A Childless Daughter That Is A Motherless Child

The women who have gone through their fertile years escaping the world of motherhood, are cut from the same cloth. I find that the women who do not want children, felt this deep within their soul early in their life when they were in their late teenage years.

I was 17 or 18 years old when I heard the words coming from my own mouth, conceived from every fiber of my being, announcing to my girlfriends "There's no way I'm having kids! I'm not having them destroy my internal organs and my body, and then they hate me when they get older." I usually softened the blow with "Maybe I'll adopt a 5 year old. That way they're already potty trained and have an idea between right and wrong by that age. They're already broken in."

I was interrogated by the older women in my family on multiple occasions. Women I respected. All of those women had children, and from what I could tell from their outward appearances, cherished motherhood like an Olympian cherishes a gold medal. Something that they won because of the mere fact that they were born with a uterus. Perhaps it is a reflection or, more measurably, a definition of a woman from their era. They all were children of the 1930's.

They most probably were virgins when they married and that's one of the reasons they married so young. But, also that contributed to the pattern simply for being their mother's daughter, and was conditioned into their psyche at a very young age. The formula was to find a man, marry him, have sex for the first time, keep having sex until your uterus almost falls out from multiple births, and during all that, stay home and clean the house until your fingers bleed and still never, ever fail to have dinner ready at the exact same time every day for the rest of your natural life.

My mother respected my choice, yet even she cautiously questioned my ideology when I was old enough to have formed an opinion on the subject of motherhood. I'm sure she held out hope that my feelings would change when I married when I was 26. When I divorced at 31, I could see that happy glow she once had when I got married to a defeated and deflated sag in her demeanor as if I popped her future "It's a Boy!" or "It's a Girl!" balloon that she started inflating the minute I pledged "I do" when subconsciously, I was probably internally screaming "What the hell are you doing, you fool?"

Fortunately for her, she had two other daughters to help fulfill her biological yearning to be someone's grandmother since she knew I wouldn't be the daughter to fill that void in her golden years. She was with us long enough to enjoy her three grandsons and one granddaughter. She passed away on Pearl Harbor Day 2012 right in front of my eyes. My heart broke and I sobbed while begging for forgiveness from torturing her with my know-it-all, bratty attitude and knack of getting my own way when I was a child. I was 41 years old when she died and realized that we had only become friends as women during the last six years of her life by putting all the past crap behind us.

I am 50 now and can reassure the women who knew their feelings of choosing non motherhood early, that your feelings do not sway...at least mine have not. 30 years of having to validate my feelings to family, friends, and strangers alike from the same questions after they recover from shock from learning them in the first place. I do not feel it is an annoyance or an intrusion of privacy. I rather feel that I'm advocating and speaking for all women who feel they don't want motherhood for their own validated reasons.

I personally don't understand why a lot of women have children when they are too young and then yell at their kids expecting the child to react differently when they should've realized that the retail cost of a condom was so much cheaper! Buying a condom in the heat of the moment would've saved their sanity and individuality.

My exhusband new my feelings, but I could tell that sometimes he thought I was just being stubborn and acting like a radical feminist. Like him though, I began to double guess myself and thought my feelings might also change because of the marriage. Turned out HE was the child that I never wanted. Replete with not knowing how to clean, cook, do laundry, yet he knew how to play video games morning, noon, and night! In essence, that short-lived marital experience only validated my feelings even further.

Fortunately, I met a man whose views of fatherhood are virtually aligned with mine of motherhood. He saw fatherhood from an economic standpoint. In his teenage years, he already knew the cost of having children was exorbitant and felt that taking on the responsibility was more than he was willing to risk. He also has realistic views of marriage. He has seen many of his friends' marriages fail. We've been together 18.5 years now and still not married. He is a wonderful cook, he can clean, he knows how to use a vacuum as well as a laundry machine. He does everything with childish enthusiasm which we know would make him a fantastic father, but just like me, he'd rather have them come out of the box ready to learn how to kick a soccer ball. We know that we eventually will go to a judge to have our relationship legalized, but only to be able to make life ending decisions for each other's physical health and ultimately to inherit each other's debt.

The stereotypes and demands on women with regard to motherhood need to change, but I don't think they will. At least not in my lifetime. Much like motherhood, the conversation is exhausting.