A global generation’s child decision
I loved playing with dolls when I was a little girl. Happy Families was my favourite game, a pastime that could last all day with Amy – my Betsy Wetsy doll that looked just like a real baby, only with staring glass blue eyes – at the centre of my play.
I spent hours changing her diapers and feeding her the little milk bottle that perfectly fit the round aperture in her hard plastic mouth. I cradled her, played with her, talked to her, scolded her, and dosed her with cough mixture in flu season. I was attentive although, if my mother is to be believed, my watchfulness was more than conscientious; it bordered on the obsessive.
Looking back, I suppose that part of my treatment of Amy was driven by watching the hovering grownups around me respond to my childhood asthma: don’t run too fast; slow down; breathe. Poor little Amy was nebulised more than her empty shell of a plastic chest needed.
In today’s terms, I was a helicopter doll mum. It’s something my lovely mum reminded me of, quite kindly I must add, on my 40th birthday. She was wistful when she bemoaned her lack of grandchildren. Using her most plaintive tone, she recalled my solicitude for Amy, extrapolating: you love children.
It’s true. I do love children. I always did and still do.
My mother’s bewilderment at my chosen childlessness is understandable. More than just a genuine love of my dolls, I had laid the fecund seeds for my own life from very early on in an elaborate, well-constructed, fully fleshed fantasy.
This imagined life was so real that even now I can feel the warmth of the sun on my face when I think of that fantasy table under the spreading densely leafed oak tree of my imagination.
I can hear the laughter of children fishing on the banks of the creek at the bottom of the garden. But I get ahead of myself.
I have no idea why, but I am always Italian in my fantasies.
Even though it began when I was barely 10, I am always the matriarch — an older woman with greying hair pulled back into a messy bun and an apron loosely tied around her ample middle. I am seated at the head of a long table laid out under a giant oak tree, surrounded by my multi-generational family: my children and their partners, my grandchildren and their friends.
The scene is idyllic (it’s a fantasy — everyone is getting on with everyone else).
I am urging everyone — in Italian, which I don’t speak — to eat. I am all largesse and generosity. Munificence.
The table groans under the weight of platters of delectable food. If it’s Christmas there are Christmas crackers and round chocolate balls and mince pies and fruit cake and a pudding topped with a sprig of mistletoe. If it’s Easter, there are Easter eggs or bunny place mats and a simnel cake and hot cross buns. If it’s a birthday there are balloons and a candle-topped cake.
Toddlers crawl across the lawn; boys go off fishing in the stream at the bottom of the garden; girls make daisy chains from flowers plucked in the garden.
It’s a languid setting, cosy and comfortable; the ambient temperature is perfect. Bees buzz and birds sing. It’s perfect. And I feel loved and happy and fulfilled.
And yet my life is now and has always been, diametrically opposite to that imagined in my fantasy.
I am childless. I have no partner. I live alone. I do not cook. I don’t know nor have I ever presided over a large family gathering.
You can see why my mother was befuddled. It seems that I mind mapped out a future that was peopled and textured and busy and yet I chose a life that was the exact opposite of that.
It is true that I chose not to be a parent. It was a conscious decision. And, although it was a decision not unheard of 30 to 40 years ago when I was of childbearing age, it was unusual.
Not anymore.
In March this year, the British Office for National Statistics showed that in 2021, one in five women aged 45 was childless — that’s 18% compared to the 13% of women in their mother’s generation who did not become parents. This statistic was mirrored in the United States and across the developed world.
In France, where the number of births has slumped to its lowest level since World War II, women are being urged to have more children. The Spanish birth rate is at a historic low.
In one of the world’s most populous countries, China, one in 10 women is childless. For the first time since the great famine (1958-1961) the Chinese population fell to 1.4 billion people in 2022 despite the government’s offer of incentives such as tax breaks and childcare subsidies.
None of this means that the world has negative population growth. The latest figures released by the United Nations predict that the global population will be more than 8.5 billion by 2030.
Choosing childlessness seems to be a developed world concept.
Women in Africa, where childlessness is viewed rather dimly and often blamed on women, are still having children. There are no statistics that I could find to determine whether this is by personal choice.
The literature will tell you that traditional African culture appears to see childless marriages as cursed. This was borne out by a sangoma friend who believes that giving birth to children is essential for the woman and her entire family.
Children perpetuate the memories that allow ancestors to live on. Of course, as anyone who has read Dickens will know, children are a valuable economic asset. Or used to be when the world viewed children as miniature adults and sent them off to work.
Still, there is a noticeable shift in the number of women making choices that do not include children. Global studies show that having children in our world is becoming increasingly difficult; rising child-rearing costs (feeding, clothing, entertaining, and educating them) and childcare costs grow exponentially every year.
Moreover, women say they are choosing freedom. It was my excuse.
As a journalist and foreign correspondent and editor of newspapers, I was in a career I loved, one that took me all over the world. I didn’t want to stop and give that up. I used to be so glib when asked why I hadn’t had children. Prada handbags versus orthodontics bills, holidays abroad versus school fees. Freedom, I’d say.
And yet, now that the formal part of my work life is over, I have more freedom than I know what to do with.
I’m wistful when I return to my family fantasy — the one in which I am the benevolent, much-loved matriarch dispensing food and wisdom to an adoring family.
Time makes us reconsider all things. I’m not sure if I would make the same decisions I made in my childbearing years now.