights.
When I was fifteen, a friend of mine got pregnant. It was 19962, and AIDS was still very much a threat, so our sex ed classes revolved a lot around protection. As much as AIDS scared me, pregnancy scared me more. I wasn’t sure I could go through with an abortion (I still had some Catholicism to shake off), but I knew for damn sure that being a teen mom would rob me of the future I’d dreamed of. All I’d wanted since I was 5 years old was to go to college, and anything that prevented me from that goal was something I avoided.
My friend decided to choose abortion, and a couple of our friends were Big Mad about it. Something something Jesus “morals”. I said, “Do you think she is ready for a baby? Do you think any of us are?”. One of our friends thought that if you “did the crime, you should do the time”. Even then, I didn’t think pregnancy should be a punishment for having sex, nor did I think hormones were a crime. I did think it was a crime that the boy who participated wasn’t the one being judged.
By the time I graduated high school, I was calling myself a feminist. I looked up to so many women who were outspoken about rape, domestic violence, and the rot in religious institutions. After witnessing the collapse of my family and moving out of my hometown - never to return - I was more than ready to be my own person.
Years later, when my now-husband and I were serious about building a life together, we had the first of a series of conversations about the possibility of having children. He told me he was pretty sure he didn’t want to have them. He said that there was no guarantee he’d have a good relationship with another human just because he was their father, which was a perspective I hadn’t heard before, and I wish more people would consider. He didn’t say never, though, and said if I really wanted them, we could revisit the issue.
Over the next decade, my husband and I both had our moments of “maybe we should”. There were times he was on the fence, there were times I was on the fence, but we were never on the same page at the same time.
Until we had to be.
I got pregnant, by accident, in my early thirties. It still surprises me how much my body and brain revolted. I felt hijacked, invaded, and betrayed by own body. I was hoping for some glimmer of happiness, or some sort of deep biological urge to continue the pregnancy, anything. There was nothing but terror, regret, and nausea3. And guilt. I didn’t want to be a bad person. A bad woman.
In the end, after a lot of crying and freaking out, I decided not to continue the pregnancy, which my husband agreed with. I scheduled an abortion. I felt a lot of complicated emotions when it was over, but when I woke up from the procedure, I felt better. I felt relieved.
When I saw my now-retired gynecologist afterwards, I had a hard time telling her about it. For all of my reproductive rights advocacy, I felt a weird sort of shame. I worried I would be admonished, or judged. She gently reassured me, and said “one unplanned pregnancy in 10+ years of marriage? If you added up every single time you had sex and then did the math, I think you’d see that’s a pretty low failure rate”. I had never thought about it that way, but it was comforting.
As difficult as the experience was, I know I made the right decision. I wish I didn’t have to make it at all, but I am grateful that I had the right to do so. And I do not regret it.
Writing this history of my reproductive life has made me understand a fundamental truth:
I never wanted to be a parent.
Part of it was because I was terrified of accidentally killing the kid. Even as a teenager, I knew I had the tendency to be forgetful and impulsive. I’ve described my undiagnosed ADHD as my brain having a trap door that would open at random, for reasons I could not explain. I had almost burned my house down multiple times by leaving burners on, or not properly extinguishing a cigarette. I knew that when I was exhausted and sleep deprived, my brain would stop working.
When I read news articles about mothers who went to jail because they accidentally left their baby in a hot car, my stomach dropped. It’s not because I thought they were terrible people, it was because I understood. I totally see how it could happen. I also think losing a child - especially if it was a result of a mistake you made - is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. I was unwilling to risk it.
And then, of course, there was my family history. I knew all too well the cost of the mother wound. I finally accepted my abuse, and worked towards unraveling all of the ways that it affected me. I was always expected to be responsible. I felt responsible for my mother, my father, and my brother. I began the hard work of learning to be a parent to myself.
I write more about that piece of it in my essay about my estrangement from my mother. You can read that here:
“But you’d have been such a good mom!”. I heard this a lot, from well-meaning friends. I am a nurturer, especially with people I love. I’d like to say that’s my nature, but really, I learned to be nurturing so that people wouldn’t run away. I learned to put others before myself, to make sure no one saw the mess underneath. I’m not sure that’s a recipe for great parenting.
I am sure that I’d have been a vigilant mother. There’s no way I’d have been chill. A granola mom. No, I’d have been a Venti Iced Coffee mom, running to and fro, making spreadsheets of unsafe playgrounds and MAGA school officials. I’d have yelled at my husband in the street for not putting them in a warm enough jacket. I’d have fretted at every fever, every sneeze, every spot.
I think my husband would have been a great dad. He’s more patient than I am, in all ways. My cats and my friends’ kids adore him. He is gentle and kind. But would he have still been a good husband to me? I don’t know what it is about men, but as soon as a baby comes, some switch flips in their brain. I can’t tell you how many women have told me that their husband has become another child to take care of.
I know the rewards of child rearing are huge. I delighted in watching my four year old niece discovering the true joys of spring flowers, and splashing in puddles, awash in amazement. I think it’s good to see the world through a child’s eyes sometimes. To see that the beauty and the magic are there. But I also see the costs. I see what it’s cost my friends to be a mother in America. I didn’t want to pay up. I’m too used to my freedom now.
My lack of desire to be a mother wasn’t political at the outset, but it is now. They can do what they want to me, but I’ll never have to watch them do it to my child.
If there was any last straw in my brain in terms of parenting, it was the shooting at Sandy Hook. When I realized we lived in a place where entire classrooms full of 5 and 6 year old children could be gunned down in school and no legislation would be passed to protect them, that broke something for me. I also had been freaking out about reproductive rights for years, and I knew that Roe v. Wade would be overturned unless something changed.
I didn’t know just how bad things would get.
A lot of pro-natalist types say the state of the world is no “excuse” to not have children. That childless women are selfish, perverted, and pathetic. If they really think we are those things, why would they want us to reproduce? To jail us. To control us. And I’ll be good god damned if I bring a child into this world to be one of Space Nazi’s slaves or concubines, or to be gunned down by another sick child while they try to learn.
Maybe it would have been different if I grew up in France, or Italy, but I didn’t. I grew up in America. I’d have been a mother in America. And for now, I have the freedom to choose to not do that. I don’t want to raise a child in a country that says they love mothers with one side of their mouth and let them languish on life support while using them as a baby incubator. Fuck that. And for anyone reading this, you are a witness to something I am putting in my will, if I ever get around to it - I do not consent to being kept alive to incubate a fetus.
The fact of a human being’s reproductive biology should not determine the course of their life. If we all adhered to “nature’s plan”, we would all still be living in caves. You’ll excuse me if I ignore the “morality” of fascists, rapists, zealots, and mega-church pastors who drive Lamborghinis and pay off the families of the children they molested.
I got a message from a reader recently (which is why I wrote this piece), saying that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do about having children. She has a difficult relationship with her mother, a mother quite like mine. She’s in her early thirties, and she is ambivalent.
I told her that it is okay to not know. It’s also okay to change your mind. Your life can change in ways you didn’t anticipate. Trust your gut, work on your trauma, and take your time.
Sometimes, I do think about the baby I might have had. If I’d gone the other way. I used to think those were moments of regret, but they’re not. They’re just those moments you stop walking the road you are on and turn around for a second, wondering what you’d be seeing on the other one.
There’s a song by Joanna Newsom called “Baby Birch”. It’s one of the most incredible songs I’ve ever heard. There are conflicting debates on whether its a song about abortion or not, but that’s missing the point. With every big decision in our lives, there’s the decision we didn’t make, and those are the ones we wonder about. That’s what this song is about for me. It’s helped me be at peace with my decision, and release it.
When these moments come, I take a breath, look to the sky ahead, and keep on walking this janky path I forged. It is rocky and wild. I don’t know where it’s heading, or what I’ll find at the end, or when.
But it is mine.
I did return it, but got caught out by the librarian who saw there was no checkout card in it. I said I lost it. She did not in any way believe me.
This was also the year I got properly obsessed with Tori Amos, who has a LOT to say about women having agency over their own damn bodies.
I was very very early but was already SICK AF. If a waft of smell hit me - any smell I didn’t like - I would hurl.