"We can grieve something we've never had"

Part one of my interview with Ruby Warrington, author of Women Without Kids...

Thank you so much for reading Crocuses In The Snow. I appreciate you! I wrote this introduction on the tube home from chatting with Ruby Warrington whose book Women Without Kids landed, hardback thud, into my life at just the right time. I am SO HAPPY she agreed to talk to me, and I hope you enjoy our conversation. It’s a whole mix of stuff and, even if you have children yourself, I think you’ll still find it interesting - particularly as we delve into different types of grief (as is always my aim with this letter, to discuss grief that’s unexpected.)

I’ve written a lot about this topic in the past. There’s so much to cover, so if you’re interested you can read “how will I ever know if I want kids” here and my discussion of the grief I have been feeling regarding this decision here.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

My cat is currently playing catch with one of my air pods, and my eyes are too red-wine-and-chips tired to read my book so I’m left, here, on this screeching tube train with just the tumble and reverse of my own thoughts. As, if my twenties were dominated by avoidance then my thirties have been dominated by questioning.

For most of my twenties (and early thirties) I was like Sonic The Hedgehog, racing and running after gold rings - shiny, sought after things that I was told to want. The career. The house. The husband. Even adventure felt like a check-box. I remember an old friend of mine embarking on a year-out in his late twenties, “I have to now,” he said. “Before kids come along and ruin it all.”

Back then, I also thought children were my next level… but I resented his way of thinking. I didn’t (and still don’t) think that having children would ‘ruin’ things. They’re a wonderful adventure of their own. But I did begin to question why, if my friend was so convinced that having kids = being boring, he wanted them. Did he really want them? Or had he been told to want them?

I can’t answer that, and I don’t want to make an assumption. I just wanted to use that conversation as an example of how much pressure we pile on that one decade (thereabouts as this spills over to our thirties too) to carve out a career, meet the love of our life, buy a house, travel… all so as to prepare ourselves for children. This planned pressure is felt by all. My friend certainly felt it. But the pressure on women to be mothers is a lot heavier.

So slowly (very, very slowly) I began to question did I really want all that I was chasing? Was I being pressured and pushed down a path that wasn’t the right one for me?

I felt as if there were two types of people: the resolutely sure, nope-no-kids-for-me type and the nurturing mother or soon-to-be mother. I was in between. I didn’t know. Sometimes, despite having made a decision to be child-free, I (whispers it) still don’t know.

My indecision today is different from before. It’s less frequent for one thing, and it’s driven by different factors. Before it was driven by fear: fear of being left behind as my friends began families of their own; fear of missing out on one of life’s most wonderful experiences; fear of future regret…

Today that indecision surrounds the ‘what next?’ If I’m not a mother, then who am I? For so long we’ve been told that womanhood = motherhood. It’s tied to our self-worth and it’s why so many women feel that they have ‘failed’ if they do not, for whatever reason, become a parent. We have been fed so many false ideals.

It’s this, and so much more, that Ruby is examining in her book. She is not criticising or belittling mothers, or other people’s choices, instead she’s digging into why, for so long, motherhood has been held up as the only way to live a happy, complete life. Why is it expected of women? Where have those messages come from? Why do we pressure women to become mothers… when our governments don’t offer them sufficient financial, or societal support? What can we do to change that? How can we break away from the binary of parent or non-parent and instead accept that becoming a mother is complicated, individual and, often, out of our control?

I’ve had a lot of these questions floating around my head for a long time. But I found it hard to find the answers. Ruby, with her tireless research, has managed (or at least attempted to manage… as these are big questions, often with no right or wrong conclusion) to do so. I feel incredibly lucky to have met her, and be bringing our conversation to you all. But please do buy her book! There’s so much she covers that I can barely touch on… you can find it here.

I think for a long time I struggled with the idea that this being child-free something that I could grieve, as it was - ultimately - something that was my choice. But what your book made me recognise is that within this society where motherhood = womanhood I probably will be confronted with what I have “lost” a lot and that it’s OK if I feel sad about that. I wondered what the process of grief looked like for you? Was there a point in in your journey when you begun to recognise yourself as grieving certain things? 

I was reflecting recently that I’ve never grieved anyone, as I’ve never lost anyone. A couple of things came up: I realised I’ve lost all my grandparents but I wasn’t close enough to any of them to grieve them. With that I realised, particularly as I began to look into my family background for this book, that I’ve never really had that grounding, foundational relationship [of what we’re told a family should look like.] How you can grieve not just something you have lost, but something that you never had in the first place.

I particularly appreciated the line “to want a family is not to want to be a mother.” I found it really useful to remind myself that over Easter weekend when I could see ‘traditional’ families everywhere. I think even before I made this decision I struggled as my own family doesn’t look like how we’re told families should look, why do you think this 2.4 ideal is so heavily pushed? 

It’s been held up as the ideal for so long. There are so many representations of, in media and in popular culture, ‘what a family is’. Not experiencing that can leave us feeling like there’s something wrong with us, as that’s the power of media and the power of culture. We aspire to what we see and we hold ourselves up to what’s represented within this heteronormative, patriarchal, paradigm. When I don’t think [what we see] reflects the experience of the majority of people!

In my research I discovered that 80% of people think that they come from a dysfunctional family. Even where it looks on the outside to be the perfect cookie cutter family, behind the scenes there could be a lot of stuff going on.

A huge part of this conversation about women without kids is what really is a family? For so long it’s been about our biological relatives and I think the shift [should be] that a family is about kinship. It’s about the relationships where feel supported and nurtured and lots of people don’t get that from their biological family.

Another thing that resonated with me was this idea that we’re not grown up without children. I’ve definitely felt that and it’s impacted my relationship with alcohol, I partied too hard thinking ‘well if this is how everyone sees me, a partying Peter Pan type’ I’ll push myself to be that. Why do we equate motherhood with adulthood? And what can we do to break through that idea? 

Parenthood is [held up as] the ultimate example of being responsible and putting someone else’s needs before your own. Some people would say that constitutes maturity… but there are plenty of people who have children who are not emotionally mature enough to parent in that way. They might be mature enough to meet their physical and material needs but perhaps not the child’s emotional needs. Because perhaps they don’t have the emotional maturity themselves. I think it’s very limited and old fashioned thinking to say that you’re not really grown up until you have a child.

But with that said, I did a launch event with Rachel Cargle, and this question came up from the audience and she said ‘but you know what’s great, I still get to be childlike!’ Which I think is so interesting, as there does become a point where we value “immaturity” in older people, [we say] ‘they’re so youthful, they’re so young, they’re up for it’. She was making a comment that there’s value to retaining that youthfulness and open mindedness.

There are also so many experiences that make us grow up and I think grief is one of them. Touching base on the things that we have lost, and coming to terms with that, is an extremely maturing process. In my previous book Sober Curious I discuss how I definitely grieved my drinking days, as my non drinking self is a hell of a lot more serious. There are a multitude of life experiences that grow us up and having children can be one of them. But it’s by no means the only way. 

When I first began exploring the idea of living a life without children I began to search for my community online. But some of the accounts felt very ‘us vs them’ and were holding up this ideal that I felt, particularly as I have been doing some work on trying to untangle how much of my wants and needs have been driven by capitalism, wasn’t fulfilling either…

I’ve never been able to relate to that content either, as I felt it was very one note. All ‘look at all the fabulous things I can do and have and aren’t parents suckers.’ It was like ‘no it’s not that simple and can we stop and stop being so cruel.’

[I think to break free from that] we have to really notice how consumerism has been positioned as the path to fulfilment. I have noticed it in myself, and it’s not a side to myself I like. With the childfree content [they’re] pushing the idea that stuff feels better than love. The idea of self love can also veer into this treat yourself territory.

I guess it’s all tied up in where we place value. I went through a period where I became slightly obsessed by male attention, and ensuring that I looked as ‘hot’ as possible and I felt a lot of shame at this. But then I began to realise it was more to do with this idea of what makes a woman… I had this thought if I’m not hot and I’m not a mother then what use am I?

That’s so tied into “will I be invisible?” It’s the mother/whore complex and plays into that. In chapter four I talk about sexual evolution, that female sexuality is [thought of as] mother or whore.

It’s asking what if we get to own our satisfaction. Tie it to our own self worth and value. There’s so much work to be done. So many of us have been taken advantage of, people have felt entitled to us [sexually] and there’s so much healing to be done in that area. We don’t often discuss motherhood and female sexuality, despite the two being so linked! What does it mean to be truly in control and directing our sexual energy? It’s incredibly individualistic, and how about instead of creating these caraciture ideas of what being sexual is, we instead give everyone permission to self determine in that area?

I’ve just realised how long this is! As our conversation was so wonderful and kept veering into all these different directions. So I’m going to split it into two parts, and release the second half later in this week where Ruby and I discuss how friendships can change when the ones we love become parents, and how that’s a grieving process in itself alongside the link between our relationships with our mothers and this decision.

Also, and I really don’t mean this to sound spoiled as I love writing this newsletter, but to do this interview, transcribe it and write it all up took about two days of work. If you can afford to do so, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. And thank you SO much to everyone who has. It makes publishing pieces like this possible.