Childless and in the suburbs, or don’t spare the speculum!

If there is one thing I have learned while living in the suburbs, it is that people will find 101 uses for an empty uterus.

One morning at work while I was writing a simple video script, the two women who sat closest to me chose to exchange comedic anecdotes about their children, although most stories were about their exasperation in dealing with the whole issue of childhood free will.   At one point, they both turned to me and seemed to chime in unison as they were quick to point out that “…Yes, well you could never understand what we’re talking about unless you have children.  You just have to have kids to understand what life is all about…”

These two women had convinced themselves that I had been hired to spy on their work habits, and they chose to rectify the situation by targeting on the subject that I have in common with almost no one in Ventura County: children.

Yes, I do not have a child.  I have neither verbalized a desire to have children to these women, nor have I mentioned how empty my life was without kids, if such a thing were true.  Yes, not having a child would automatically exclude me from their particular conversation in which I was already not a participant.  However, having experienced childhood and that awkward transition into adulthood like most other humans, I might have some idea of what their conversation has been about.  It is not as if they were discussing enzymes or quantum physics or becoming hypoglycemic during the penalty phase of the biathlon, which are subjects outside of my particular realm of understanding.

I also understand the needling that some mothers make to my kind – the childless ones – when pointing out how their particular status in life gives them a privilege so unlike my own, emptier view of the world.  I will not understand until.  I cannot understand until.  But I would make a great mother when.  An awesome mother when.

I know these catch phrases all too well.  I am not the only one, too.  I have many girlfriends who neither have nor will ever have children.  We do not have parties celebrating our childless nature, and we do not elevate our status as, for instance, that one teacher I had who, upon finding that she liked being a female, passed around a sculpting of her ovaries to the class.   We do not meet in a dark alley and exchange phone numbers to form a sisterhood.  We are simply who we are, defined by different things – not better than or worse than those women with children– that enrich our lives.

These are my childhood, girlhood, college time and adulthood friends who, for reasons of their own, remain without a child.  Some of us are married, while others are not.  We all dote on the children of our families and friends, but I doubt it is because we harbor our own regrets at not having children.  We dote on other children because we simply want to and not because, as a former co-worker suggested in encouraging me to buy items from their child’s catalogue, “…you don’t have kids so you might enjoy doing this to fulfill your womanhood…”

I also know there is this belief that “….women are not truly fulfilled until they have children…”  I can only guess that the person(s) who made this claim has children, which makes them wholly unqualified to speak on behalf of the rest of us.  I know that the Lifetime channel has made it a stock industry in producing psycho childless women films, and I enjoy watching some of these.  Delta Burke wanting to burn her gynecologist in the hospital boiler room is some pretty exciting drama, and who doesn’t love watching a gurney slam into a doctor’s abdomen?  It is all television drama, however. As a scriptwriter, I know this.  Even if it is “based on a true story,” you have to recognize that we cannot simply fill 120 pages of dialogue with endless crying when your audience thrives on watching a woman with an empty womb have an emotional relationship with a bottle of Vodka, a filet knife and a pantless John Wayne Bobbit.

Not having a child is not an indictment on some imaginary loss of femininity.  In fact, it was not even an issue to me until I began living in Ventura County, a bedroom community where generations of children attend great schools, participate in sports programs and have other children or even grandchildren.  Women who live  here subtlety ask  family planning questions, framing their curiosity in such  roundabout ways that had me wishing they would just use the direct space alien mode of anal probing to extract their information.  This is the suburbs, however, and perhaps there is some unwritten rule that children have to reside in every home.

Their thinking, however, is not unique.  My time spent in a fundamentalist Christian church was a lesson in female submission and domination to a male figurehead for no good reason other than “…the Bible says so…”  Children were an integral part of a woman’s life and marriage, and I had the impression that no woman was worthwhile without a husband, a ring, a few children and a bunny rabbit.  It is an ideal that is so impressed upon women that there seems to be no other option, other than to fight against the that system of belief or walk away.  I chose the latter, and soon discovered that the family of God, like most other families on earth, was a bit like my own.

My mother, who has never once asked when I was going to have children, seemed to skip onto a phase that allowed for direct intimidation.  No children?  Fine.  No inheritance, except for a dresser drawer.  No children?  Fine.  You should clean the house, work and devote your time to other people because there is no purpose in your life.  She believes this to be true, as do many others who believe that the whole point of marriage is to be fruitful and multiply.  Such a belief is the basis for many laws that were written to discourage gay marriage, of course.  There was an assumption that all straight marriages would result in children.  Of course, the authors of such laws are wrong.

There are more people like me than you might believe.  In fact, over half of my friends do not have children.  Among them are two college friends who had already done the amazing during our freshman year, applying their talent and acumen to blow up radio.  They are still young, desirable, absolutely beautiful and have transformed their talent into great contributions to music and music history. I have another girlfriend who elevated her longtime experience as a masseuse into something absolutely necessary and beautiful.  I have so many girlfriends who, in my same position, have yet to meet the unfulfilled life that was guaranteed them once their uterus put up the “no vacancy” sign.   One of these woman still believes in eternal love, and searches for it with the purest of hearts.   Another friend, a crafting genius and extraordinary assistant producer, has a husband who has doted and loved her from sight. There is also my childhood BFF, a woman whose life and dedication to so many causes would have collapsed an entire community if she were not involved.   She is an artistic giant with an even bigger heart, and a husband who might be the coolest person alive.  There is a world famous jewelry designer who was also my mentor, and another woman who had the notion of introducing the intimate world of film festivals to an internet audience.  These are not women who have found no fulfillment in life.  They dazzle, produce, pioneer, create and deserve all the acknowledgment of being the sort of beautiful creatures that have every right to their full femininity.

I have friends who are mothers and stepmothers, proud pet owners and central figures to a family filled with homeless, ragtags and misfits.  None of us deserve to be ridiculed for our life choices, or classified and dismissed as if our ovaries were the deciding factor in our own self-worth.   I have lived beneath the weight of that fundamentalist credo that seems so desperate to imply that a woman cannot start living until marriage and children, and I reject that dogmatic belief as being steadfast in its sheer shallowness.  Others believe and thrive in this setting, and they deserve to be acknowledged as both mother and individual.

I would prefer that we all just celebrate womanhood, that wonderful condition where we have only to compare ourselves to our own expectations.  I choose not condemn a woman because she has no children, or has botox, an hourglass shape, a lifetime subscription to Mad Magazine or wants to enough money to get a personal buyer at Bergdorf-Goodman.  Tearing each other down, or even tearing men down, should be the only thing we should ever condemn.

And the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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