The Better Half

There's something missing from my last post.  In a committed relationship, it takes two people to make the important decisions.  So where is Ken in all this?

Ken's rule is that I can write anything about him in my blog, as long as it's true.  I was going to leave him out of the discussion, based on the urge to protect him from being blamed or scapegoated, but this topic is incomplete without him.

The bottom line for Ken is: he doesn't want to have kids.  He doesn't have moments of waffling, when he's around adorable babies or watching perfect families share warm moments on TV.  He doesn't even want to produce offspring as insurance against being alone in his old age.

Why is he so unmoved by the prospect of raising a family?  Because he spent too much time taking care of other people in his youth, and now he wants to have his life to himself.

Ken's older half-brother, now 38 to Ken's 34, is both physically and mentally disabled.  He has cerebral palsy, and has the intellectual age of a four-year-old, approximately.  Ken was made responsible for looking after his older brother, Gabe, ever since he can remember.  

Ken and Gabe's parents decided to put Gabe into the regular school system with other kids close to his age, perhaps in the hopes that this would stimulate his development.  Ken went to the same school.  Almost every day, the older kids would make fun of Gabe and push him around.  And every time, Ken would step in to try to defend his older brother - from the bigger kids.  Ken took abuse, both verbal and physical, from these older kids almost every day of his early school years.

He told his parents what was happening.  They were going through a hippie phase.  Their response: they advised Ken to be a pacifist.  I get angry every time I think about it.  They let him continue going to school to get beat up by older kids every day.  What's worse - the pummeling, or knowing that your parents aren't going to help you deal with it?

Ken didn't even get time off during summers.  Instead of enjoying leisure or having fun at summer camp, he was signed up by his parents as a volunteer for Gabe's "special" camp.  He spent all his summers helping disabled kids, who didn't all have sweet and sunny dispositions.  

When he grew to young adulthood, Ken often felt lost in the world.  He never had a chance to live for himself, to develop his own identity.  He didn't get a chance to try things out and decide what he liked or disliked, like most kids.  He started from a disadvantage, and he still feels like he's trying to catch up.

As if this wasn't enough, Ken's dad got really sick in 1999.  When I first met Ken, I was told that his dad was dying of cancer.  For two whole years, Ken's dad hovered at death's doorstep.  When he finally overcame the cancer, his liver and kidneys shut down due to a drug interaction, and he almost died from organ failure.

Ken took a minimum-wage job with flexible hours so that he could care for his father.  He spent every weekend for a year driving his dad to Buffalo and back again for special cancer treatments.  He couldn't afford to stay in a hotel while his dad spent the night in hospital, so he'd drive back home with just enough time to sleep, and then leave early the next morning to drive back, pick his dad up, and drive him back to Toronto again by nightfall.

When the cancer treatments were done, Ken spent hours by his dad's hospital bedside, throughout another whole year, praying and giving his dad hands-on energy healing.  His dad was in the palliative care ward at St. Michael's hospital. It's almost unheard of for patients to leave that ward alive, once they've been transferred in.  But Ken's dad inexplicably recovered.  His organs, slowly but surely, regenerated and began to work again.  The doctors called it a miracle.  Ken's dad attributes it to the hours of prayer and energy transfer.

Obviously, Ken is an incredibly caring and devoted man, when it comes to his loved ones.  No detail is too big or too small for him to attend to.  He has always treated me like royalty.

When we were first dating, he would bring me armloads of roses.  One dozen was never enough.  He would bring two or three dozen, in different colours.  I had vases all around my little apartment that were constantly filled.  He kept track of when the blooms would start wilting, and brought replacements.  I didn't know this at the time, but he sold almost his entire CD collection to the used CD store to pay for all the flowers.

Nothing much has changed to this day.  Ken bends himself over backwards to be the best husband he can possibly be.  He listens.  He volunteers backrubs.  He cooks fantastic feasts just for the two of us, and then insists on doing the dishes too.  He does more than his share of the housework.  He tucks a blanket around me while I'm on the sofa, watching TV.

Sure, he's not perfect.  We have fights a few times a year.  We get on each others' nerves sometimes.  But boy does he aim high!  I trust him completely and I never doubt his love.

When I occasionally bring up my broody impulses, he meets my eyes, and says with all the generosity he can muster: "I'd be a Dad for you.  I'd do my best."  But I know that he's burned out on that intensity of care-giving, maybe for the rest of his life.  A baby screaming at all hours of the night, financial stress, disagreements on parenting: I fear it would all be too much.  That could be what it takes to break us up.

So this is what it feels like: if love and happiness were money, I have been scrimping and saving all my life to finally amass a small personal fortune, i.e. my relationship with Ken.  I have a chance to gamble the whole thing on one spin of a roulette wheel.  Red doubles up my love and happiness.  Black - I lose it all.  It truly could go either way.

I'm not a gambler.  I never play the lottery: neither the pick-your-numbers variety nor scratch 'n' lose.  And I surely have no desire to struggle as a single mom.

If Ken had even 50% enthusiasm for being a parent, we could put that together with my 50% and maybe make a go of it.  But as it is, between the two of us I just don't think we have enough. 

Of course, I could turn around and change my mind tomorrow.  The urges of biology are powerful.  I can feel the undertow of maternal instinct trying to pull my logic off-balance.  In the end, only God knows what the future has in store.  Either way, I'm in His* hands.

*(His/Her/Its as you prefer.)

Broody Hen

It took me many years, but I have reached a point of being 99% satisfied with my non-parental status. I have written before about this decision.

But every once in a while, maybe once or twice a year, I get all broody. It's typical for this to happen over the Christmas holidays, when families with young children all seem so magically happy. I spend time with my grandparents, and see what joy their children and grand-children bring to their lives. I worry about being old and alone, with no one to look after me.

For the past week, I went through this familiar emotional cycle. I don't like to talk about it, because the answer most people will give me is "No problem! There's still time! Hurry up and have a baby!" That's not what I need to hear. I KNOW in my gut that having a child would not be a good idea for Ken and I. It's just not an easy decision to live with all the time. Just like having kids isn't always easy, but that doesn't mean you give them up for adoption because you've had a bad week.

Ken and I are like two playing cards, leaning up against each other to form a somewhat stable triangle. Neither one of us is consistently "the strong one". We take turns supporting each other through life's trials. We both came from childhoods that were difficult, and we're both sensitive, some would say oversensitive, emotionally, psychically, and physically. Just getting through life as it is now often overtaxes our resources. We can comfortably look after ourselves and each other, but start adding demands on top of that and the effort can only be maintained for a few weeks or months before either of us might start to crumble. I speak from experience.

If I try to willpower my way through more than I can handle, my body starts to seriously malfunction. I have a knack for somatizing my feelings.

I have a history of depressive phases, which can be triggered by too much stress and insufficient sleep. I think I'd be the perfect candidate for a truly horrifying post-partum depression.

In a perfect world, if I could trust myself to be as resilient and adaptable as I would like to be in theory, I would love to experience motherhood. Some people have told me that I should take the plunge, because I'll be surprised at what I can accomplish, when I have to. In my life it's most often worked the other way. I've optimistically made grand plans, assuming that because I'm committed to my goals I will be able to tolerate any hardship to achieve them. I truly believed that if my mind could conceive it and my heart could believe it, I could achieve it. I overestimated myself time after time. Experience proves that the best of intentions, positive thinking, and all my willpower (and trust me, I'm stubborn!) can't overcome my limitations.

Therefore, once again I must confirm to myself the wisdom of not becoming a parent. I'd rather keep the hard-won stability and happiness that I've finally achieved, than risk it all for a high-stakes gamble. In the meantime I'll keep volunteering at Babyland, and satisfy some of my maternal instincts that way. I promise not to steal any of the babies.

Choice

I have always felt jealous of women who unambiguously knew their reproductive destiny from a young age. I always teetered on the fence. I have never had that sense that some women speak of, that they “always knew” that they were meant to be a mom, or not.

Until I was 21, I just assumed that I would marry and have children. Then I was exposed to the concept of alternate choices, and suddenly I felt wonderfully free. At that time I was engaged to my first husband, and he shared my feelings. We declared our intentions to the important people in our lives. Of course, no one older than us took us seriously.

When I got to be around 26, I reconsidered again. I had been married for 3 years to my high school sweetheart, and we were preparing to move into a house that we would share with his mother. What better opportunity could there be? I brought up the subject in a very tentative way on a few occasions, but he was not keen on the idea. Now I thank my lucky stars that we never had a child, considering the very painful divorce that followed when I was 28. (The split was not caused by reproductive conflicts.)

Shortly after I moved out, one of my best friends announced that she was expecting. This was the first child in my group of friends, but others were soon to follow. I went through agonies of longing to participate in this rite of passage. I felt left out, lesser than, and a failure, especially since I was still brushing off the dust of a ruined marriage. I went to a high school reunion where it seemed that every woman but me was pushing a baby carriage.

I began a new long-term relationship, and for the next five years I spent endless hours going around in circles in my head. Did I want the experience of parenthood? Was I ready to devote so much of myself to another being? Could I handle the challenges of motherhood on top of the already substantial health and emotional challenges I was already facing? Would my new beau, who was not enthused about fatherhood, be able to accommodate the change, or would it tear us apart? Did I really want a real baby, with all the attendant demands and concerns, or was I just chasing fairytale, white-picket-fence dreams from my girlhood?

I started reading, finding every book I could that dealt with the realities of parenthood and reproductive choices. Many women of the childfree lifestyle stated: “When I see a mom dealing with a crying baby or a Terrible Twos tantrum, I just shake my head and thank God that that’s not my life.” When I see a scene where a parent is having a hard time with their child, I feel relief, and I also feel jealousy, mixed in equal parts. After all, parenthood is a mix of everything from the ecstatically wonderful to the supremely awful. You can’t pick just half and call it the whole truth.

In the end, I decided that given the circumstances of my life, it was best for me to remain childless (or childfree, if you prefer). If my circumstances had been different, I might have made a different choice. I have achieved as much peace as I ever will with my decision. I believe with all my heart that I made the right choice, and yet I also grieve what I had to let go of to get here. Dreams, a sense of belonging, the love of my own child, all of these and more.

I wanted to put this out in the public realm, because there might be someone else out there with a similar story, who can find comfort in my words. I have always felt so alone in this experience.

No Kidding

I am 35 years old, in a stable relationship, with no children and with no plans for children. People often ask me: why?

To the best of my knowledge, I could conceive if I wanted to. And there is a part of me that desperately would love to raise a family. The miracle of new life, the joys of first smiles and first steps - who can resist the warmth of those glowing moments? Kids can be super-awesome: spontaneous, loving, and bursting with sunshiney energy.

The thing is, you need an awful lot of resources to raise a kid. Physical, financial, and emotional resources. And, after years of agonizing indecision, I finally concluded that I do not personally have the resources to raise a child in a way that would be truly beneficial to the child, to myself, and to the world at large. A lot of people don't enjoy their children much, and I didn't want to become one of them.

I had the kind of childhood to which withdrawal was a natural response. I didn't get the love and emotional support that kids need. I had to keep a sharp eye on the grownups and try to please them or disappear much of the time. Then I got married and took those same patterns into my first marriage. I finally moved out on my own when I was 28. Then I had a few years of desperate and almost deadly depressions as I tried to sort myself out.

I'm finally happy with myself and my life. I'm still learning to support myself emotionally: to not be scared all the time and not to make myself disappear. There are little challenges each day, and I feel proud when I can handle them all. Things that would be small to an average person can exhaust me. Raising a child is a monumental task even for someone who is relatively emotionally healthy; I don't believe that I could enjoy the challenge or cope with it well enough. I suspect we'd all be miserable.

My husband Ken, let's just say that he has his own story, and his bottom line is the same.

I read a lot of blogs written by women my age who are raising children, because I want to understand what their lives are like. I am fascinated by their stories. After ten years of longings and indecision, I finally feel at peace with my choice. I have a lot of respect for the parents out there who are putting their hearts and souls into loving their kids. And for the responsible non-parents. Courage and love to all of us on our chosen paths!