Not All Moms Have Kids

Once, a friend said to me, “There are two types of women. Those who have children, and those who are children.” And, without hesitation, I immediately believed that statement to be true. Motherhood is, after all, thought to be the line of demarcation, the unofficially official rite of passage that transforms girls into women. Even the institutions of medical and social science understand this cultural reality enough to provide viable options for those who, for whatever reason, can’t bear children.

But the longer I pondered what my friend had said, I realized that it simply couldn’t be true. There had to be other variables, other shades that colored the complexity of females and the stages of our lives. What about those who simply don’t want children? Are they truly disrupting their own process of maturation, truncating some vital aspect of their existence as women? Where did they fit into this equation?

Molly Peacock, in her recently published memoir “Paradise, Piece by Piece” (Riverhead), attempts to answer

some of these questions by examining her own conscious and well-thought-out choice not to have children. “When I was 3, I decided not to have children,” she declares on the first page. And, with the stunningly beautiful command of language that has made her an award-winning poet, Peacock then enables her readers to understand how--and why--a young girl whose very body, let alone world, has yet to be fully formed can make a decision of this nature, one that would shape every aspect of her entire life.

Throughout her traumatic youth in Buffalo, N.Y., with a violent, alcoholic father and a well-intentioned albeit exhausted mother who openly envies the “selfish” liberation of her child-free friends, Peacock revisits this decision. “Is it strange for a girl of 8,” she asks, “to be thinking about motherhood--or avoiding it--with such intent? But motherhood is what some girls only think of.”

Certainly the seeds of a woman’s desire to either have children or not have them are planted very early. Long before most young girls are able even to feed and dress themselves, they are given baby dolls with bottles and diapers and other such toys that teach them how to mother. They are taught that the feminine pronoun is used when referring to countries, that continents and languages are labeled mothers. They are made to understand that they, like the very earth on which they play, are fertile and expected at some point to grow life.

In Peacock’s case, however, the desire that was continually nurtured by an echo of affirmation from her elders was one to remain unencumbered by the responsibilities that children bring: “Don’t ever have children, Molly,” her grandmother once advised; “don’t let nobody say you have to have kids,” her father said; “I hope you get to be selfish all your life, Molsie,” her mother hoped aloud.

Ironically, during childhood, the time when everyone is assumed to have the ability to be selfish and carefree, Peacock was thrown suddenly into the position of mothering her younger sister and being a caretaker for their father while her own mother was away being the breadwinner. “I have already been a working parent,” she explained in a recent conversation. “Seventh grade was my full-time job. Parenthood grows you up by drawing a line across your life. You step over that line into parenthood, and you’ve got to cope. I stepped over that line as a child, and I coped. But I knew I wasn’t grown up.”

Far from the binary view of have versus have-not, it seems that Peacock’s decision not to produce children has always been based in her ability to differentiate between self and service, and her need to create a life in which she could commit to both. “I am very aware of myself in the world, and as a contributor to the world. I realize now,” she says, “that we have a very narrow definition of parenthood in this culture, because I certainly have acted as a mother to many many people and structures in the world.”

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Just as breakthroughs in medical science have created opportunities for women who could not have children to become biological mothers, they are also creating a physical freedom for an increasingly large number of women who want to either postpone or permanently put off their reproductive capabilities. This personal sovereignty is one that 33-year-old artist / filmmaker Dianna Cohen exercises her right to claim.

Like Peacock, Cohen decided at an early age not to have children. She remembers as a young girl listening to her friends describe their dream futures filled with husbands, children and aromatic kitchens. “I used to think, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound appealing to me.’ I have always been, since I was little, somebody who had a lot of things I wanted to do, and having kids, it’s not on the list.”

Cohen stresses that her decision was well-considered and entirely a matter of choice. Growing up in a household with a younger sister, a writer / filmmaker for a father and a mother who was the director of the Los Angeles Free Clinic allowed her to view her life through the lens of both choice and change, and see it was whole.

“[Not having children] is a choice that I have to make every day. At my age, it comes up much more often than it ever did. Everybody wants to know when I’m gonna do it, and they all seem surprised by my answer. . . . I’ve always felt like I don’t have that ‘thing’ inside of me.”

The pressure of expectation and the search by others to locate that “thing” inside of her--the soft, ticking sounds of ripe yearning--started when Cohen approached her late 20s. “The men I was seeing were having stronger nesting instincts than I about getting married and having a family. I began to feel like chattel, like people were looking at me going, ‘Hmmm, she’s got child-bearing hips. Those teeth look good.’ I began to feel like a vessel. And I don’t like walking around being looked at solely as a vessel. I don’t think I have to use my body, to bear children, in order to mother--something that I have done again and again over the course of my life.”

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The word “mother” is most often used within our society as a noun, to identify a role. Likewise, “mothering” is used as an adjective, to describe an individual who possesses a set of characteristics generally associated with mothers. Rarely is either word used to capture an act, a process.

As a biological mother, I know firsthand how difficult it is to mother. It is hard work; it is a job that requires, if not a village, then certainly some serious team effort. No one can do it alone. And no one does, not even single mothers such as myself. We rely on the presence of other people to help mother the children we have birthed: teachers, friends, relatives, neighbors, doctors and other caregivers. Isn’t that, essentially, what mothering is about, caring? Creating love from labor?

It is a mystery why we don’t provide room in the language of our praise to acknowledge women such as Molly Peacock, Dianna Cohen and all the others who have chosen not to bear their own children and, in so doing, made their lives more open to take part in mothering all of ours. So, to them, too, I would like to wish a happy Mother’s Day.

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* Molly Peacock will be reading at Dutton’s in Brentwood on Wednesday at 7 p.m.