Telling Women’s Truths: Privilege and Peril

By Kate Kaufmann

By gathering the stories I needed to hear, I found the book I was meant to write.

When you don’t have kids, life unfolds differently than it does for parents. There are no blueprints, only a plethora of possibilities. Always a searcher, I wanted to know how other women like me went about composing their lives once they knew their path didn’t include mothering daughters or sons.

After accepting that kids were not in our future, it was time my former husband and I reconsider our present and our tomorrows. We’d invested years focused on fertility. What now? I wondered. I couldn’t find any guides—human or bookish—for what might be in store. My quest for understanding resulted in Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No, the guide I’d hoped to pluck from the shelf or meet on the street.

Mustering up the courage to ask women what some consider deeply personal questions was the first step in my research process, although I didn’t yet know that’s what I was doing. My ex and I lived in a rural area at the time, where most everyone had children.

During a walk one day with a new friend, I posed the question I dreaded hearing and only rarely asked outright: “Do you have children?” My new friend didn’t and was open to talking. Thus began a series of conversations about how our lives have been affected in so many ways—friendships and family to career options and what we leave behind when we die.

Soon we were gathering small groups of childless and childfree women for conversations about not having kids. Most said they’d never shared their stories before. No one had ever asked. When common themes began to emerge from these conversations, the idea of writing a book was born.

This is where privilege comes in. Over the course of years facilitating these groups, I saw the transformative power of women sharing wisdom through giving voice to their stories. As a fairly organized writer, I sought ways to gather their words more systematically. I developed a detailed interview guide and conducted in depth interviews with a diverse range of women of various ages, partnership status, and geography. Some were women I knew; most were not.

An experienced job interviewer, this was a much more intimate line of inquiry, so I progressed slowly. To assure accuracy and protect us all legally, I asked and received permission to record our sessions. Though it was tedious work, I personally transcribed every interview, which reinforced the remarkable trust each woman had placed in me. Listening carefully to my side of the exchange honed my perceptiveness. I learned how silence could elicit introspection.

I wasn’t prepared for the cascade of experiences and feelings these women shared. I acted as witness to profound decisions and personal discoveries and was entrusted with stories of the many different routes by which women come to not have children.

Some wanted kids and for a variety of reasons—ranging from medical issues to lack of a partner—did not have them. These are considered “childless.” Others made conscious decisions not to have children, likewise for a range of reasons. These we call “childfree.” But I now know reality is not so clear cut.

We are nuanced creatures who shift perspectives based on the realities of our situations and our time of life. I heard from one woman who lost several members of her family in a horrific accident, another whose husband died at war, several who were abused by their partners. These losses affected their non-motherhood in different ways.

I heard from women who dedicated their lives to shaping the characters of young people in their charge—as a nanny, a nun, a professor. Every story was just below the surface waiting to be told, the realities of life narratives captured and acknowledged. I consider these women a community I had the privilege of bringing together on the page. I became the steward of their stories.

Therein lies the peril. Over and over again women described both the positives and negatives of life as non-moms, as well as the fears and hopes they held for their futures.

The choice was mine which parts to include, what to leave out, and how to weave women’s stories together with research findings and my own experiences. I organized material into a narrative that follows the arc of the full lifecycle, an effective structure for comparing and contrasting life experiences and feelings.

I didn’t originally plan to include my own story in the narrative, but it seemed cowardly to remain mute on the sidelines while courageous women told theirs. Fortified by the stories I already held, I dove in and found the truth of my own. I had to trust myself, just as others had trusted me. The intricate tapestry that emerged is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Giving voice to the scope and complexity of women’s lives outside the mainstream of motherhood has been the privilege of my life. Already the book is fulfilling its purpose, because stories are being shared this very moment.

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Kate Kaufmann embarked on her life as a non-mom when she abandoned fertility treatments, quit her corporate job, and moved from the suburbs to a rural community to raise sheep. Since 2012, she has talked with hundreds of women ranging in age from twenty-four to ninety-one and advocates for better understanding of the childless/childfree demographic.

Kate received an MFA in creative writing in 2016 from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and has a professional background in corporate staffing, training, and consulting. She’s lived in various urban, suburban, rural, and coastal communities and currently calls Portland, Oregon home. Her writing has appeared most recently in Conscious Connection, GirlTalk HQ, and the Washington Post. Visit her at www.katekaufmann.com.

Do You Have Kids?: Life When the Answer Is No  

A savvy and validating guide to what might be in store for growing numbers of childfree and childless adults worldwide, Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No takes on topics from the shifting meaning of family to what we leave behind when we die. Weaving together wisdom from women ages twenty-four to ninety-one with both her own story and a growing body of research, Kate brings to light alternate routes to lives of meaning, connection, and joy.

Today about one in five American women will never have children, whether by choice or by destiny. Yet few women talk much about what not having kids means to their lives and identities. Not that they don’t want to; there just aren’t obvious catalysts for such open conversations. In fact, social taboos preclude exploration of the topic―and since our family-centric culture doesn’t know quite what to do with non-parents, there’s potential for childless and childfree women to be sidelined, ignored, or drowned out. Yet there’s widespread, pent-up demand for understanding and validating this perfectly normal way of being. In this straight-shooting, exhaustively researched book, women without kids talk candidly about the ways in which their lives differ from societal norms and expectations―the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

 

 

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Category: On Writing