Kelly Davio’s previous Waiting Room columns for The Butter can be found here.
As a woman, you never know when the question is coming—only that it is. You may be having a perfectly innocuous conversation about the traffic, your favorite brand of peanut butter, or even your latest dental work when someone springs it on you: “You have kids, right?”
This spring, while I was representing the literary journal I co-edit at a small but hopping book expo here in Seattle, a man parked himself in front of my table and began to regale me with a lengthy description of a poem, probably one he’d written himself. I confess that, after a while, I wasn’t really paying attention—I was amusing myself with the fact that his voice sounded almost identical to David Lynch’s, and wondering whether I could somehow direct the conversation toward Twin Peaks for my own amusement. That’s when he asked, apropos of nothing, if I have kids. I replied that I do not.
“Oh, you’d never understand the poem, then.”
My tolerance for men patronizing me is notably low, so I turned to my co-publisher and said, about as loudly as possible, “Joe, you hear that? I can’t understand poetry because I haven’t had children!”
A few people chuckled, and poor Joe looked mortified, but the man who was not David Lynch didn’t seem to recognize that I was making fun of him. I was too busy fantasizing about kicking his teeth in to pay further attention. He finally moved on to another table—presumably to find somebody whose poetry comprehension had been elevated through childbirth—and I tried to forget about the incident, but it kept gnawing at me for the rest of the day.
Now, I’m a happily childless person. So if even I wanted to relieve the man who wasn’t David Lynch of his full set of teeth, I can’t imagine how a woman dealing with infertility must feel when she hears such insensitive comments. I have never longed for a baby, and I haven’t felt my life to be incomplete for lack of one. I’m everybody’s auntie and nobody’s mom, and take great pleasure in spoiling the children in my life before sending them home to their parents. But I’m fully aware that these facts are unimaginable to some, and that they make me, in these people’s eyes, something less than an actual woman.
I’m also aware of the fact that, even if I wanted a child, I shouldn’t be giving birth to one. The drugs that keep me above ground are toxic—they carry black box warnings so scary that while writing the prescription my doctor asked me three times whether I was sure that I never wanted kids. Even if there existed a magical, cellular-level eraser that could scrub all the poison from my body, any baby I carried would still have a one in five shot at having the same disease that I do, but at such an amplified severity that he or she would likely die not long after birth. Death on arrival doesn’t seem like a good gamble.
Yet I’m not a person who can’t imagine loving a child who was anything less than the picture of health, or of whom I couldn’t brag to other parents about various measurement percentiles (it seems to me, as an outside observer, that parenting an infant often involves ranking babies against one another in some kind of percentile-related horserace). This may be my own bias, but I believe we sick people are as capable of meaningful living—and as capable of loving and being loved—as anybody.
But just as there are people like the man who wasn’t David Lynch who can’t imagine a childless woman, there are also legions of people who can’t imagine having a sick kid. We all know them. We’ve heard expecting parents say, “I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, just as long as it’s healthy.” Then they look particularly solemn while stroking their bellies. We all know how we’re supposed to interpret their statements—we’re meant to hear it as magnanimity and a desire not to see their offspring suffer. But we who are sick understand intuitively that we are, in these people’s minds, the worst possible outcome. We are the spooky unknown. We embody others’ darkest fears. And sometimes, we are less, in their eyes, than full people.
So here I am: a great failure of modern womanhood. The person who hasn’t fulfilled—and won’t ever fulfill—her biological endgame. A woman whose own biology has gotten away from her.
From the other side of the great chasm of human progress, I can tell you that being the worst possible outcome—the scary, not-quite-real woman—isn’t all that bad. In fact, my life is downright ordinary and satisfying. I have meaningful relationships with the people in my life—that includes adults and children. I find fulfillment in my work. I have my little family of two. I enjoy a vivid imaginative life.
Hell, I even understand poetry.
Tags: health, illness, kelly davio, kids, parenting, the butter, the waiting room
I had a hard time reading this because once I got the the part where you took down Not David Lynch and his theory of Childbirth as Poetry Comprehension Device, cartoon hearts appeared over my eyes and I had to read around them.
Oh, goodness. I have had similar conversations. My friend, a good friend whom I love, once said to me that she didn’t think her boss could be a good leader because she had not had children. I, having no children but someday planning to be a boss, said as gently as possible, “While you do get good leadership practice when you are around children, that is not the only way to be a good leader.” The idea that no one but a parent could possibly understand how to think about other people, especially people who are depending on you, is staggering. I think it just shows how selfish those people were before they became parents if all of the sudden now that they have a small person, them they start thinking about all the other people and relationships that depend upon them acting in someone else’s best interest. Maybe I am not having children because I don’t need that constant reminder that the universe is not all about me?
Sorry, got a little snarky at the end there.
Maybe I am not having children because I don’t need that constant reminder that the universe is not all about me?
Definitely going to remember this perfect and singular line in the future when people start asking me about my childlessness. Thank you!
Also, self-absorption can certainly extend to one’s children. People who think that the universe revolves around them and their kids (to the exclusion of anyone else) can be plenty selfish and unbearable.
+++1
Also, maybe I’m being nice to your kids because I’m trying to be nice, period? Or I am a sister with younger siblings? Or because they’re your kids so I’m being nice for your sake?
Like, are you only nice to other kids because you have one? Dang.
Maybe I’m nice to your kids because they’re more fun than you are and I like them better …
So much this. No, I don’t have children. Yes, I have nieces and nephews, but no, I am not their “auntie”. No, my pets are not my children, nor do I call them my “furbabies” *shudder*. No, I am not less than you.
Oh, the dreaded “furbabies!” I shudder with you. I still don’t know how to deal with family members who want to wish me a happy mother’s day in reference to the fact that I have an old, arthritic cat.
“furbabies” is my SO’s joking ‘signal in case I’m being held hostage and have to pretend everything is fine over the phone’
because there’s no other way either of us would ever use it non-sarcastically
that’s pretty brilliant tbh
I love my cats DEARLY. I get teary thinking about the day they will die. I physically shudder at the word “furbabies.” I love my cats a lot but they are cats. They are not replacement babies. Thank god.
My mother calls my cats my furbabies. I ask her how her skinkittens are (in reference to me and my sisters). (Did I get that from here? I can’t remember if it was a thread on here or on facebook.)
I use “furbaby” with shameless abandon, but I love “skinkitten.”
References to “Furbabies’ and “furkids” are how I know that a person messaging me on OKCupid is a no-go.
I worked child care at my church in high school, and in June the break room turned into the Pregnant Wives Club. One woman, fully 8 and a half months into her first pregnancy, straight-up told me, “you’re just not a real woman until you’ve felt your child growing inside you”.
I made my then-fourteen-year-old sister sit through my entire rant about how that was a huge “fuck you” to trans women, women who struggle with fertility, women who have miscarried, etc. because I couldn’t bring myself to end the first steady job I’d ever had.
The Friday before Mother’s Day, a delivery guy said “Happy Mother’s Day!” to me and then hastily added “…if you have kids.”
I said “I don’t have kids,” and from the end of the hallway as he turned the corner, he yelled “But that’s the goal, right?”
I was pissed that I didn’t get a chance to reply, but then a few minutes later I was almost glad I couldn’t because there aren’t enough words to express what I wanted to say to him.
I love kids, always have, and my biological clock has probably been going off since college (and working at a day care a few years ago did not help). But I have polycystic ovaries and I’ve suffered from depression since I hit puberty and I have an internal debate all the time about whether I should have kids biologically, because I don’t want to pass this stuff on. The combination made me really miserable as a teenager and that has bled into my self-esteem as an adult. There’s a strong family history of both conditions, and I don’t know that I could knowingly risk putting someone else through that. That’s not “the goal.”
Mother’s day has become a real source perplexity since I entered my 30s. I suppose people didn’t assume I *must* be a mother until I no longer looked young, but now I too get strangers wishing me a happy mother’s day, and I don’t know how to respond. Like the guy in the grocery store who wants to know, “are your kids doing something nice for you for mother’s day?” What do I even say? “No, the ungrateful little jerks!” or similar?
I’m only in my mid-twenties, but people think I’m younger (recently one person guessed 21 and another guessed 19), so I don’t even think my age was a factor. I think the delivery guy was just saying it out of habit, but that’s annoying too, because it means he was making assumptions all day about women he doesn’t know.
It’s really odd that strangers say these things to you–there really is no good response. As far as facetious-but-harmless responses go, you could pretend to think “kids” is referring to baby goats… “Well, last year Billy bought me flowers, but he ate them on the way home, so we’ll see what happens this time!”
As a fellow “sick kid” this definitely hit right at a lot of how I feel. My kids have 50% chance of having my condition but there’s no way to tell the severity. I have thought about if I would be willing to care for a child that will never be able to live on their own and decided I can’t do that. I am more on the fence about raising kids than the author, though it feels like every year I get closer to being sure I won’t. Even though I’ve decided to never become pregnant, I’m angry sometimes that it really wasn’t up to me. Someone making a comment like not-David would definitely be very hurtful to me.
I love children but the fact is medically I shouldn’t have* any. Thank you for saying all the fuck you’s I’ve swallowed.
*Adoption is great and I would consider it but for Reasons I am not a terribly great candidate so I try not to hang my hopes on that too much lest I break my own heart harder than when I realized I should probably never give my particular genetic crap shoot (having been adopted myself, meaning even more of a paucity of information with which to judge the odds) to a child.
New person, making small talk: Do you have kids?
Me, in scandalized tone: Oh no! Not at all!
References to "Furbabies' and "furkids" are how I know that a person messaging me on OKCupid is a no-go.
Thanks for relaying the tip about shooting offspring out of your womb in order to better understand poetry. I don’t have children, but I am a teacher and spend most days surrounded by children. I have always preferred prose to poetry, so it’s nice to know what I’m doing wrong here.
In all seriousness, thanks for writing this column. As a fellow Spoonie, it means a lot to me to see people with chronic health issues represented here 🙂
I’m a childfree woman with a cleft lip, anxiety issues and depression. This all resonates. I feel so lucky that so many of my co-workers are respectful of my choice to not have children and that so many are also childfree and understand my choices. Some are in their 20s and haven’t yet decided to have children. Others are my age and have just made similar choices.
I'm a childfree woman with a cleft lip, anxiety issues and depression. This all resonates. I feel so lucky that so many of my co-workers are respectful of my choice to not have children and that so many are also childfree and understand my choices. Some are in their 20s and haven't yet decided to have children. Others are my age and have just made similar choices.
Mother's day has become a real source perplexity since I entered my 30s. I suppose people didn't assume I *must* be a mother until I no longer looked young, but now I too get strangers wishing me a happy mother's day, and I don't know how to respond. Like the guy in the grocery store who wants to know, "are your kids doing something nice for you for mother's day?" What do I even say? "No, the ungrateful little jerks!" or similar?
Bless you for this.