On Being Circumstantially Childless by A. Pearson
I never cared if I had children or not. What perturbs me about being childless (or childfree) is how women such as myself are treated as, or assumed to be, selfish, losers, failures, etc. This is also true of churches and Christians.
I’ve read of never married, childless women talk of walking into churches and treated rudely because they do not have children. I’ve had similar experiences in churches. Being childless isn’t bad… what’s bad is how people tend to treat you like a freak once they find out.
Men, by the way, very seldom get the same harassment over being childless as women do – not the same amount and not the same kind. Men seldom get hounded or pestered over if they have kids, or why do they not have them or don’t want any, etc.
(Link): On Being Circumstantially Childless by A. Pearson
Excerpts
- They expected to have babies but found themselves at the end of their natural fertility without having done so. Perhaps it was due to prioritising work, study or travel. Maybe it was due to not having met someone they wanted to have children with.
- Whatever the case, the impact of “unintended” or “circumstantial” childlessness on women’s lives needs to be more widely acknowledged, University of Canterbury researcher Dr Lois Tonkin says.
“They are in the unusual position of being neither voluntarily childless nor involuntarily childless … an unexpected consequence of other choices,” she says.
- A GRIEF LIKE MOURNING
Tonkin, who has a background in counselling, has written a thesis on the subject for a PhD in sociology, examining the experiences of 26 New Zealand women in their 30s and 40s who expected to have children but found themselves at the end of their natural fertility without having done so.
“Circumstantially childless women very often grieve for the loss of the opportunity to become a mother and for some this grief is likened to the death of someone close,” she says.
“My study participants often said they felt misunderstood, judged, unacknowledged, ignored and isolated by others around them. Many talked about feeling like a failure.”
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