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I AM A childless thirty-something and I’m confident I’ll stay that way. I don’t want children, but I’m not selfish.
“Don’t you think it’s selfish to have children?” I ask Jackie, my friend with kids. “Isn’t that a selfish act in itself, to create something for your own enjoyment?” Jackie’s face dropped. “If you knew the work that goes into raising a child you’d never say that.”
Yes, the work. We’re constantly reminded that motherhood is the hardest job in the world and then we’re vilified for saying we don’t want it.
Cold hearted, hedonistic, immature?
Jackie’s not alone in her thinking, admitting you don’t want children fires up all sorts of reactions in people, but selfish is the most popular one. Motherhood is so much part of a woman’s story that to turn your back on it seems weird, unnatural, suspicious even.
You’ll be dismissed as cold hearted, hedonistic, immature. You’ll be warned that you’ll change your mind. This isn’t the fault of the confused older woman in your office who can’t quite grasp your decision and assures you, you just haven’t met the right person yet. This is bigger than Blanch.
Having children has been a woman’s ‘thing’ since time in memoriam. It’s our magic power. Our USP. Why would we not want to show that skill off? To admit you don’t want the job, is in Jackie’s eyes, just plain weird.
I’m a 34-year-old woman so all my girlfriends are either having babies or miniature dogs. The miniature dogs are usually dressed in babygrows and carried around town on their owner’s hips, so from a distance it’s hard to tell if Lorraine from school has had a human child or a chiwuahah.
I’ve the attention span of a ferret
Meanwhile, I’m having neither. I travel a lot for work and I’ve enough instinct to know that a baby doesn’t want to sit around a comedy club in Hackeny waiting for mommy to stop telling jokes about how she came in locked and almost set fire to the moses basket. Neither does a dog.
I miss flights, I’m on my 13th bank card this year. I know the number for the bus lost property office off by heart. Basically, I have the attention span of a ferret on six nespressos. Ringing up Bus Eireann and asking if a baby was handed in on the 46A is not a call I want to make.
As well as this, I don’t have that burning desire to have a baby that I thought all moms had. I don’t have a baby-sized hole in my heart. So I assumed I was missing that maternal chip, that part of a woman’s mind that lights up around babies and tiny chickens.
As more and more of my friends had babies I began asking them why. Why are you having kids? What does it feel like to want them? Their answers varied. One or two had the baby-shaped hole story. But the rest said things like: “It felt like the next stage.”
Fair enough reasons, but there was very little evidence of this burning maternal drive that I’ve heard so much about, that chip I thought all mothers had.
Every woman doesn’t want to be a mother
There’s a large lie floating around that all women are built with this innate longing to mother. That it’s all a woman really wants.
“You will eventually succumb” they tell you, you will have a baby and it will of course be hard but you will never, ever regret it because they bring so much to your life. Right? Wrong.
All across the world there are moms and dads spilling their guts in online forums like ‘I Regret Having Children’. Only a very brave few have the nerve to identify themselves. The rest type away under fake identities.
Using the boards as confessionals, where they can admit the truth and get virtual reassurance from other people that they are not alone. That the transition into parenthood was for them, a complete shit show. That they have never adapted to it or recovered from it, most of them accept their decision and they love their child and they will raise the child to the best of their ability but they know now they should never have had it.
Parenting is not for them. They regret it.
My mom’s reasons
I ask my mom why she had children, why did she choose to adopt myself and my brother? “It was what you did. You got married and you had children”.
My parents are the suck it up generation. Crap marriage? Suck it up. Hate your job? Suck it up, the world doesn’t revolve around you. This isn’t about you. The more of yourself you sacrificed the more you were respected. It was shameful to leave a bad marriage. You were seen as weak, spineless, disloyal. Now, it’s shameful to stay.
In that world, children made sense. They were part of that culture. Irish women’s raison d’etre was to prioritise other people. But this is a new era. Our generation is more self-aware. We put ourselves first. My mother thought mindfulness was an app that helped you find your car keys. Yet even with all these changes, publically admitting you don’t want the job of motherhood is still taboo.
But privately, it’s a different matter. Parents lean into me at dinner parties, and whisper wine induced warnings: “Don’t do it unless you really want it” and “It’s tougher than you can ever imagine”. Some are more direct. “Don’t do it”. Their tone is hushed, it feels like an SOS.
Why, still, in 2017 is the life I could bring into the world more worthwhile than my own life that I’m already living? Why can’t I be my purpose?
Joanne McNally, 34, from Dun Laoghaire is Ireland’s fastest rising comedy star. She is making a documentary for TV3, to be broadcast early next year, exploring the topic of choosing to be child free.
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Bus w*nkers
@Dlow Brown: the picture says it all regarding your comment, putting those 2 words together must’ve gave you a headache
@Anthony Whelan: same could be said about yours. Boring and no creativity
@L-Plate: that’s exactly what he’s like in person
@L-Plate: and your contribution was what again
@Barra O Brien: sorry if anyone I knew had a name like that I’d remember them. Yours doesn’t ring a bell. Thanks
Better post something quickly for the comment section is closed and comments deleted.
@Nick Allen:
ha ha happened to you as well????
@Nick Allen: There was a ‘cool story’ comment deleted earlier. Is that offensive now?!
There are to many traffic lights in Dublin!
@Martin Sinnott: would you rather more crashes??
@Mr. H: in fairness there’s some places in Dublin that have traffic lights 20 metres apart. And as for traffic lights on roundabouts!?
Most of the new lights seem to be pedestrian lights. They’re not there to prevent car crashes. In blackrock there’s 7 sets over 200 meters. It’s ridiculous.
@Mr. H: Too many and badly synced traffic lights can cause driver frustration and lead to drivers making bad decisions causing accidents. Most city accents are at traffic controlled junctions. Where traffic lights don’t exist, motorists instinctively display more caution and accidents tend to be fewer. Nevertheless, there still is a need for traffic lights on certain roads.
@Daragh Cassidy: there was an accident last night on the Temple Hill / Monkstown road junction of Blackrock. A taxi and a car. Proves that traffic lights don’t prevent accidents. Although, I have to admit, traffic lights are needed at this junction.
@Mr. H: no just better usage of less lights
@Martin Sinnott: it’s TOO Martin
Not TO
@Martin Sinnott: I would like more of them. A worrying development last time I was in town was that some sets of pedestrian crossing lights have been removed where Talbot Street crosses the southbound track of the new Luas loop.
@Daragh Cassidy: Yep. Takes nearly an hour to drive the mile or two between Phibsboro and Drumcondra most evenings. As for traffic lights and roundabouts, try negotiating the Donaghmede roundabout in the morning…
@Daragh Cassidy: A roundabout with traffic lights can actually sustain a higher level of traffic than either a unlit roundabout or lit intersection… so there! ;)
Can I just say that dcc’s head of traffic, Brendan O’Brien still had a job in traffic. This is the person the journal described as Dublin’s traffic supremo last year. Probably get this comment deleted by stating the person dcc say is responsible, is actually responsible and is incompetent at his job.
@Gulliver Foyle: we all know its Owen keegan behind every traffic catastrophe that occurs in the city
What on earth are they thinking? The buses being diverted will make no difference after they introduce even longer trams through the small streets of Dublin. It’s the people who make decisions about public transport who use it the least out of all of us.
Here’s a novel idea – build up in places people actually want to live! Plenty of commuters would be only too delighted to live in a high rise where they could walk to work in a few minutes instead of two hours each way from a house share in suburbia. But even mention anything more than four stories tall and the locals have conniptions about incongruence with the skyline and politicians jump on any bandwagon going about “saving” an “iconic” space.
@The Solipsist: It would still be more affordable to live in the suburbs though.
The city centre rents are stratospheric and its easier to bring down cost by sharing a house with four/five than an apartment with two/three.
Do we need so many bus stops in the centre of Dublin? Some of the stops for a single bus, are so close you could stand at one and see the next one. Dublin is such a small city, that it’s possible to walk a short distance to each stop.
I was changing from a Dublin Bus (got off on Dame St) to Luas (Trinity stop) this morning at about 08:30 and there was definitely a lot less traffic about. Was on a bus last week coming towards College Green from Lord Edward St and it crawled from Christchurch for about 10 minutes without evening getting to the old Central Bank, driver advised us to get off if we wanted to walk faster. No such scene this morning, so cautious approval of this change.
@James Patrick Boyle: Without even*
Best be on my way home with that typo.
@James Patrick Boyle: Good to know. Liking the driver who offered the option to get out and walk. Nothing worse than being trapped in traffic on a bus that can’t let you out!
@Fiona Fitzgerald: Hope the kind driver let you off in a safe place and gave you a refund
To avoid all that stress come to Donegal If your are in no hurry to get there as our train service and motorway is still at the objection stage .If you want an ideal life when the only stress will be trying to get a job seeing your children going off to third level and the expense of and the lack of affordable acc.for them After all the years they will probably emigrate When someone needs what should be care that is taken for granted in Dublin is almost a lifetime away Where the scenery is fantastic when the weather allows you to see it Where we have Poloticians who are all afraid of the party whip When you need a long haul flight to visit children who had to go to far off lands it can be 4 or 6 hours to get to the airport Give me the stress of College Green any day
@brian mclaughlin: Puts it in to perspective..
@Harry Corry: Thank you it does indeed That was an edited version
Perfect example of the mess that is Dublin Planning .. There is no joined up thinking, or practical solutions other that a Luas that basically goes 2 directions, ban all the cars and bicycles for all .. The City has been tron up for years with Luas and the extension, soon as done .. oh wait now we have problems .. ok more construction and lets no ban all traffic for other areas .. There needs to be at least a 10 year plan for Dublin and all have to be agreed on it first, plan it properly and then execute .. else we will have chaos .. oh wait now we do ..
@Irish Bob: What?
@Irish Bob: there are plans called the national development plan that’s constantly being wheeled out every political cycle… nothing gets done here. Corruption and incompetence combined with parochial mindsets and lack of imagination or willingness… lethal combination
@Irish Bob: Dublin planning is a mess because anyone forward thinking is ignored Those who Toe the line are promoted lest they expose those who have gone before them same as POLITICS in dail
All buses should terminate at the edge of city say places like the M1 airport exit or near Clare Hall, put large car parks as well so people could drive to there and from there onwards there be trams and cycle paths. Put all the tram routes back.
They have also f##ked up both the north and south quays for this.
The people in charge of Dublin City transport are just making it up as they go along.
Deck chairs on the titanic come to mind
@Marc Power: Did you think up that comment all on your own?You should get a copyright
@brian mclaughlin:
Is your head half empty or half full?
@David Dickson: Good idea for a poll!
SERIOUSLY I was home recently when I saw a 46A in… Phibsboro… It used to go to the Quays, and you’d use those two items at the end of your legs for a few minutes, and hey presto, you could get the 4, 10 or 14 to the park.. Now, most of the bus numbers are changes (12, 12A 22, 22A gone) etc, and more buses crossing the Liffey, hence jamming up the city centre. Same with getting to Landsdowne…. You’d get above mentioned routes to town, then walk… remember that feeling?… to another bus…. to Landsdowne…or Dun Laoghaire….. Dun Laoghaire to the park….. Really??? As for the stops on O’Connell street…. AND Dublin bus STILL has the problem of one packed bus followed by 2 empty ones….. Sort out the cobwebs and see things clearer before tinkering with something. As for that LUAS… using the old train lines was the best thing…then use existing services.. but no, they had to cross the city……..
I see Dublin Bus has re-published a book from it’s 80′s and 90′s past.. Aesop’s Fables… sorry, bus timetables and schedules… It wasn’t working too well then, but it wasn’t broken.. they have tried and (it seems) failed…
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