A great post by Jess at My Path To Mommyhood really made me think today.
She talks in part about the kind of comments you receive when you’ve been trying to build a family for a long time without success. In terms of sensitivity levels, discussing options with someone in this position is as volatile a minefield as offering well-meaning advice to someone with a terminal illness. There’s a good reason the Internet is full of Top Ten Things not to say to people struggling to have children.
But living childfree is the one option that no platitude-bearer or advice-giver dares to mention, even if it’s clear that the person is suffering mentally and physically, and might be thinking about exiting the rabbit-hole of infertility treatment or quitting the interminable adoption process. I suppose others who are also stuck in limbo want to project their own fears and longings onto you and can’t countenance someone else giving up. Maybe parents just feel unqualified to suggest it. Perhaps it’s impossible to judge whether the person is ready to hear it.
In the face of my own reluctance to continue treatment, nobody – not the doctors giving out 5% chances of success, not the professional counsellor who told me I don’t know what I’d do without my daughters, not the friends and family listening to how ambivalent I felt about fertility treatment and adoption – ever mentioned opting to live without children.
In 2017, should the possibility of a childfree life after infertility really be The Great Unmentionable? Surely we’re more advanced than that?
Christy in Jess’s comments sums it up pretty accurately when she says:
“Too often, this option is seen in the same light we view death.”
That made me gasp, and then I thought: well, yeah, I’ve been writing similar things for six months now.
As a person living childfree after infertility it does piss me off; for once I’m not going to mince my words. In order for people in the IF community to feel better about this, something needs to change, but where do you start, and how? And is a change even possible, at all?
Different Shores 
You are entirely right. Something has got to change. I think editors have some responsibility in commissioning/accepting pieces like yours and from others within the IF community (insofar as they identify themselves as such) . The variety of blogging voices and experiences feels niche and taboo while being the only few sources that illuminate the dark corners conventional chat doesn’t veer near. If part of the fear or reluctance to do this is the possibility of presenting simple narratives or a uniform experience, it’s a cop-out; that’s already been the problem for too long.
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Thanks Dept. I am feeling very niche right now and I had a very ranty Monday so I appreciate your words
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Reblogged this on department of speculation and commented:
A consistently great writer poses some essential questions we don’t hear asked often enough
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Whole comment eaten by my phone. So here’s the short version.
I do think it’s possible. I already think it’s being done by people like you and Jess (and many others in the growing Silent Sorority). The trick now is getting others to a point where they are able to actually listen. Honestly, that’s going to be the hardest part and I don’t know how to do that. What I do know is that you should continue sharing your story as bravely as you have and keep asking the questions that makes others uncomfortable. Learning requires discomfort. It also means you’re getting through.
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Thanks Christy! Damn those phones, forever delighting in destroying our long comments. I agree: how to get people to engage, if they don’t want to engage, or can’t?
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Great post — thank you so much for linking to mine! It does strike me that no one offers up living child free as an option, especially in the clinic side. My counselor is actually phenomenal and has been pinging me on this issue for years (kind of hard to write that, that it’s been a possibility for years that this parenthood thing might not work out) — which I very much appreciate. But most other people don’t want to hear of it. They definitely don’t want ME to bring it up — how unhopeful! how dire! Ugh. I wish that clinics had “After” mentors who could speak to different options — people who conceived with donor material, people who adopted, and people who live childfree. I wish they were all presented equally. I wish that there were more mentors in that area so that you could see that it is an option that need not be mourned like a death — not to say that it won’t be hard, but that it’s not some sad life that needs to be hushed. I wish it wasn’t The Great Unmentionable. For me, it’s essential to to have mentors (hope it’s not creepy that I consider you one) — people who are living childfree at various points of making that decision (or having it made for them) and who write about it and live good lives, without parenting. I feel like it brought me a sense of peace to listen to this perspective and explore it not as a worst-case scenario but another option, another way to resolve this incredibly long and disappointing journey. In a way it feels like freedom to feel that living childfree is another option at my disposal, and it’s not a nightmare scenario.
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Jess I LOVE the mentor idea – I myself would train for that and become one, if it were a real-life possibility. How shortsighted of clinics and the likes not to consider it – it’s a brilliant idea. And oh I love that you called me a mentor – that cheered me up and will spur me on.
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“Where do you start, and how? And is change even possible?” These are good questions. I don’t have an answer. All I know to do is to continue to do what we are doing now. Writing about our lives, sharing views, and taking down stereotypes and misconceptions, one by one, as people utter them to us.
I do think we’re a little more advanced than the case where the childfree life is the Great Unmentionable. Not very far advanced at all, but I like to think that it is a little better than death! Just writing that makes me sad though. And I want to roll my eyes!
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I’m with you there, Mali
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It does seem to be incredibly hard for some people to accept a person’s choice to remain childfree. You read about women who want some sort of permanent treatment to rule out kids and doctor’s refusing on the grounds that they might change their minds. A friend of my sisters doesn’t ever want children and she said it would be easier if she wasn’t able to have them as other people would accept that easier then!
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It’s definitely a divisive subject fraught with volatile opinions – I find it fascinating.
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Great post and great questions! I think that asking these questions is the very beginning of change, even if we do not have the answers yet!
I will catch up on what Jess wrote now :-)!
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Thanks Elaine!
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I think it’s getting more accepted to hear (and listen to) childfree voices, sometimes even in the mainstream. And I think people will change the way they think by listening. I think we’re culturally-driven to keep making suggestions/offering support that points toward the person’s goal. So if the person is talking about family building, they’re going to suggest a bunch of mainstream options. If the person is talking about resolving infertility, it should pop up as an option. The fact that it doesn’t says there is still a long way to go.
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I am so glad that people write on this topic. They pulled me out of a dark hole, and maybe, just maybe, I (and you) can do the same for others too. I honestly wish that I’d been able to listen to the voices of this path sooner. It would have saved me a ton of heartache.
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Hearing things like that keeps me going, BnB
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How interesting that this topic is still being discussed as a ‘Great Unmentionable’ — particularly as I sit on the eve of my 10 year anniversary of first writing about this topic. I can’t be 100% sure but I can safely say with 98.9% certainty this blog post … the first from our once Silent Sorority was the first ever written on the topic: http://www.coming2terms.com/2007/02/03/just-the-beginning/
I don’t know whether to be stunned at how little progress has been made or more determined to amp up the volume. Perhaps a little of both. Thank you, all, for continuing to acknowledge and discuss this…
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Wow. I could have written these very words myself, today (from your 2007 post): “There are lots of discussions out there involving those in the midst of infertility treatments, but I think there is much to be aired and shared about what happens when it’s clear that no amount of money, medicine or prayer is going to produce the impossible.” This still sums up the situation. It makes me more determined to amp up the volume, I think, even though on some days my voice just feels lost amongst the tumbleweeds. Every interaction I have from others living the same life encourages me, though. Thanks so much for posting that link: poignant and important.
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I don’t know… On the one hand, the difference in the number of outlets & voices speaking out on this topic has increased dramatically in the almost 10 (!!) years I’ve been blogging, and 15+ years since I abandoned fertility treatment. There are so many more supportive resources available for those who find themselves considering this path, and that’s encouraging. On the other hand, as Pamela noted above, the fact that most people (inside & outside the infertility community) still think it’s the Great Unmentionable shows we still have a long way to go. 😦
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Maybe things will really change in a couple of decades when we hit that oft-spoken of crisis of a huge number of people ageing without offspring: maybe governments will recognize the need to divert a bit of their obsessive focus on families and children in another direction; this in turn might alleviate some of the “fear” people experience about ending up without kids. Here’s hoping.
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Some food for thought. i think The Great Unmentionable has to come from the person experiencing infertility to arrive at that decision if it’s best for them. Someone did suggest it to me, and I did not accept it. That person who told me that had tried for years and miscarried at 20 weeks. So I agree with you that people project their attitudes and experiences on other people’s situations. I personally would be devastated if someone said that to me. But I’m believing it will happen for me.
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It’s a very sensitive minefield: probably always will be. Maybe it’s just the nature of the situation and will never change? Hard to say.
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