As a 70-year-old involuntarily childless woman, I can only say that the chasm between mothers and childless woman has always been there – and it only gets wider as mothers become grandmothers. I find it beyond belief that women are told to “get over it”. Are women who suffer miscarriages given the same advice? My grief is always with me, and it is only in the last few years that I have not wept on Mother’s Day.
Nicola Slawson (The chasm between mothers and childless women is widening, 7 April) says that the real culprit is the patriarchy, but the truth is that I have found men more willing to talk to me about my childlessness. The sisterhood still seems to measure you on your status as a mother, not on your intrinsic value as a woman. Very few women have ever discussed my childlessness with me. Too often in life, the subject of grief and loss is avoided. However, everyone experiences it at some point. Maybe a little more empathy about this particular loss would not go amiss.
Name and address supplied
• Yes, there is the feeling that if you’re a woman and childless, you’ve not fulfilled your allotted role in life. After I got married at 28 and didn’t immediately start a family, other people assumed that I didn’t want children. It wasn’t worth contradicting them. It was certainly a shock to many when I became pregnant with our daughter at 39. I had finally “done the right thing”.
I think I’ve always known not to ask if someone is a parent – I guess I’m not that nosy. However, I am now painfully aware that it’s no-no. Our daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 11. She died just after her 15th birthday.
A pub that we visit regularly is in a holiday resort – the kind of place where people like to engage you in conversation. The inevitable question nearly always arises. Do we lie and say our daughter is with her grandma or do we drop the bombshell and tell the truth? It’s a conversation killer, but maybe it’s a way of teaching people that you should never ask whether someone has children.
There are many, many reasons why the answer may be no, and giving that answer is painful. We also always end up feeling guilty for making the person who asked the question feel uncomfortable, then wonder why we are.
Helen Osborne
Beeston, Nottingham
• Maybe I am lucky, but there has never been a chasm between me and my friends who are mothers. Quite the opposite, in fact. I love them and I adore their children. And they, for their part, are glad of a childless friend who gives them something that they don’t get from their friends who are also mothers.
Also, it’s healthy for children to have adults in their lives who aren’t parents – they see us as bigger versions of children because we don’t give off a parent vibe. And we’re role models – showing that you can be childless and happy, which I’d like to assure your young readers they can be.
Laura Marcus
Leek, Staffordshire
• The only mention made of men in Nicola Slawson’s article is in connection with the patriarchy – which judges and shames us for our choices. But wasn’t that the whole point of the piece? That childlessness is often not a choice. Childless women find themselves agonising over their inability to conceive, and that’s a tragedy. But spare a thought for the thousands of men who are desperate to become fathers, but discover that they or their partners are infertile. Who do they turn to? Who will empathise with them? It’s time we included men in this conversation.
Lindsay Cullen
Meerbusch, Germany
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