Harpy (eBook)

1. HARPIES AND HOME

Most of us first learn about what is possible in life through our family and the culture that we are born into through them. Our families can tether us to our communities, for good or ill. The story of how we feel about home is, naturally, a complex one. It brings with it the first things we learn about ourselves and our place in the world, and how we navigate our way into adulthood. I was raised on the island of Ireland, in the North, during the decades-long violent conflict euphemistically known as the Troubles. This has undoubtedly left it’s mark on me, my family and the people that I grew up with. Motherhood occupied a cultural place that seemed vitally important and all-consuming. When I grew up, it was assumed that anyone who wanted a different kind of life moved away, destined for Christmas pick-ups at the airport on flying visits and brief, fraught conversations over roast potatoes.

It is quite remarkable that so many women choose a childfree life, given how robustly we get the message that there is only one decent way to live. I want to explore the idea of the family, even though I know this can be a particularly charged topic. What I want us to think about is how we get the message that there is one superior path or are never presented with an alternative – despite this, many of us still pursue a life without children. Sara Ahmed details how it feels when you choose a way of living that’s not like the people around you: ‘Just opening up room for different ways of living a life can be experienced by others as snap. You can become a killjoy just by saying: life does not have to be like this, or to be This.’1 By snap, Ahmed refers to a point where something changes, for good, in which perception and reality can no longer hold together. I’ve spoken to women for whom their decision to live without children has led to this kind of snap and, often, estrangement from their families.

Women swim against the cultural tide if they live a life without children despite the overwhelming pressure from their family and communities to just ‘get on with it’ and have a family. One interviewee offered the advice to ‘Try to disentangle cultural and societal pressures from your own desires.’ The word ‘try’ here is important – the way that we make sense of our intimate lives is informed by our families and cultures of origin and this is tricky conditioning to wiggle free of. It often leads to disappointing the people you care about the most. Another interviewee offered the insightful comment that: ‘Just because society or your great aunt are weird about it doesn’t mean it’s a weird decision, besides when has society ever been kind to or right about women?’ What they articulate is how to live against the overwhelming perception that there is something wrong with you in a society that demands so much of women whether they are mothers or not. I want us to be aware of some of the things that are said in places that we are meant to call home, and then how these sentiments broaden out into our wider communities, and finally the ways in which the communities that raised us want to keep us in our place with restrictive laws around reproductive freedom. Whether you were raised with outright hostility, estrangement or a nagging sense that you didn’t fit in, many women have had similar experiences. It makes it no less painful but it gives us common ground.

Some of the remarks women have reported coming from family members have been exceptionally hurtful – these are not just ambiguous comments taken the wrong way, but pointed barbs intended to wound. For example: ‘I was once told I was brought on this earth to reproduce and who am I to take that away.’ Nearly every woman I have spoken to has had at least one comment made to them from a family member that would curdle milk. We might take a minute and try to have compassion for someone who cannot imagine another way to live and lashes out at difference. No one rages at a loved one if they are happy in themselves. But, these remarks have a particular ability to hurt when they come from those close to us. I was quite taken aback by some of the comments women reported from their closest family members: ‘Without children you are not whole, nor have you ever understood real love.’ These are the sort of comments that we remember, that we internalise and carry with us for life. Mine is a brief aside, dashed off, ‘But you’ll never be happy. Not really.’

Nearly every person who doesn’t have children has at least one sentence that they can recall, word for word, sometimes from decades ago. These are sharper when they come from friends and family. While it’s easier to brush off the outside world, our families can be the places where raw nerves are still felt. One person felt deeply uncomfortable by the manner of questioning: ‘I would prefer we don’t all chat about my womb and who I’m planning or not planning to move in frankly, that feels extremely private and extremely uncomfortable.’ I wondered about the occasions where these remarks took place – was it at Christmas while the mince pies were cooking or over Eid sweets? Did someone melt your head during a happy family occasion like a wedding or christening? There is a challenging current to navigate here – the people asking the question do not care about making us feel uncomfortable in public, but we must not sour the mood with our reply. We master the wan smiles and the diversions through humour. We swallow our tongues but we get the message.

One woman discussed how her childfree life was a subject of painful discussion at every family event that she went to: ‘The fact that I am over the age of 30 and without children is a constant source of frustration and disapproval from almost every paternal family member. It is impossible to attend any function, even a funeral, without being asked if I am either pregnant or planning to have children.’ Reading this, I thought about how exhausting this must be for her to be faced with constant ire at every happy or solemn occasion. Another woman commented that, in her culture, ‘a wife was considered to have failed – her husband, her extended family, herself’ – this was even if she was medically unable to have children. One wonders how a wilful childfree woman might have fared. Women often describe being met with utter incomprehension, sheer bafflement. These are the sharp end of the wedge – the sharp comments, designed to hurt. While they are extreme, they are part of a large picture in which many women feel themselves ill at ease with their families, and the ramifications are long-lasting.

Sometimes the coercion to motherhood is direct and sometimes it’s in the gradual repetition of language that makes the preferred way to live clear: ‘My extended family is a bit more pushy; there’s some weird talk about the family name being continued and about the joy of raising children. Lots of sly nudges and “you’ve got this all to come” when children are discussed.’ An interviewee felt that, to her family, her worth in the world was ‘dependent on who I bring into it’. The message that she received was that she was not enough, that her life was not enough on its own. The experience of repeatedly going home, only to be found wanting, wears many women down and leads to a gradual or sharp alienation from family life. Some women had to bear disapproval from their closest family: ‘My mum is disappointed I don’t have kids – she often says me and [my husband] would make good parents, in a wistful way.’ While most people have to navigate some measure of parental disapproval, this daughter is being asked to take responsibility for a sadness that is not her own. Even to an outsider, it feels too much to bear.

Several women reported that relatives voiced their opinions in no uncertain terms: ‘My mother-in-law did inform me prior to marrying her son that he wanted kids. She found it somewhat difficult to accept that he did not want children. She did not understand why we would bother getting married if not to have children.’ I will discuss romantic relationships in Chapter 2 but I just want to mention here how families, especially in-laws, can monitor and try to police your reproductive life into adulthood. Several women contended not just with the complexities of their own family dynamics but also with what their partner’s circle brought to the party. And while men were often met with offhand comments, it seems to more often fall to women to give an account of their reasons and meet repeated, hostile challenges.

Families often provided a particularly powerful place for the ‘You’ll Change Your Mind’ conversation to happen: ‘I was often met with comments such as “you’re still young, you’ll change your mind when you get older.” Again, there was no you “MIGHT” change your mind; it was always “WHEN” you change your mind.’ Many women have been living with this long-term cognitive dissonance – having the knowledge in their bones that something isn’t right for them yet being repeatedly told that it is.

It was clear, also, that this line of questioning did not stop after menopause: ‘There is not that much pressure on me to go out and try to have children in some way (well I am past that stage physically anyway now) but there is sometimes the implication that having children is the most satisfactory and fulfilling option in life that anyone can choose.’ The idea of being older and these comments...