Non-Motherhood: Ambivalent Autobiographies Author(s): Gayle Letherby and Catherine Williams Reviewed work(s): Source: Feminist Studies, Vol.

25, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 719-728 Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178673 . Accessed: 12/12/2011 10:58
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NON-MOTHERHOOD: AMBIVALENT AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

GAYLELETHERBYand CATHERINEWILLIAMS
From the beginning, feminists set out to break two taboos: the taboo on describingthe complex and mixed experiencesof actual mothersand the tabooon the celebration a child-freelife. But for of reasonsboth inside and beyond the women's movement,feminists were better able in the long run to attend to mothers'voices than they were able to imagine a full and deeply meaningfullife without motherhood,without children. -Anne Snitow,in EncyclopaediaChildbearing: Critical of Perspectives, ed. Barbara KatzRothman,1993.

Non-motherhoodhas become more visible recently in advanced Westernnations, in part at least because of the scientific,ethical, and media debates surrounding"infertility" treatmentsand intercountry adoption, the apparentdecline in fertilityin Britain,and the increasing number of women and men who are positively or However,this situachoosing to remain"childfree" "childless."' tion cannotbe simpy describedas "thecelebrationof a child-free life,"in Snitow'swords, and non-motherhood, too, is made up of "complexand mixed experiences"that merit feminist attention. Feministshave demonstrated thatmany women feel discrepancies between how they experiencethe world and the officialor expert definitionof their identity,for example,with relationto sexuality and motherhood. These discrepancies may result in guilt, fear, An anxiety,and feelings of ambivalenceand exclusion.2 extensive literatureby feminists and others also discusses the ambiguities of both in terms surroundingthe medicalization non-motherhood, of identityand of the effortsto "cure" non-motherhood throughthe new reproductive However,detaileddiscussionthat technologies.3 validatesthe experiencesof women who don't mother childrenis still lacking. In this dialogue we offer an explorationof women's non-mothFeminist Studies no. 3 (fall1999).? 1999by FeministStudies,Inc. 25, 719

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and Williams GayleLetherby Catherine

erhood that is groundednot in medicalor pathologicaldiscourses but in our own personalperspectivesas a biologically"involuntarwoman (Gayle)and a "voluntarily childfree" woman ily childless" Our goal is not merely to challengethe stereotypical (Catherine). women as view of "childless" women as desperateand "childfree" eitherliberatedor selfishbut to explorethe complexissues of definition, ambivalence, and exclusion that surround these experiences. To do this we draw on our own biographies and our researchinterestsand activities. A view of people without childrenis CATHERINE: stereotypical that they have decided once and for all that they don't want chilI dren or that they areunableto have them.4 feel that I do not fit in either of these camps. I have never sought pregnancy,and I now but define myself as "childfree," the situation is not so simple. When I was twenty years old and married(and workingas a midwife and health visitor),I was 99 percentsure that I would some day have children. I even chose names for them. I was equally clear that I wasn't ready yet. Now at the age of forty-eight with a woman and (divorced,in a committedintimaterelationship in higher education),I am 99 percent sure that I won't working have children.In the twenty-eightyears in between,I have made a from one position to the other.At times I gradualtransformation wanted to have children;but the time, place, or relationshipwas never right. My desire has never been strong enough to override these obstacles, although I have taken contraceptive risks that "accidentally" exposed me to sperm duringtimes I was ovulating, especiallywhen I was "inlove." Yet when I startedto bleed at the end of my cycle, I rarelyfelt regretor sadness.The occasionalsadness I did feel passed quickly the and changedto relief.Although I appreciated positive aspects of motherhood,I always viewed the experienceas somethingthat I might enjoy in the futureand not as somethingthat I wanted in the present.Now, as I reach the end of my biologicalcapacityto have a child, I feel somewhat puzzled but content with where I am. I can look backand see an ambivalent path towardmy present state. Yet I have found that when I try to express this "childfree" ambivalence, many people see me simply as a woman who really and lesswants a child or a someone who is "childless," abnormal, er for not having one. Fifteenyears ago, when I was a marriednurserynurse GAYLE: working with small children,my centralaim was to be a mother,

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and I felt that I was only half a woman without a child. Any

doubts I had concerningmotherhoodI denied. A miscarriagein 1985added to my distressand sense of failure.By the time I started work on my doctoratein sociology nine years ago, my feelings were different.Although I still felt the desire for motherhoodand felt a gap in my life, this issue did not dominate my every thought and action, as it had earlier.I no longer felt that I was a
lesser woman or less than adult for not mothering children. I was also able to accept the equivocal nature of my desire. A part of me enjoyed the freedom that I had because of my "childlessness,"and I felt sure that if I did become a mother, I would feel opposing emotions in relation to that experience also. In the interim I had also developed warm relationships with the children of several close friends through staying with and visiting their parents. CATHERINE: So, although we both feel positive about our ambivalence now, we feel that others may see us a quickly approaching what a novelist (Sara Maitland) described as "the moon madness from which childless women suffer when it is too late

for hope and they know they will have to go down to theirgraves with the barely concealedmockery and scorn echoing across the barrendesertof theirflesh."5 Gayle and I met at the annual BritishSociologicalAssociation medical sociology conferencein 1994. I'd read an early paper of hers6and had wanted to talk to her for a while. I recognizedher name and we startedtalking.We kept in contactand on the train home from the U.K.Women'sStudiesNetwork annualconference at Stirling,Scotland,in 1995,we planned this article. GAYLE: discovered that issues of definition and exclusion We were importantto both of us as we faced social assumptionsabout which women areadequatelywomanly or feminineand which are not. For example,we repeatedlyfaced the presumptionthat havthat without this desire or abiliing a child is centralto femininity, we are unfeminine and abnormal.Our society still takes for ty granted that "woman"equals "mother"equals "wife" equals and "adult"; this presumptionstill remainsa partof medical,political, and public discourses.As PatrickSteptoe,one of the pioneers of the techniqueof in vitro fertilization Englandsaid, "Itis a fact in that thereis a biologicaldrive to reproduce. Womenwho deny this
or in whom it is frustrated show disturbances in other ways."7 CATHERINE:We decided to write a paper together for the next

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U.K. Women'sStudies Network conference,"LostDiscourses in Feminism"as we both felt strongly that non-motherhood was clearlya lost discourse.To initiateour dialogue we both read Sara Maitland'sDaughter Jerusalem found that our own experiand of
ences were reflected in it. For instance, the main character,who is

trying to get pregnant, consults a physician who tells her "she that the suppressionof ovulation withshould see a psychiatrist; of out apparentphysicalcause could have its roots in the rejection the patient'sown femininity."8 Other people's characterization of the novel's protagonistis that she is not a proper woman, or, at best, not a fulfilledwoman. She is defined as deficientnot only by the medical professionbut also by strangers,women friends,her family, her husband, and even herself. We, too, experienced unwelcomeintrusionsinto our lives throughuninvitedadvice and desiresand abilities.Sometimes commentsaboutour reproductive and we experiencedsuch remarksas benevolent,"helpful," kindly intentionedadvice on the value of childrenin one's life. At other times, these intrusions felt uncomfortable.My lack of desire to have childrendefinedme in some people'seyes as "abnormal." In GAYLE: contrast,people usually defined my "abnormality" as physical, although, as in the novel, I felt that sometimes psychologicalundertoneswere hinted at. I tried to become pregnant over the years, although I have never been for medical assessment or treatment.In some settings, I feel that I have to justify I've this choice.In some friendshipsand relationships, felt judged as inferioreither for not having childrenor for being "obsessed" with the desirefor them. A realno-win situation. CATHERINE: many people, "childless" For implies a person with somethingmissing fromher life, whethershe is describedas or manner, albeing "childless"in a "voluntary" "involuntary" though the formerwomen are more often viewed as selfish while the latter frequentlyincur pity. Eitherway, mothers are seen as women, while women without childrenare perceivedas "proper" and They are also treatedas child"improper" treatedas "other." like ratherthan fully adult.Feministrhetorichas simplifiedwomAlen's experiences through its emphasis on women's "choice." women's recent and hard-won "rightto choose"among though reproductivetechnologiesand abortionhas posed a challenge to the patriarchal myth that motherhoodis women's inevitabledesin tiny,"choice" this respectis impossiblefor women who discover

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that they are unable to have children. On the other hand, the "childfree,"as a description of women who are "voluntarily child-

less,"implies a positive choice not to have children.Many people also considerthis a selfish option.The word "childfree" has associwhich in turn implies a childlike ations with the word "carefree," state. Thus, women who have no childrenare consideredto have and no responsibilities thus to be like childrenthemselves.9 I GAYLE: recentlyfinished a five-yeardoctoralresearchproject in which I conducted interviews with twenty-four women and eight men in the United Kingdom in order to explore the social, and emotional, and medical experiencesof "infertility" "involunI with anotherforty-onewomen tary childlessness." corresponded who eitherlived an inconvenientdistanceaway or who preferred to write ratherthan talk.These respondentscame from all areasof the United Kingdomand rangedbroadlyin age and economicstatus.10 study group was comprisedof self-selectingindividuals My and childwho defined themselvesas "infertile" / or "involuntarily less"at presentor at some time in the past. It includedpeople who were experiencing or had experienced primary and secondary and childless" nonfor "infertility" otherswho were "involuntarily medical reasons.Many had sought medical treatment,but some had not. The study group includednonparentsand social and biologicalparents.Some of the latterhad achievedparenthoodunaided, and some had had successfulmedical assistance.Despite this broad range of experience, several key themes emerged in the interviews,including exclusion and ambivalence.All my respondents felt that the experience of "infertility"and "involuntary childlessness"in women (and men) is viewed by others one-dimensionally as an all-absorbingexperience.People (particularly women) without childrenare not perceivedas capableof ambivalence about theirsituation.In addition,women in the "infertile" or childless" category reported that people reacted "involuntarily toward them with pity and envy. The pity emerged from the acceptanceof the ideology of motherhoodas the norm and from their unquestioning belief in the positive experience of motherhood. Feelings of envy, on the other hand, were relatedby those who felt negatively about motherhoodand its constraining effects on women'slives. CATHERINE: Womenwho are "voluntarily" childlessor "childfree"also face ambivalence, priorresearch this areashows. As in as

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is CarolynM. Morellargues,"choice" a complexterm.People usuwomen make a determineddecision ally assume that "childfree" not to have children after a period of deliberation.Her research with "childfree" women revealed much more ambiguity:"Even when women did experiencemaking a clear decision, the stories they told to accountfor that decisionwere complex and inconcluRatherthan a sive, open to shifts, revelations,and reconstruction. choice, remainingchildless was describedas an ongoing practice and/or an outcome determinedby a variety of personalor social JaneBartlettfound from her research Similarly, circumstances."'1 with "childfree" women that they felt it was easierto say they had
never made a decision to have a child than to say that they had
decided not to have a child.12 Thus, "involuntary childlessness"

and "voluntary childlessness" or "childfreeness"are more complicated than is often acknowledged, and women's ambivalence about non-motherhood is perceived negatively rather than as a normal and justifiable response to women's life conditions. GAYLE:During my research, when respondents asked about my feelings, I talked about my feelings of ambivalence. Some of them felt that they could identify with it, but others did not. My respondents asked me how my own attitudes toward childlessness had developed. To one respondent I replied, "It'ssomething I

live with. EarlierI was a wreck, obsessed with it all. Now I think there are other things in life that are important,but I'll always be sad. I think that there's still plenty of time. In ten years' time I know I'm likely to feel different,but the futurepotentialis partly
how I cope."13' That was during my fieldwork when I was in my

but mid-thirties, I feel differentlynow. I still would like to mother childrento whom I am biologicallyrelated,and I still sometimes think that there is time to do so. However,I don't now feel that I "need" children.I'm confidentthat I would never go for "infertility" treatment, and I never use the word "cope" anymore. Some people may interpret these changes as a rejection of motherhood. My research suggests that "infertile" and / or "involuntarily childless" women feel excluded from certain groups in society. Respondents referred to feeling left out in conversations with family, friends, and strangers. One woman noted the pervasiveness of parenthood in casual conversations:
It's rare for there to be any sort of discussion in which parents don't mention their children, and unless there's someone present who's looking out for me-or

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I divert the conversation myself-parenthood very easily develops into the major theme. Members of the club to which I don't belong swap stories. RecentlyI was sitting in a small circleof residentsand visiting friends.A friend who is pregnantwas due to arrive,and that .. led to other women talking about their pregnancies.Someone left to put their child to bed. I looked across the circle and there were two parents discussing how they felt about their grown-upchildrenbeing at university.'4

CATHERINE: Being with a group of women talking about the apparentlyinexhaustibletopics of their labors, children'seating habits, or teenage rebellionis similarto being in a group of men talkingaboutfootball.I feel excluded. I GAYLE: too at times find these discussions limiting. At other times they distress me. The experienceof exclusion from discussions about parenting and from the lives of parents is complex. The "involuntarily childless"often feel uncomfortable the comin of families with childrenand with friends who are having pany children. This accords with Morell's work as her "childfree" respondents reported feeling "deserted"by supposedly other "childfree" friendswho had late pregnancies.Morellsuggests that motherhoodcreatesa wedge separatingthe mother,with her time constraintsand differentinterests,from her former friends who arenot mothers.'5 One Americanstudy found that previously "infertile" members of "infertility" support groups were excluded when they became mothers parents.16In my own researchI've found that "infertile" who have adopted children feel "out of it" when conversation with othermothersturnsto that of pregnancyand childbirth.17 CATHERINE: me, such feelings of exclusion have been For on the variations in my own life over time and the contingent changes in my friends'and family'slives. WhetherI am single or in a relationshipaffectsit, since the exclusion of being single in a couple-dominatedworld increasesthe isolation of being without a child in a world where 88 percentof women do have children.18 Researchon both "involuntarily childless" and "childfree" women shows thatwomen who don'thave childrensometimeswant to keep children at a distance. On the other hand, women (indeed people) in this situationmay think that parentsassume they have no knowledge of children and childcare. Holidays, especially Christmas, are times when "involuntarilychildless" and often "childfree" people feel particularly excluded not just from the activityand conversationof othersbut also from even the right to
celebrate.19

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GAYLE: Due to all of these feelings of exclusion, like other

women without childrenI sometimes seek friendshipswith other women in similar situations,both to share experienceswith othand ers who are not centeredaround children20 to talk about the
"obsession"of those who are.21 CATHERINE:Having been a midwife and a health visitor I am often included in conversations about pregnancy, childbearing, and motherhood. At times my advice is sought, but at other times I am clumsily neglected and excluded. Looking back, I remember times when a cluster of significant friends moved into the birthing game leaving me on the sidelines cheering them on. Four to five years ago a number of my friends became pregnant. This time I noticed that I was choosing to exclude myself. I choose much more when, where, and on what terms I am willing to be involved in their experience of motherhood, so that my relationships with these friends are no longer only being defined solely by their time restraints and their new interests. I am much bolder than I used to be about asserting my "childfree" rights and asking for "childfree" time. So exclusion becomes my choice. GAYLE:Life changes are also relevant to my feelings of exclusion. My circle of friends and my occupation are different than they were fifteen years ago. Then a lot of my friends were getting pregnant and/or mothering babies and young children and my job as a nursery nurse in hospitals, nurseries, and private homes revolved around and brought me into constant contact with children. In contrast, my job as a university lecturer and a researcher in sociology is centered around adults. It has given me the space to theorize on my own and other women's experience of childlessness. Many of my newer friends and colleagues don't have children, and those that do are not involved in full-time care of young offspring. A major change in my life is that my partner of the last seven years has two sons (aged nineteen and twenty-one). Although I would not describe myself as a mother, I do have a parental relationship with them because until very recently both boys lived permanently with us. Consequently, when asked if I have children, I sometimes feel that it is appropriate to say yes. Also there

are times now when I am an active participantin or even initiate and a conversationabout "troubled" "troublesome" youth.

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These changeshave made my daily experienceboth more comfortable and more challenging and caused me to rethink my desirefor a biologicalchild. and In CATHERINE GAYLE: this paper we have tried to highWe light the complexityof non-motherhood. think that an awareness of this complexityis essentialto feminism,because all women do not sharethe same realitiesor the same sense of their experiences.22 We acknowledge, therefore, that our experiences regarding non-motherhoodare shaped by the similaritiesbetween us. We areboth white, able-bodied,middle-classfeministacademics;and at the time when biologicalmotherhoodwas a much more likely possibilityfor each of us, both of us were heterosexual.We realize that the desire of a lesbian or disabled woman who wants a child is likely to be questionedin a way that an able-bodiedheterosexual woman'sis not. In these circumstances, woman'sinabilityor a "choice" to have childrenmay be welcomed by other people not ratherthan defined as sad or selfish in the ways we have experienced, while women subjectto racismface furthercomplications. CATHERINE: Although there are no simple feminist "answers" to these issues, feminist debates on motherhoodopened the door into another way of living life-one without any children, although only now has a significantfeminist discussion begun on the definitions and exclusions that women without children are still made to feel in our society.23 GAYLE: me feminism, along with other intellectual and For personaldevelopmentsin my life, has enabledme to value what I am and to see both the positive and negative aspects of motherhood and non-motherhood.
NOTES
We would like to thank participants at the 1996 Women's Studies Network U.K. Conference for their interest in our paper. 1. We place quotations marks around several words throughout this article to highlight the problems of definition. We also use the term "childfree" at times when the original researcher used "voluntarily childless." 2. For example, see Ann Phoenix, Anne Wollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices, and Ideologies (London: Sage, 1991); Sheila Rowbotham, "To Be or Not to Be: The Dilemma of Mothering," Feminist Review 31 (spring 1989): 82-93; Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5 (summer 1980): 631-60; Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Pen-

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Sex FourSquareBooks,1960). guin, 1973);and Simonede Beauvoir,TheSecond (London: 3. For example, see MichelleStanworth,"Reproductive Technologiesand the Destrucin and ed. Gender, Motherhood, Medicine, tion of Motherhood," Reproductive Technologies: MichelleStanworth(Oxford: Polity, 1987);MaureenV. McNeil and StevenYearley,eds., TheNew Reproductive (Hampshireand London:Macmillan,1990);and Sarah Technologies A Embodied Account Assisted Franklin, (London: Progress: Cultural Conception of Routledge, 1997). 4. Carolyn M. Morell, Unwomanly Conduct: Challenges Intentional The Childlessness of (London:Routledge,1994). 5. SaraMaitland,Daughter Jerusalem Pan, 1978),52. (London: of 6. Gayle Letherby,"Mother Not, Motherof What?Problemsof Definitionand Identior International 17 Studies Forum (winter1994):525-32. ty,"Women's 7. Stanworth,15. 8. Maitland,3. 9. Letherby,"Motheror Not, Mother or What?""Choice" mentioned here is only as available to a minority of the world's women. See Gayle Letherby,"'Infertility' and Childlessness': Definitionand Self-Identity" Uni(Ph.D.diss., Staffordshire 'Involuntary versity, 1997). 10. Respondentsin the researchprojectwere aged between twenty-fiveyears and seventy-two years. Despite the differencesof age and experience(see main text),other differenceswere not represented. white and heterosexuRespondentswere predominantly al which can be partlyexplainedby the publicationsthat did and did not agree to print Gayle'sadvert/letter asking for people to come forward.Also, although she did stress that she was interestedin the social, emotional,and medical aspects of "infertility" and the involuntarychildlessness," majorityof her respondentshad had/ were having medical treatment which is more available to heterosexual women. Cultural differences relatedto conceptionand motherhoodand to talkingto "strangers" have prevented may otherwomen frombeing involved. 11. Morell,48-49. 12. Jane Bartlett,Will YouBe Mother?WomenWhoChoseto Say No (London:Virago, 1994). Recent researchby the Family Policy Studies Centre, London, concerned with childless"are "thoughtful "voluntarychildlessness"also suggests that the "voluntarily and responsibleabout what parentingmight mean. They find it variously undesirable, difficultor impossibleto incorporate into theirlives. Farfrom being a generationwho it can 'have it all,' respondentssaw themselvesas making considerableeffort to maintain a reasonablequality of life without children." FionaMcAllisterwith Lynda Clarke, See Childlessness (London: Choosing JosephRowntreeFoundation,1988),58. 13. Letherby, and Childlessness." "'Infertility' 'Involuntary 14. Ibid. 15. Morell. 16. Susan Borg and Judith N. Lasker, WhenPregnancy Fails:Copingwith Miscarriage, and Death(London: Stillbirth, Infant Routledge& KeganPaul, 1982). 17. Letherby,"'Infertility' 'Involuntary and Childlessness.'" 18. Bartlett. and 19. Morell;Letherby, "'Infertility' 'Involuntary Childlessness.'" and Childlessness.'" 20. Letherby, "'Infertility' 'Involuntary 21. Morell. 22. Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, "Method,Methodology, and Epistemologyin Feminist in and ResearchProcesses,"in FeministPraxis:Research, Theory, Epistemology Feminist ed. Sociology, Liz Stanley(London: Routledge,1990). and "'Infertility' and 23. Morell;Bartlett; or Letherby,"Mother Not, Motheror What?" " 'Involuntary Childlessness.'