Opinion
My son says he doesn’t want to have children. It’s not my job to convince him
Kate Halfpenny
Regular columnistThe plates of Easter Sunday roast lamb were still being passed when my mum and eldest child got stuck into something almost as meaty at the lunch table. A conversation about whether at 31 he’s any closer to fatherhood.
No, said Jack. I don’t think I’ll have kids. Not affordable to raise them in modern Australia in a capital city. Even if I could afford them, I’d question what sort of life they’d have in this world.
Having children is not always as rosy as many parents claim.
It’s an open joke-not-joke that I’d sell several organs or swear off Italian shoes until eternity to be a grandmother.
Later, Jack and I had a chat about his complete future and my shattered hopes. I bit my tongue not to bore him witless with the old, “The thing about having a baby is you don’t know how much you’ll love it until it’s born.”
My experience has been like a line from Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace: “The two things in life you never regret are having a swim and having a baby.” I never leave the ocean thinking, “waste of time”, and felt an instant, irrevocable tsunami of devotion when little Jack made me a mother in 1993.
But lately – watching women friends scurry about at Easter and during these school holidays – I do get there’s a proper, terrifying flipside to that.
Having a baby is the rare thing you can’t back out of. Tatts, vasectomies, vows, all reversible. Babies, not so much. What if you do it and realise it’s not for you? Even if it’s decades later, and you question not your love for your children, but what your life would have been like without them. Whether you’d make a sliding doors choice if you had your time over.
Not having a baby is just as permanent. What if you get comfy not being a parent, then watch mates dangle babies over christening fonts, share junior-sport war stories, walk brides down aisles, and are driven mad wondering if you made the right call?
How do women in 2024 know which way to go, especially if they don’t have a siren call one way or the other?
The economic perspective around not having kids is super valid. It costs a minimum $230,800 to raise one in Australia. Women know the baby’s future relies on their body, savings, career. We make sacrifices that men don’t: as Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show, we do the bulk of daily unpaid housework.
Yet putting that lens on what is an emotional, psychological and biological decision – sometimes an imperative – feels both practical and limiting.
Truth is, nobody ever has enough time, money or selflessness for children. French psychoanalyst and former economist Corinne Maier explores that in a fascinating way in her new book #MeFirst! A Manifesto For Female Selfishness, which fans see as “liberating” and critics see as “a mockery of devoted mothers”.
Maier found the responsibilities of raising her two now adult children “appalling”. She lives in a different country to her husband of 32 years. In her book, she calls marriage and relationships “a bad deal” and motherhood “a trap”.
She advocates being selfish and escaping “the role your mothers were trapped into playing”. Dissects “babywashing”, the “lie” that “children make women blossom, and that suddenly our lives are more rich, rewarding and beautiful because of them”.
It’s provocative, maybe slightly tongue in cheek and not totally true for me. I don’t wish I’d had more “me” time. The kids were my me time, my greatest pleasure, my legacy without expectations other than that they find someone to love who loves them back, something to do, something to look forward to.
That’s what I told Jack. If you’re going to have a baby, you should really want one. That there’s a whole other world out there that doesn’t involve suburban barbecues and pass the parcel and parent-teacher meetings. That being a mum has been exhausting, endless and a staggeringly fabulous adventure I never regret.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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