It doesn’t matter what you do in your life; if you are a woman (and you are childfree), people will expect you to have babies. If you don’t, they will ask you why. Alessia Armenise reflects on the idea of family and on why she doesn’t think she is cut out for having kids.
I didn’t grow up in a traditional family. Mine was a single mum always working to make ends meet and my dad – who was barely in the picture before anyway – passed away when I was only six.
Probably aided by the constant bombardment of happy families in Italian commercials in which the mum is always making breakfast for her husband and kids (usually a boy and a girl, while the sun shines over their perfectly tidy home), I always thought that one day, I would have something exactly like that. What I then perceived as a typical family.
The concept of family is still very much important to me, but I found myself having to reconsider that picture-perfect construct which was in my head when I was a kid. Throughout my life, I have built many families. My closest group of friends have been a chosen family I carefully nurtured ever since I left Italy to move abroad, almost ten years ago. Now I am thirty and I am married, and very much content with the family I chose. But, even if I have never felt a motherly instinct burn in my soul, somehow the feeling that a family is not really ‘complete’ without a child has been creeping up in my mind for a while.
I questioned why my maternal instinct wasn’t showing up the year I turned thirty and, even if my feminist self hates to admit it, I felt like I was weird. Many women have been talking about how society pushes us to be something that we don’t always want to be – like a mother, for example. But still, the brainwashing that we go through for our whole lives is so intense it’s almost impossible not to question ourselves at least once.
I am now in my early thirties, and my friends are starting to have babies. I see them navigate their lives through this mission that is taking care of a tiny human while keeping their lives and their relationships together and I think they are amazing. Until now, I honestly thought I could do it as well one day – I just wasn’t ready at that moment.
This summer, my best friend gave birth to the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. Honestly, she looks like she was painted in her womb by a renaissance artist. I have observed her, cuddled her, made her laugh and put her to sleep, and every single time I thought how magical it was to be able to create something like that. As much as I was craving to have her in my arms, her little limbs always moving in search of something new to discover, I was more and more aware that no, actually, I don’t think I can do it.
As much as I was craving to have her in my arms… I don’t think I can do it.
When you get to your thirties, especially if you are married and childless, people tend to ask you over and over again if you are pregnant, if you are planning to get pregnant or why the hell are you still not pregnant. Only if you are a woman, of course. All of a sudden, the ‘where are you working now?’, ‘Oh, you still can’t afford a house’ are replaced by babies or, better, the babies that you – as a woman – should be having.
My personal favourite comment is: ‘you will regret it if you don’t have any’. Apart from the fact that I doubt anyone can see my future feelings in advance, what if I do end up regretting it? What if I have them and I regret it? What if I have to change my life for them and I end up not liking it and, even worse, unconsciously blaming them for it?
I can’t avoid thinking about Reese Witherspoon’s character in Little Fires Everywhere, Elena Richardson. This perfectionist, bitter and superficial mum, full of regrets that she tries to drown building up a facade of perfection. How many women feel like they have to act like that?
I know there are no perfect mums, just like there are no perfect people. Unfortunately, society doesn’t accept unperfect mums, just like it doesn’t accept or understand women that don’t want to be one. If you ask me now, I don’t want kids. Will I change my mind? Maybe I will; perhaps I won’t. Why can’t that just be my business?
Photos: Les Anderson,
