Catastrophe and the Modern Woman

I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon this month marathoning the Amazon Prime series ‘Catastrophe’, and I can’t recommend it enough!  Written by the two leads (American actor/comic Rob Delaney and Irish actress/comic Sharon Horgan), it’s the story of a one-week stand between two 40-somethings that turns into a lifetime commitment when Horgan ends up accidentally pregnant. From there, the comedy turns into one of the most refreshingly honest and romantic (and hilarious) shows I’ve seen in ages.

I recommend it to anyone, but for women who have been told they should be able to “have it all” all by themselves, the show has a particular resonance. There’s one scene, mid-way through the 6-episode run, where Horgan is explaining to a friend and co-worker that she and Delaney have decided to get married. Her co-worker is shocked - it’s the 21st century! She doesn’t need to get married to raise a child! She can do it on her own! Horgan’s character laughs it off in the moment, but later in the episode she returns to her friend to say “No, you know what, I CAN’T do it on my own, and I don’t want to; he wants to help, and that’s wonderful.” And it doesn’t make her less-than, it doesn’t make her seem pathetic or sad or weak, it just makes her human.

There are a million other scenes in this show that made me laugh and cry and love it to bits, but that one made it golden.  Check it out:  

Starting the Conversation: Book Recommendations

My last post stated that baby-stealing was a great way to get a conversation started about the ways we think about women and children, and more specifically women without children. But baby-stealing is, rightly, illegal in this country.  So where else would a conversation start? Books! Books are a great way to start thinking about something, and talking about it!

There have been, in the past few years, a small number of voices speaking up about this non-conversation, about this well of loneliness at being single and childless and ‘of a certain age’. I’ve read all of these books this year, and while my experiences are different from these women in the practical, the feeling of sorrow at watching one’s life unfold in a way you didn’t expect seems to be universal. I remember reading Notkin’s book and underlining whole paragraphs, scrawling “YES!!!” in the margins. These aren’t books that have all the answers, but they showed me that I am not alone in asking the questions:

1) Otherhood, by Melanie Notkin

I found Notkin when I was frantically googling things like “childless women who are sad about it” and “women who want kids and don’t have kids”, crazy stuff that was running through my mind as I came to end of a long, emotional journey where I realized that I did not want to have a child on my own. I was not going to be a ‘Single Mother By Choice’; instead, I was going to be something else, something undefined. My searching brought me to Notkin’s Huffington Post article ‘I’m 45, Single, and Childless, and There’s Nothing ‘Wrong’ With Me’ which deserves a read as well.

I found out from there that Notkin had just (just! as in, that very week!) published a book called ‘Otherhood’ about her struggle as a single, childless woman in New York City. Was it perfect? No. In fact, large swaths of the middle of this book read like episodes of Sex & The City, complete with disastrous dates with high-powered attorneys and conversations about egg donation over cocktails. Her life is far more glamorous than mine, and her friends have far more money than I will ever see in a lifetime of non-profit work. But the chapters that start and end her book are smaller, introspective pieces of writing that strip away the trappings of five-star Upper East Side eateries and weekend visits to the Hamptons and show Notkin to be a woman who struggled for years to come to terms with her own truth - that she wanted a family more than a baby, and that she wasn’t okay with settling for mediocre when it came to finding a partner. And, at 45, she wasn’t going to have the family she’d always envisioned. It’s worth checking out, even if you skim the Sex & The City parts.

2) Rocking the Life Unexpected, by Jody Day

Day’s book comes out of the UK, and her experience is as a woman who ended up divorced in her mid-30s, single for the first time in ages just as her fertility was about to nosedive. Her battle through the grief and anger around her circumstances led to a book that is full of hope and encouragement. Day has spent the last few years in training to be become a counselor, and it shows in her writing. She doesn’t point fingers, but gives some practical exercises for women to work through as they are thinking about their worth as women in the world who are not mothers.

Day also founded Gateway Women, an online community for those who are struggling with their circumstances. Much of the focus of the site seems to be around women in the UK, but there are meet-up groups all over the globe. I haven’t fully explored the community online, mostly because it’s a closed community and joining seems daunting, and would solidify my membership in a club I’m not really thrilled to be a member of.

If you want to get a flavor of Day before you read the book, check out this great short talk she gave as her book was coming out.

3) The Mother Within, by Christine Erickson

In her non-writing life, Erickson is an “equus coach”, which (as far as I can tell from her website) is a kind of life coach who works to help people while they ride horses. This seems odd, but Erickson’s short polemic on childlessness is earthy, personal, and accepting. She wants to be okay, and she wants you to be okay too. It’s a lovely read!

(She has also tried to get some discussions moving around childlessness at her Mother Within website, but it doesn’t look like the conversation has started there either.)

Not all of these books are for everyone. And yes, there need to be more voices from poor women, from queer women, from women of color, all of whom face this same challenge. But what I got from these books was a sense of shared loss, a sense that I may still be at the bottom of a well of loneliness, but that there are other women down here too, grasping in the dark for someone’s hand to hold. These books were a helping hand for me. I hope that this blog can be a helping hand for some of you, who will then open your hands to even more women.

I really do think we have to overcome the shame of perceived failure at not having children before the conversation can really open up. No one wants to be the first to raise their hand and say “me! I didn’t end up with the life I wanted!!” Thank goodness these writers made their voices heard! 

Do you have other books, articles or blogs to recommend to those struggling without children? Let me know in comments!

I Want To Steal Your Baby

I spend half an hour holding a gorgeous baby on a sunny Saturday morning. He’s ten months old but small for his age, and he’s all smiles, laughing as we play peek-a-boo with a book his big sister left on the dining table. “He doesn’t usually like strangers,” his surprised grandmother says to me.

“I’m the baby whisperer,” I tell her. Then, as we’re leaving, the baby is still tugging on my hair as I tell the room, “I’m totally going to steal him.”

We all laugh.

But I really, really want to steal that baby.

*

I love living in New York, because it’s a city of people with Big Ideas who have made Choices and have Opinions, and not always the popular, middle-America ones.

Many of the women I know in New York are in their 30s and 40s and beyond and don’t have kids. The assumption I make about them is that they decided they weren’t going to have them. They woke up one day - at twelve or twenty or thirty-two - and said “nope, kids are for other people, but they aren’t for me,” and they happily moved forward with their lives.

It’s the easy thing to assume. It’s the happy thing to assume, and these women look happy.

When I look in the mirror, I look happy a lot of the time. I joke and laugh at work. I go out to plays and long dinners with friends. I travel, carefree and kid-free, able to do a weekend in Vegas or Boston or Chicago without much notice.

Is that what people assume, when they look at me? That kids would hold me back? That kids don’t fit into my lifestyle? That I made a choice? I didn’t make a choice about kids.

*

I don’t have kids because.

I’ve been trying to finish that sentence for a while now:

because I never found the right partner;

because I can’t afford to do it on my own;

because I focused too much on my job, I didn’t give online dating a fair shake, I stupidly believed in ‘you’ll find The One’ and ‘things happen at the right time’;

because no one ever really explained how women’s bodies work, that I would hit 35 and start on a stark downward spiral of fertility, that at 40 my chance of getting pregnant even if I was trying really hard would be 20%, and at 45 it’ll be 5%.

It all boils down to “I wanted kids and I don’t have kids and I probably won’t be having kids.”

*

There’s a woman I’ve known for years at work. She’s tall and lovely, with a warm smile that makes her a favorite among our coworkers. “I notice you don’t have children,” I yearn to say to her. “Do you not want them? Has it always been that way? Or are you like me? Did you want kids but never found the right partner? Or maybe you tried and tried and tried, with a partner or without. Maybe your body isn’t built for having children. Maybe your heart isn’t built for doing it alone.”

I don’t ask these questions.

“Have you ever thought about just having a one-night stand from Craigslist, just to see if you could manage to get knocked up? You wouldn’t even need to know his last name,” I don’t say to the friend-of-a-friend who is over 40 and divorced, sitting at our favorite table in the back of our Thursday night bar.

“Have you ever wondered if having a baby alone would be easier if your mom moved in with you? Or is your mom a little crazy like my mom?” I never ask the brilliant woman with a PhD who is my monthly lunch date.

“How do you apologize to your dad for not making him a grandfather when you know he would love that more than anything?” I think to myself, sitting quietly with some of the other single ladies at a baby shower for my friend’s second kid. It’s going to be a cute kid.

They’re all cute kids.

Man, I really want to steal a baby.

*

I don’t ask these questions because no one asks these questions. In the women-can-have-it-all era of post-second-wave-feminism, it’s assumed that what a girl wants, she gets. We’re all active participants in our lives, after all. If we don’t have kids, we made the choices to get us there. The ‘childfree by choice’ movement has books and podcasts and blogs all telling women it’s okay to not want to be a mom. You won’t be less of a woman. The fabric of society won’t come tumbling down. And they’re right! If you don’t want kids, you shouldn’t have kids. That sounds like basic common sense. Go you, ladies who never liked babies, or who prefer being an aunt to being a mom! Do what you do!

But I’m not one of you.

And I bet there are people reading this who aren’t either.

But I can’t tell for sure, because no one ever talks about failing to become a mother. New Yorkers don’t fail at big life things like that. Women with great careers and advanced degrees are smart enough not to get to a point in their lives where they don’t have something they desperately want.

I know a bunch of you are rolling your eyes right now. “Why doesn’t she just have one on her own?” you’re asking and I wonder if you’ll lend me $18,000 a year to put my kid in a Manhattan day care. “You can adopt,” you say, and I barely refrain from sending you a dozen articles on how hard it is to adopt a baby as a single person. “What about fostering?” Well, that one I’m actually looking in to, but fostering a kid over the age of four (which most of them are) requires a free second bedroom in your apartment. Most single women in NYC would be dropping 60% or more of their paycheck on rent, if we all wanted to be foster moms.

A note to everyone, everywhere: all women who are in this boat have already asked ourselves these questions. We are still asking them, every day, just in case some miracle has occurred to give us an extra paycheck, or an extra set of hands to help with midnight feedings or a medical miracle that would save our failing bodies, would give us time to make plans or save more money.

Billy Joel is having a new baby this year. Billy Joel is 66. Fuck you, Billy Joel.

*

Besides, all of those options would still make me a single parent. Choosing to be a single parent is amazing and heroic, and I salute those of you who make that choice. But I have weighed it, back and forth, for years now, and it’s not the right choice for me, financially but especially emotionally. I want a family, I want support, I want to share the joy of being a parent with another person.

I spend a lot of time berating myself these days, worried that this no-kid thing is not a failure of body, but a failure of my heart. It’s a failure to make the connection that everyone in every rom-com ever made has managed with a meet cute on a train platform, or by awkwardly tripping over a stranger in a coffee shop. It’s a failure to be pretty enough, or thin enough, or smart enough. Or maybe I’m too smart? Should I talk less? More? Should I go out with everyone who asks me out, just in case, even if I don’t like them? What if no one asks me out? Why didn’t I settle for good enough years ago??

This is not a productive line of thinking.

Right now, my Truth-with-a-capital-T is that I didn’t meet someone, and I’m not old (I’m not even middle-aged), but I’ve pretty much run the clock down on the ‘partner + babies = family’ lifestyle I envisioned for myself. It sucks. I’d like to talk to someone other than my therapist about it. But other women don’t ask me if I’d ever intended to have kids, or if I’m sad that I don’t have kids, or if this was a choice or just circumstance, just plain bad luck. And they don’t volunteer that information about themselves. Why would they - no one likes to broadcast a failure. The consequence is that I often feel utterly alone in my childlessness, like one layer of loneliness dumped on top of another.

Maybe we’d all start talking about it if we all started stealing those babies. A national baby-stealing epidemic would open up this conversation for sure.