‘Otherhood: Emily Writes on the anthology of the childfree

Women do not have to be mothers. Photo / NZME

In some ways I think I’ve always been a mother. Ever since I can remember I’ve mothered others. I brought home a child wandering around our cul-de-sac and asked if I could keep him. I loved to baby my brother and I was always babysitting. A not-always-stable home life gave me plenty of practice in early caregiving.

It’s hard to know what is nature and what is nurture when I look back at it all now. There was never a definitive decision to become a mother. It was always my path. In the religion I was brought up in - evangelist Christianity - it was a foregone conclusion that I would have children, and ideally many of them.

In the late 80s, The Campbell Family’s Above Rubies Ministry had an absolute chokehold on Christian families in Aotearoa and Australia. Aimed at “encouraging women in their high calling as wives, mothers, and homemakers” it felt as omnipresent as God himself in some households.

Proverbs 31.10 “A capable, intelligent and virtuous woman, who is he who can find her? She is far more precious than jewels and her value is far Above Rubies or pearls.”

Often, we think only of the American states as a place where Christian women are encouraged to pump out babies, but the Quiverfull movement was mighty popular in small towns across the motu and in some cases, it still is.

Mary Pride’s book, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality came out the year I was born, in 1985. It’s a Quiverfull bible. The name of the Quiverfull movement comes from Psalm 127:3–5:

“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”

By the time I was a teenager and beginning to reject this way of thinking (an easy enough task with my fondness for pre-marital sex of the queer variety), I wasn’t far off the path to becoming a mother anyway.

I had my first surgery for endometriosis at 16 and was sternly warned I’d better “attempt pregnancy earlier rather than later”.

When the surgery had to be repeated just two years later, I’d made up my mind. I’d be a young mother. Not being a mother was inconceivable, pun intended.

My boyfriend, now husband, was (and is) a gentle soul. A born dad. He wanted kids too and was largely unbothered as to when we would have them. He understood the urgency, but we were broker than broke. I worked nights at a winery, being groped by Boomers behind the eyeline of their second wives. He worked at the petrol station, bringing home free pies.

The GP at medical centre next to Bethlehem College told me at 21 to have children “now”. He couldn’t understand why we would wait, even if we weren’t married.

So, I went off contraception. And nothing happened. Month after month after month. Still, I was so determined that I hadn’t yet reached the despair stage. It was just before we married four years later that we realised we’d need IVF. I signed up for the IVF wait-list. We got pregnant a week later.

I was at risk of an ectopic pregnancy, but the pregnancy stuck. After our little boy was born, another little boy followed without much effort on our part. We were the lucky ones. I know that very much now.

My desire for seven children ended with the birth of my second baby. The reality - that I wasn’t nearly as good at mothering as I thought I’d be - put an end to dreams of a big family. Early parenthood hit me like a freight train. I found it desperately difficult. I felt like everything I did was wrong, and I constantly felt like I was failing my children.

Looking back now, I don’t think I was nearly as useless as I thought. But it lit in me a fire that has been raging ever since – a fire that burns with the knowledge that no person should ever do this parenting thing unless they’re absolutely sure they want to. Nobody should be forced into parenthood. No woman should be pressured into motherhood.

I might not have had the career I have had parenting been a walk in the park. Writing about parenting and society’s closely guarded secrets of motherhood has allowed me access to stories I’d never have heard, from people I’d never have known.

Motherhood might be a neighbourhood, but it’s not the only suburb. Photo / 123RF

An unheard story is a howl in the dark. My rants in the dark about how the package of motherhood had been sold to us was just one tiny galaxy in a cosmos of lore held by women.

I heard from mothers who would never be mothers. Women who spent decades of their lives trying everything to be mothers. Women who were mothers for the shortest time, raising their voices to say “we are still mothers”. Women who knew timing is everything and sometimes timing is just wrong, so wrong. Women who were meant to be mothers but meant to be isn’t enough to make a baby. Women who noticed every swollen belly, every pushed buggy, every tiny shoe in the window of a shop. Women with stories as big as the hole they tried to fill.

I met women who never wanted to be mothers. Ever. Full stop. Why are we still talking about this? Women forced into motherhood against their wishes. Women who were content to be step-mothers or bonus-mothers. Women who were both but wanted to be neither. I heard from the best aunties and those who had to smile brightly as their bosses made comments about biological clocks. I met brilliant women reduced to walking ovaries by a society obsessed with women staying in their place. I met women who knew their life was an adventure and that adventure did not need to, and would not, include children in any capacity.

I met non-binary folks who were already blazing trails for tamariki to come after them, who loved kids but didn’t want any of their own. Folks who had deconstructed gender and now wanted to deconstruct parental roles.

So many stories. And all of them were best said from the lips of those who lived them. It is not enough to just say someone exists, that they live, that their experiences matter. You must be able to tell your own story, share your own truth, hold your own pen.

We live in a society that still attempts to shut down people who live on the margins. It’s as important as it has ever been, if not more so, to stand against that.

At a time when reproductive rights are being eroded around the world, we must hear the voices of women who have always said the truth: That we do not have to be mothers.

Motherhood might be a neighbourhood, but it’s not the only suburb. The village needs to fling open the doors and hear the stories that help us better understand each other. Mothers don’t just need each other; we all need each other. We always have, we always will.

‘Otherhood stories

A new anthology tackles one of life’s last taboos.

Alie Benge, Lil O’Brien and Kathryn van Beek have something in common, other than all being writers. All of them are childless — or, depending on your perspective, child-free. O’Brien (who’s queer) and van Beek have been through their own fertility journeys; Benge doesn’t want to have kids and never intends to.

The three women bonded via Twitter over an extract from Kate Camp’s memoir, You Probably Think This Song is About You, where she faces the reality that IVF isn’t going to give her a “miracle baby” after all. “At the most basic level, reproducing the species is the purpose of life,” Camp writes. “After my emotional grief and the sense of failure had faded, I began to experience not having children as a philosophical question… What is the point of me, if I am not part of this primal human chain?”

‘Otherhood, a collection of 32 essays curated by Benge, O’Brien and van Beek, gives voice to women who aren’t mothers, whether by choice or by circumstance, an experience they say can be profoundly “othering”. Contributors include Jackie Clarke from The Aunties, Green MP Golriz Ghahraman and novelist Paula Morris; a happy DINK (double income no kids), an egg donor for infertile couples, a fertility counsellor and a foster mother. Topics covered by the essays range from domestic violence to disability.

“Motherhood is still the default that people settle on,” says O’Brien, who salutes the bravery of women sharing their stories about a common experience that still doesn’t get openly talked about. “Even the question, ‘Do you have kids?’ can be hard to answer. We wanted to have a really good balance of grief and joy [in the essays] — the decisions people make for themselves and what happens when that choice is taken away.”

Massey University Press has come on board to publish the anthology, due out in mid-2024. To ensure all the contributors are paid for their work, a Boosted crowdfunding campaign has been launched to pay each of them a $500 fee. To find out more or to donate, visit boosted.org.nz/projects/otherhood – Joanna Wane