Carolyn Hax and Being Without Children

Carolyn Hax gets it.  Usually, that is.  I mean, the woman isn’t a robot.  She sometimes overlooks things, but on the whole, she gets it.  I loved her explanation of what it means to live childfree after infertility in a recent column.  I saved this until Thanksgiving was over because I didn’t want it to get buried in the holiday posts.

The situation was a same-sex couple: one wanted a child, the advice seeker didn’t.  They would clearly need assistance to conceive, so let’s try-but-not-try was out of the question.  They decided to not have a child, and the advice seeker stated: I see this as nothing more than sticking to our default state of childlessness, but my partner clearly thinks I have gotten my way and feels owed something in return.

Advice seeker wonders why getting a pet wasn’t a reasonable substitution.  Carolyn gently explained what the questioner couldn’t understand.

That they weren’t sticking a default state because her partner had been in a different state.  Yes, before and after were both without a child, but before — for the partner — included a future where she was a mother.  And after — for the partner — was a future where she was no longer a possible mother.  I often see people write that they didn’t lose anything, so they don’t know how to mourn, but Hax points that people DO lose something: they lose their future self.  No small loss.

Hax states:

Your decision lopped off your partner’s expected life path. You came to it mutually, yes, but in areas where there is no compromise, just either-or, even a mutual decision means one of you 100 percent gets your way. You did here. This is not just something your partner “thinks.”

But maybe the most important point of all:

You can’t provide a substitute for a child. You didn’t choose a different thing, you chose a different life.

That is IT.  There is no substitute, which is why there is no simple way to “get over it” or “move on.”  You need to mourn because there is nothing else that can fill a child-sized hole except a child.  That’s not to say you will forever feel a breeze blowing through you, but just that it’s an actual loss that needs to be recognized by others and mourned by the person/couple experiencing the loss.

And that concept that it impacts your life.  It changes your life path.  And that is no small thing, too.  It needs to be acknowledged.  Not pitied but acknowledged because we should recognize people’s life changing events.

Hax tells the question asker, your partner is grieving.  And with this simple statement, she opens the door to empathy.  To care.  To offering a kind word and a hug and not an opinion.