All my life, society has told us to be mothers. How can we break free from that conditioning?

I'm child-free and happy with it, why do I sometimes still feel sad?

As a toddler and with a doll who, if I’m honest, I can’t remember. That Sindy camping set though! What a toy!

We were sitting - cross-legged, spooning plastic cherries into plastic mouths - discussing how we would all, definitely become mothers one day. There were three of us, primary school best friends, and we were seven-years-old. This is young, to know exactly how our lives were going to pan out, but we did. We’d been told. We were women, we would become mothers.

It can be hard to explain social conditioning. The way that we breathe in ideas daily, often not even noticing what we’re inhaling: an invisible, powerful gas that permeates us, and influences what we do, and how we feel about ourselves.

I didn’t have many dolls at home. There was one, called Paula, who wore a salmon-pink knitted dress, made by my grandma. She had been my mum’s doll, perhaps even my grandma’s… But apart from Paula, this heirloom of tradition, if I wanted to play with dolls, I went to my friend’s houses. I believe this was an attempt by my parents to break the pattern, to block the inbuilt motherhood expectation.

Still, it got in somehow. Already. As there we were, fussing over fake nappies, and telling each other how we would have children. One of us said she was going to carry her baby, be pregnant but, I, alongside my other friend, said we would adopt. That we didn’t want to be pregnant but, obviously, we would be mums! We would adopt.

Did I know, back then, that I didn’t want to be a mother? Was that feeling, that knowledge being pushed, deeper and deeper, inside of me? I knew I didn’t want to be pregnant. But it was inconceivable that I wouldn’t become a mother. It’s what I had to do. So, I would adopt. There’s the solution right there.

The messaging was all around, the gas had already sunk in.

Another tricky thing about social conditioning is that there are plenty of times when what we’re sold is what we actually want. So, perhaps gas, this unconscious breathing in of it, isn’t the right analogy. As, I don’t believe that everyone who is a parent is a parent simply because they were told to be one. That we are all puppets-on-strings who only want the things we want because we have been orchestrated by an invisible force to want them.

There are things we want, then there are things we don’t want and then there are the things we’re not sure we want, but are told we should.

Today, what I want, is to discuss (hopefully without offending anyone about their wants, and choices) is the grief we can feel when our lives don’t match the expectations fed to us by others. How disjointed we can feel.

I’ve felt lost, a lot, lately. Panicky at times. The future feels foggy and when my steps don’t know where to go, they distract themselves by going around old, well-worn circles.

I’m tricking myself into thinking that I’m sad.

I’m not sad.

But, this year, I turn 40. And my life looks nothing like I thought it would, when I sat on that carpet and played dolls with my friends. Or, when I was 30-years-old, about to marry and convinced that children were the next natural step.

We once sent Paula to the toy’s hospital. Her leg had broken clean off, popped right out of its socket, so, off she went, to be mended. I was invested in Paula’s recovery, and I remember thinking, Paula will get better and Paula will be played with by my children.

Paula made it out of the hospital. She sat, on my grandma’s chair, until my grandma died.

I don’t know where Paula is now.

I don’t have Paula, and I don’t have children.

I am not sad.

But when I trick myself into being sad, it’s thinking of all the ways my life does not match up to the happiness ideal.

I feel that way every time I walk past my local Italian restaurant and see a bunch of balloons celebrating a 60^th birthday. Children and grandchildren clustered around, getting ready to blow out candles.

I feel that way when I see people posting about nativity plays, or I see them in movies or on TV. I feel this yearning, this loss. I want to be there, on a too-small plastic chair and watch my child sing under Christmas lights.

Except I don’t. Not really.

I’ve spent a lot of time examining my decision not to have children. Part of that is leaning into these raw, wanting moments and really feeling the chasm open within me. Trying to label whether, in these small, flashes of sadness, there’s a sign that I really do want children. That I’m lying to myself.

I often find that the only reason I feel sad, I feel wanting, is because I’m comparing my life to an ideal. One that is everywhere: on our TV screens, in movies, literally sold to us in adverts (often, I’ve found, selling cars). The loud, bustling household. The pencil-marking heights on walls.

For some it is happiness. But for others, absolutely isn’t.

This year, on a Sunday morning, I flew out to Spain to spend 24 hours on a porn set. I danced on stage at Glastonbury, and I spent three-days at another, smaller festival, laughing non-stop about ice-cream and nothing at all. I blew gigantic bubbles on a beach, and I climbed Camden’s canal locks, in a boat full of haunted teddy bears. I’ve spent my Saturday mornings hearing facts about forgotten film stars, serving up tea for a community of people who are facing homelessness. If Spotify Wrapped also counted the amount of time I’ve spent talking to my friends over voice note, it would add up to days, if not weeks.

I have a full life.

And… here’s the part I’m not really meant to say out loud: I have been slightly bored in children’s company.

I thought I wanted children all throughout my teens, my twenties, and into my thirties. I wanted marriage, I wanted children. I wanted my life to look like how I was told it should look. So, after many white wine fuelled arguments at weddings, when I felt the expectation of others weighing down on me, I got married.

I woke up on my honeymoon and I wondered, why, why am I married?

This question was nothing to do with the man asleep beside me. He still sleeps beside me. He’s the right decision. But I realised my aims for marriage were less to do with him and more to do with proving something. Proving that I was chosen, that I was valuable.

At 14, I sat in a circle to play spin the bottle. Two boys got up and refused to play. Simply because I was there. Because I was so unkissable. Because I was so repellent.

This stayed with me. This, along with all the messages that a woman’s value lies in how appealing she is to men; if she is not chosen, she is “left on the shelf.” At those weddings, when people asked me “so… when will it be you two?” I did not hear small talk, I heard: “you won’t manage to get him to marry you, did you really think that you, you, would ever be chosen?”

Inside, at times, I’m still that rejected 14-year-old, desperate to be kissed.

I got married. I was chosen. And with that, with getting what I thought I wanted, I realised I had been fed a lie.

My value did not lie in that ring on my finger, I did not have to check boxes in order to be worthy. I love a man and he loves me, but that is only a percentage of who I am, what makes me special.

It led me to wonder, what else had I been lied about? The answer was: motherhood.

As that’s the next step, isn’t it? First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a golden carriage. We sang that to our dolls, it still rings in so many of our heads.

I began to take an inventory of my past. Think about the things I’d lustily chased, and thrown my all into, all the things I’d achieved. None of them involved a baby. I prioritised so much more.

Today, I know my decision was right. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling wrong sometimes. As Self Esteem says in this Guardian profile: “there’s this person I should be, and I’m not, and I hate myself for that.”

There’s always going to be dolls, there’s always going to be car adverts. There will always be short-sharp bursts of sadness, the grief of a life not lived, an optical illusion of a happiness that isn’t real, or right for me.

I have built a life that suits me. I think this year is going to be complicated, I have to keep reminding myself of this. A life that, had I been aware of it as an option at seven-years-old, I would have played with: the doll of who I am today, almost 40, fully happy.

Thank you for reading, I find this topic quite difficult to write about as everyone’s circumstances are so unique and I’m aware it can cause others pain, particularly if you want to be a mother, but, because of circumstance you’re struggling or can’t. The messaging then, that’s all around, is so much more painful and I’m sending you a lot of love.

If you related to this, or think someone you know might, please do share with others. Below are some other pieces of writing on the subject…