NYMPHE: Childless, Childfree, Parent, Stepmom.

Let's Hear It for Aunties, Loud & Clear

For some bizarre reason, the New York Times won't allow commenting and conversation on this article. Too bad, because it might get some good stuff going!

The piece celebrates childless/childfree aunts. Yay, childless and childfree aunties! It's less snarcastic than my piece on the same subject was for Bust and Utne. It's nice. It's equal handed. Has a very strange ending that requires elaboration or, even better, should've been cut. Anyway, enjoy it here:

Let's Hear it for Aunthood from Style section, NY Times, Sunday Sept 19.

"Traffic" by Kristy Athens

Good writing and good illustration and good collage and yes it deals with what some people go through when they cannot have babies and remember we never know how things are going to work out, even the ones that seem to be happy endings.

Traffic.

MOVING BEYOND GRIEF: Advice from Sugar

My blog nattering may be helpful now and again, but I'm no Sugar on The Rumpus. Freaking great, amazing stuff. This Sugar post discusses grief, miscarriage, depression, and abused teens---yet it is compassionate, practical, and realistic. It's not depressing at all.

Grieving? In the stuck place? Click that link and go read. Now. And here is a quote:

"You will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name. But she will always be dead. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live though it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing—the genuine healing, the actual real deal down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change—is entirely and absolutely up to you."

COULD IT BE THAT THE CONVERSATION IS FINALLY GETTING MORE REASONABLE? CHILDFREE VS. BREEDERS IN A NEW LIGHT.

Obligatory warning: This post mentions pregnancy but doesn't otherwise get deep into infant/preggo talk. Should be safe for most CF/CL readers, I think...

The tenor of conversation online about childless, childfree, and parental issues seemed shrill, unreasonable, and unlikely to solve any problems in the long run, when I started this blog a few years back. I was vocally childfree for many years, got interviewed about it, got published about it, etc., but hopefully not in any hateful way. Still, it was an important component of my identity.

Some 10-15 years ago I joined an online CF group, a small one populated by some folks I knew in real life and other people too. Some stuff I found humorous; I didn't mind the word "breeder" (which my "fruit" friends had long called us "hets"); it was nice to share experiences with like-minded people.

However, the viciousness and bitterness of other posts seemed way out of whack. Well-off white people with graduate-level educations and good futures in the tech industry snarling about how put-upon they were by those nasty, evil breeding types—it seemed bizarrely cruel, classist, elitist, and frankly sometimes sexist. The conversations tended to be about how fuckin' cool we were for not being like the pond-scum normals who procreate. Many of whom were not just unenlightened and prone to talk about dull subjects like children, but poor and uneducated. La ti tah.

 So, though I really wanted to hang with fellow CF/CL people, I left the group.

When I wanted to rediscover resources for CF/CL folks online, years later, I found many a place that was even worse. Especially as I began, to my utter dismay, to experience the biological clock and question my previously rock-solid decision not to breed, I really sought good conversation about these things. From comments posted to newspaper sites when they ran articles about childfree living, infertility, any related issue... to blogs... to closed-loop discussion websites... I mostly found black-and-white thinking, bitterness, defensiveness, offensiveness, ad hominim attacks, and a lack of sympathy or interest in how other people lived. Everyone was a victim, it seemed—a whiny, angry one whipped to foaming peaks by the injustice of it all.

In other words, I found the Internet, in all its anonymous, cowardly glory.

This gave Nymphe an instant niche. I am still astounded by the feedback and support I've gotten for this one tiny, unpublicized blog. Just because I wrote about my experiences without assuming that parents are assholes and children are yucky. Just because I said, hey, there's a grey area of childless people, and we shouldn't have to fake that we're Totally! Happily! Childfree! all the time in order to fit the mold of the childfree cheerleaders. I still get the emails, some from people who've read current episodes of the blog and know I've crossed over... some from people who think I'm forever childfree.

I think the feedback has just been a sigh of relief from readers: thanks for writing this, because we're sick of the divisiveness. We're sick of the nastiness. Maybe we are victims in some ways, but we know things are more complex than many of the defensive CF groups want them to be, more complex than the defensive über-parents want to pretend.

Some people think it's weird or even unacceptable that a pregnant lady like me still reads and posts about childfree/childless/etc issues. But I do, because even if I were to squirt out two dozen screaming brats to drive all the other shoppers insane at the supermarket and overpopulate the planet and suck up all the tax money for schools, I would still care about inequality in our society. And the childless and childfree people in our society are treated unequally. That's just truth, supported by many facts. (See The Childess Revolution by Madelyn Cain for stats; it was written by a parent btw.)

In the last year I've noticed an uptick in reasonable, useful, interesting conversations about these issues online. Parenting blogs have them (see CafeMom post below). Childfree blogs have 'em too. (See this conversation at thebritgirl.com—the comments are probably more revealing than the initial post; you can see people mulling over each other's ideas.) Generalist newspaper articles tend to inspire pathetic posts lacking in thought, but strewn among them are really good discussions.

What I'd like to think is this: maybe we're actually listening to each other. Maybe we can guide the conversation to a point where it becomes useful. And then? There's hope for meaningful social change.

What IF we redefine Woman?

Watch this IF you've experienced Notbaby grief, whether due to infertility or other reasons. Watch this IF someone you know might be going through it. Watch this IF you think grieving childless people are whiners who oughtta buck up and get over it. Watch this IF you generally don't care either way.

Because this reality is going on around you all the time, every day, IF you like it or not. Many of the people experiencing it aren't comfortable talking about it. Let's help them get it out of the closet.

What IF? A Portrait of Infertility from Keiko Zoll on Vimeo.

(And try not to be overly annoyed by the over-the-top heartstring-plucking music; by the end I was cryin' like the middle aged, hyperhormonal lady I am.)

Thanks to Cafemama.com for turning me onto this video, and to Ariel for coming out of the infertility closet. [Warning: this links out to an infertility story that did end with a baby.]

PREGNANT WOMEN ARE SMUG. SO'S EVERYONE ELSE. WHAT TO DO?

There ain't many nice things about being waffly, making decisions you can't live with, weighing your options endlessly, and feeling unable to settle on one tidy identity. Mom? Nonmom? "TTC" Trying to Conceive wannabe-mom? Childfree? Childless? "CSM" Childless stepmom? Nullipara? "CBM" childless by marriage? Stepmother? Feminist? Writer? Artist? Career woman? Traditionalist? What the hell am I and what the hell do I want to be?

Now I've spent four years investigating the whole mess: parenting, maternal desire, the biological clock, grief, and the unfair plight of the childless and childfree in our culture. For that matter, the also-unfair and strange position of mothers in our society. Have I finally learned something? Well, maybe. Here's what I've got:

We cannot know each others' experience based on surface identities alone. We cannot say anything without possibly inspiring angst, boredom, love, empathy, or agony in some listener or other. Everything we say can and will be interpreted with nuance, and will be heard through a filter the speaker may not realize exists. One woman's monologue on how giving birth has made her capable of real love, a love that no one but a parent can understand, especially a mother...

CHILDFREE & CHILDLESS WOMEN BATTLE IT OUT WITH "THE MOMMIES"...

Homemaker-mothers stake out their territory after centuries of being treated like crap. Childfree and otherwise biologically childless women who will stay childfree are in the minority (20%) and seek out others like themselves. Working women have to defend their decision to work outside of the home*. Infertile women feel intense pain that is often mocked or misunderstood.

And then there are women like me, who've wandered along a few different points of the spectrum, in my case going from vociferously childfree to grieving (thanks to that biological clock) to being a stepmom, and yes, finding co-parenting intensely meaningful. Men and other-gendered folks who are wrestling with similar issues. We're barely even acknowledged as part of the conversation.

Now let's suppose we all start flinging mud at each other. Not just bemoaning or celebrating aspects of our own lives, but lashing out. The Internet boosts the battle. Online, we can all vomit out whatever words we want, any ol' time, and feel few real-life consequences, compared to standing in a group of real people and announcing our views. I've been doing this since 1992; I can be a total Internet asshole. But it's not necessarily helpful or useful.

The media promotes the mommy conflict because they're guaranteed to get a zillion comments whenever they run: a story about allegedly self-absorbed, wealthy infertile women; an opinion piece by an allegedly aloof childfree person; a clearly arrogant parent who thinks that parenting is the ne plus ultra of all existence. In the resulting blog comments and counter-blogging, everyone will accuse each other of selfishness.

I'm a sucker for a good fight, but this one has really gotten me down. When we're all disrespecting each other and playing Queen of the Hill: who wins? Some fat cat media executive? Ariana Huffington? A desperate blogger wishing to be understood, to have her views affirmed by similar people who must be out there? In the latter case, how long will that blogger's outburst make her feel better?

In that small moment of smugness or desperation, when we write that defensive, angry post: we want to reach out. We want to say, "HEY I'M HERE, MY EXPERIENCE MATTERS, AND I HAVE A VOICE." This is the genius of the online communications revolution, along with the zine revolution, pirate radio, independent music, and small press.

I get paid real folding money to write about my experiences and opinions for newspapers and magazines. That, and teaching, constitute the bulk of my day job. Here on Nymphe, I can blog. No one pays me, but I can blather without going through an editor or making everything nice and pretty. I can be me, and I can be completely real.

Millions of other lucky ladies--- those with jobs or disposable incomes or local libraries that allow us to get computers and Internet access---can do it, too. What we seem to be saying, underneath all the clawing and spitting, is simply, RESPECT ME. Respect me and my choices.

Try to understand the hand fate or god or biology or nature, or whatever's in charge of this mess, has dealt me. Respect the emotions I go through. Don't tell me that your way is the superior way, we bloggers and yellers seem to be saying. Don't judge me. I'll just get defensive and yell back.

How can we get on the same page and agree to put up with each other and each other's lives, including reproductive choices? I think we put too much pressure on ourselves. My mom was among those first women to use the birth control pill in the US, in the 1960s. C'mon, guys, we've had only one generation to get used to contemporary feminism, to start acclimating our new gender roles in the larger culture. Think of all the changes in that short span of time. There's no way all the issues can be ironed out in such a blip of history. We're totally freakin' confused by all the options... but hey, maybe that's OK.

Our entire culture has just begun dealing with this. A television show called Murphy Brown was considered revolutionary about 20 years ago, because in it a single career woman decided to have a baby. The vice president of the United States bothered to mention this fact. Dude: that was only two decades ago! Speaking of babies, we are all infants, newcomers to this radically altered, feminist way of life. There's no adequate social, cultural, political, or often familial infrastructure for handling what we're all going through.

Realistically, how can we get there? Is fighting enough? Is yelling enough? Is blogging enough?


- - -

Some stuff to read:

"Ack! What's going on? If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd be convinced we were in the midst of a well-coordinated, full-on assault against those who can't or don't have children."  From "Moms, We Hear You Loud & Clear," by Pamela Tsigdinos on the Coming2Terms blog. http://coming2terms.com/2009/11/16/something-in-the-water.aspx?results=1

From "Don't Forget to Have Kids, Part Two" by Mika Brzezinksi, at Huffington Post. (Childless/childfree people: take a deep breath before reading this one. Or maybe do like an hour of meditation or yoga. Get ready:) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mika-brzezinski/dont-forget-to-have-kids_b_358839.html

HEALING FROM THE GRIEF OF BEING CHILDLESS LEADS ONE WOMAN TO DEATH.

Desperately seeking healthy ways to grieve and move on? You're not alone. The question of motherhood or childlessness, for those of whom it happens to hit hard, can bring about deep grief and existential crisis. "What is the meaning of life?"

Well, we could ask Monty Python, or we could delve in deep and find it, ourselves. Especially if we're with reluctant/unwilling partners, this process can be even lonelier than usual. Or if, like some women (thank goddess not me), we're surrounded by an entire community that has children: what do you do if 100% of your friends are pregnant or have babies, if you live in a small town where family is the only topic of discussion, or if your church promotes procreation (you know my answer on that one, but i can't judge someone else for staying in what i consider a shitty religion; I've heard from more than one person that I'm stupid for staying in a marriage with someone who doesn't want to have kids with me. Takes all kinds.).

If you can get through this harrowing process without flinging yourself off a bridge or, like the characters in the film Raising Arizona, stealing someone's baby, you're already doing great. Hats off to you. But you may find a creeping need for deeper spirituality in your life. I recently did a creativity program that led me to write, in giant capital letters: I AM ANGRY AT GOD, even though, ya know, I don't even believe in God.

I started to see why people, especially around this age, finally throw in the towel on being rational and slide into some religion or other. It's because sometimes things are simply too much for us to bear. If we don't offload some of this on a hopefully benevolent, external spirit or being or god or Godness or universe, if we don't Let It Go (where does it go, exactly, the stuff we're instructed by New Agers to "let go"?)... well, we may not be able to make it through. Or we may become so bitter and twisted that we probably should've jumped off that bridge when the biological clock first smacked us down, because hey, who wants to live life bitter and twisted and sad and grieving and nasty? Not on a hipster-cynic level, but FOR REAL?

One childless stepmom (CSM, in online support parlance) whose partner didn't want more children sought help in a program that was supposed to transform life, mind, and spirit. It sure did. But she didn't live through that process.

Here's the story.

FEMININITY, WOMANHOOD, GENDER IDENTITY, & REPRODUCTION...

Commenters to the Nymphe blog, and other places where I've been involved in discussions about the choice of whether to reproduce, have asked whether I feel like less of a woman because I chose not to have biological children. (Some imply that if I do feel unwomanly for not being a biomom, it's merely a societal gender construct and therefore perhaps beneath me to feel...)

OBVIOUS CHILD

"Your pee smells like Cheetos" and "fucktard" are among the excellent lines in this short, Internet-viewable film. That alone should recommend "Obvious Child," but it gets extra points for representing what sex, love, pregnancy, and life are like for some young women.

Note: this post/that film is probably not suitable for people actively dealing with infertility and similar grief, so stop here. Also: SPOILER ALERT about the film follows.

Unlike "Juno" and "Knocked Up," Obvious Child doesn't gloss over...