You're listening to a Mother and Me a podcast Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on for MoMA me, Or you're listening to no filter. My name's Mia Friedman and my voice was a little bit croky, but bear with me because this is a really interesting episode. I always knew I was going to have kids.
But if you were a girl or a woman who doesn't think she wants to have kids, where are your role models for what your life could look like? Because portrayals of happy mums and just actually mums are everywhere, but rarely do we see women who choose not to have children shown in a positive light. Even in this year of Our Lord twenty twenty four, a woman over thirty five who doesn't have kids is viewed with what is it like?
Pity?
Suspicion, confusion, apprehension maybe, And if that's you, if you're one of those women who for whatever reason doesn't have kids, you're forced to deal with some pretty nosy and frankly rude questions. Why don't you have them? Do you want kids? Don't you like kids? Have you chosen ambition over motherhood? Have you put your work and your career before family. We'll look after you when you're old. Aren't you worried about dying alone? Have you thought about adopting? What about
ec donation? It's never too late or surrogate. Be sure you won't change your mind, and I bet you'll change your mind. It's pretty brutal the questions that you get asked if you don't have kids. And I am going to admit I'm guilty of asking some of those questions and saying some of those things myself. Now I'm careful
who I say them to. Because the thing is, the thing that I've learned is because we all know women who don't have children, even though they really wanted them, because maybe they had fertility issues, or maybe they just didn't meet the right person at the right time, and now that window and that choice is not available to them.
And for those people, those women, it's an incredibly fraught topic and a really distressing one at times, because they really wanted to be a mother, or maybe they thought they would be a mother and it just wasn't their choice not to be one. But there are more and more women who aren't child free by circumstance. They're child free by choice. And this seems to bring up a whole lot of weird feelings in people who feel like
it's their job to convince everyone to procreate. And I don't even know why this is, But when I was thinking about this episode, I started making a list in my head of all the famous women I could think of who didn't have kids. And I thought of Glorious Steinem and Julie Bishop and Elizabeth Gilbert and Julia Gillard, all of whom I've interviewed on this show. Actually, Jennifer Aniston and Renees Elwigger, Angela Merkele, Kylie Minogue, Tracy Ellis Ross,
Chelsea Handler, Kamala Harris, the Vice President. These are women who've accomplished and are still accomplishing so much. They're living very fulfilling lives without children, and so many women are, and yet as a society we still don't really know not just how to accept that some women don't want children, but that some women celebrate it. And if the women are listed, we don't know how many of those women are child free or childless, because there's kind of a difference,
is in't there? We don't know how many of them actually chose not to have kids. But instead of pichying those women or viewing their lives as somehow less than the lives of women who are mothers, today you're going to hear a different story. Farrest Daw celebrates her life and she's proud of her choice to be a non parent, which makes it sound like she wears some kind of badge going I don't have kids, I'm so proud, or
that she organizes parades. That's not true. But she prefers the term non parent because she says child less makes it sound like her life is lacking, which she says it's not. And she says child free makes it seem like she doesn't like kids, and she does. You're going to hear more about all of that in a minute now.
Throughout her career, Fara has worn many hats. She was a journalist before she became the founding editor of Women's Health magazine in the UK, she was the editor of Cosmo and Elle, and today she works for Substak, which is a newsletter platform, and she also writes her own essays on Substak called Things Worth Knowing. I'm excited about bringing you this conversation today because now at forty five, ten years after she and her husband officially decided to
stop trying to have kids. Fara is offering us a much fuller, more optimistic, and positive picture of what choosing a life as a non parent can look like. Is now one of those role models. Here's my conversation with Firestorm. How long had you been trying to get pregnant and how old were you at the time.
So I was thirty six at the time, and we had been trying maybe for about three years, I think three or four years. But you know, when I say trying, I also think that the signs were there. You know, my husband had brought me all these fertility monitors, and I remember he found it one time and he went, far, it's got dust on it, And so all the sort of signs were there. Really that even though we were sort of doing everything right, you know, we were having sex when we knew we had to have sex, and
I was occasionally using the fertility monitor. You know, I was looking after my body. I was making sure I was in the best shape of my life. But really the sort of dedication I think it needed when I look back now, it probably wasn't quite there to the degree that I see other women dedicated to the pursuit of motherhood and having a child.
Well, you were actually doing a lot though exactly phoning it in, right, I mean, I.
Did so much. I went on these crazy fasts. I went to see this woman who was like, you know, she was like the European expert on fertility, you aren't.
Finding it in No.
I mean, I'm pretty good at when I set my mind on something, I go after it. So I was doing all the things that I thought you should do, but yet behind the scenes, when it was sort of left to my own devices, you know, dusty fertility monitor, I think there was this sort of ray ambivalence behind it all, but the big sort of show of I'm really trying really hard to get pregnant everyone. I definitely do all that to the signs and signals that I wanted to have a family. Suit that with some gusto.
For those who haven't experienced the very specific misery of conception sex when you're trying to get pregnant, what are your memories of that type of sex without you know, wanting to pry too much?
Well, I think it's very mechanical, isn't it. It's like there's a goal at the end of it. So of course it takes all the emotion away, it takes the enjoyment away.
Lake. I say, speaking from experience, it's very very blak. It's like doing your taxes. But also if you are desperate to get pregnant, as I was when it wasn't working, you're also just incredibly emotional, and yeah, it's deeply unpleasant. Was it that for you?
It wasn't deeply unpleasant because I think the emotions weren't there, and I think it was a mechanical thing. It was something we knew we had to do, and we had to do it on this date and we had to quickly make sure that we never missed it. But for me, there was never the emotional side to it. And then every month when my period came, I didn't have that crushing sort of devastation. So every time I went to the toilet and it was like, oh, you know, you
see the spot of blood, it was like fine. And I wonder also whether there was a bit of relief in it as well. Yeah, you can deceive yourself very well.
I think sometimes you write a piece a couple of years ago saying farewell to motherhood. You started it by writing, I always thought I would be a mother, right up until the afternoon I walked into my husband's home office and told him I no longer wanted to be one. Do you remember what you actually said to him.
I think it was very simple. I think it was just I'm not sure I want to be a mother, and I remember his response was good, because I'm not sure I want to be a father either, So it was very simple exchange.
Well, given you're about to start IVF, this is a fairly unexpected time, it would seem from the outside to be having that conversation. The decision that you didn't want to do it, you wrote it came during an appointment with your doctor. Do you remember what happened in that appointment and sort of why it became clear to you in that moment after so many years of trying.
Well, I think the moment of clarity was probably in that doctor's office, But actually I think there were so many things that had led to it. But actually I think what it was was she was explaining to me the chances of us getting pregnant pretty good, and I think she said it was something like forty.
Forty two percent, she said, and.
Actually that's really good. But all I was thinking was was, God, that's terrible, and actually everything that we will have to sacrifice in order to have this relatively in my head low probability of getting pregnant. I wasn't sure if I was ready for it. Because the other thing about IVF, and I'm always very grateful to the women who had gone through it, who had told me about this in the lead up to it, was they said, you know, things will change, your hormones will go crazy, your relationship
may be a little bit ravaged. And I wasn't sure that I was up for the job of doing it. And the other point, of course, was that we had discussed earlier on that who was going to do the chief childcare giving. And actually my husband had said, because at that time I was an editor, I was earning more than him. He was just sort of making it as a writer. He was on the cusp of about to make it, and he said, look, I will say
my career, I'll be the caregiver. And that was another thing that I just wasn't sure about that, you know, he was sort of going to give up on this thing that he was about to break into for something that I wasn't sure that I particularly wanted, and I was actually not a high probability. Of course, it's actually pretty high forty two percent. But at the time I thought all of this that we have to give up and actually there will not be a child at the end of it, and I wasn't really ready to do it.
Did you have a blueprint for what of life without kids in it might look like? Did you have friends or anyone in your world who didn't have kids, who were around your age, or who didn't want kids.
Not that I knew intimately. The only blueprints that I had actually growing up were there were two men that we used to live next to, called Roy and reg and they were a married, same sex couple, and obviously they didn't have children, and I think, I mean, this is in the eighties. I'm not even sure they had
come out. They lived next door to us, and obviously children were not a part of their life, although they were lovely to us children and they were really wonderful, and I remember they had this wonderful home and this perfect garden, and they seemed to have this incredible relationship. Obviously we knew that, you know that they were together,
and then up the road. Further up the road where we lived, there was a lady called missus Jenkins who was in her eighties, and I think she didn't have children, But when I remember her, she was alone. She was by herself. She was a spinster. I think perhaps she'd lost her husband. I can't remember, but the point was she was a single woman. She was eighty and she would come to our house sort of every couple of weeks, and she would tell us about these she'd been traveling
around the world. She still had her gusto for life, and she was probably without her realizing it was sort of a real role model of what, you know, a rich life to down the line could look like. And it's interesting that there never seemed to be children as part of that equation. She went by herself, she traveled alone, but she still loved children. You know, she was a wonderful woman to be around, and she really enriched our imagination of what the world could look like.
You wrote that after you and your husband made the decision not to have kids, and thankfully you were both on the same page. We didn't really talk about it again. It was a closed chapter. We moved on but I did think about it. I still think about it, and I suspect he does too. Did you really not talk about it much after that initial conversation.
Not really, I mean the only times and it's still we barely talk about it apart from very occasionally. I remember one time Will came home and he'd been on the train as well as my husband. Of course, he said, oh, I saw a man today and this little girl went running towards him and wrapped her arms around him, and
he said, I felt a real moment of sadness. I did have moments, but I actually didn't communicate into Will where I would see children on the tube with their parents and I would get very teary about it, and then it would go. It was sort of like this weird and emotion would then come. And I think that was actually as I got into my later thirties, when I knew that time was passing by and actually, door,
I say, the door is closing. Of course, people have children right up into their fifties now, but for me, if we're being honest here, I felt that the door was closing. It was a firm decision we made together. It was a strong decision. I think The strength of the decision is shown by the fact that we didn't really ever talk about it again. Will occasionally we'll wake up and go, I'm really glad we didn't have children, and I turned to, yeah, I'm glad to and it's
quite a statement to make. But I think the only sadness, which of course is a very selfish sadness, is that you don't get that sort of genetic combination of the two of us. You know, it would have been nice to know combination of me and my husband would have looked like nothing more. The vision that I always had of motherhood, which again is wholly selfish, was having a child, maybe when they were eighteen and they were grown up
and we would spend time together. I used to have an image of I would have a child and there would be eighteen. I'd go and visit them at university and we talked about life. But that was an adult really that I was envisiging. There were no other daydreams about being a mother apart from that, And of course there's no guarantee that I was ever going to get that, to have that sort of airship with an eighteen year old, So we never really spoke about it.
Ever again, it's funny when you stop and think about the parts of other people's lives that we feel entitled to ask about or to weigh in on. You know, we ask people what they do for work or if they're in a relationship, and we're curious about where someone lives or what political party they support, or maybe what
school they went to. And most of the time these are just harmless curiosities and sort of part of being human right out in the world and small talk, trying to relate or connect to other human beings and kind of place them in the filing system of our brains and our sort of ideas about who people are. It's sort of how we're hardwired to try and understand each other.
But asking a woman whether she has kids or not, or whether she wants kids, that can often be far more complicated and just very personal to sort of casually wander into as far as territory goes. And you know what, as I said before, I've done it, You've done it, We've all done it, and I've done it so many times and then really regretted it. And as you're about to hear from Farah, it's time that we learned to tread a little more gently around this topic. I was
taking notes when she said this part. You two were very much on the same page, and fast didn't need to talk about it much more, but other people did.
And reading the two pieces that you wrote on your substack a couple of years apart, one about farewelling motherhood and the other about how not to be a mother, which was towards the end of last year, about what life is like on the other side, I was really struck about the fact that you must have to come out almost in a way, again and again and again
and talk about this decision that you'd made. You write about the dinner party question because you were thirty seven when you decided to have kids, which meant you say, at dinner parties with strangers, the question of children would always come up. What would people say? And was it something that you had to sort of steal yourself to answer again and again.
Well, what usually would happen is, obviously I look like a woman of a certain age, so people very benignly would just say do you have children? In the beginning, I used to bristle a little bit because, of course, admitting that I didn't have children that I didn't have children by choice. What I thought the world would perceive that to be was I didn't like children, which is
very different not wanting children. It's not that I didn't want children in my life, which is why that child free thing really sort of irks me, because actually I really like kids. I spent a lot of my life with them. I was a mentor when I was twenty six to a young child. I mean, I like kids, but I didn't want to be a mother, and I think that was the difference. But yeah, when people would say, look, do you have children, and then I would say no, I think they didn't quite know how to do a
follow up. So what would happen is I would always just volunteer the whole story, and then of course people look slightly ill at ease because it was like, well, what's this person trying to justify their decision not to have children. So in the early days, when people would ask me that question, do you have children? I would then go no, and then I would explain to them why. But as I got older, I didn't feel that I
needed to anymore. So I think I was lucky in that, you know, my parents and my in laws have been very cool about the whole thing. Obviously they would like it if we'd have had children, they'd be grandparents, of course, But you know, we're a generation that we're told you have choices to how you live your life, and of course both sets of parents have been very true to that. Their respect to the decision.
Not that they had a lot of choice.
No, they had any choice. No, they were very good. They didn't really prod and my father is Asian. For him, it's a really big thing for you not to have children.
Do they have any other grandchildren on each side?
Just one? I mean there's four of us, but there's just one, and actually one coming on the way, so actually there'll be two grandchildren.
And what about a near it with your in laws? Do they have any grandchildren?
They all have children? Yeah, so everybody again will is one of four and everybody okay, who will Yeah.
I've just become a grandmother. I think I would find it a lot easier to be magnanimous if I had at least one, which is can be entirely selfish, do you know what I mean? Like completely selfish. But I'm happy for them that they didn't have to project all of that onto you and Will.
That's right.
They got that satisfied elsewhere. If in fact they even wanted to become grandparents, maybe they did not want to speak for them.
I think that's right, and I think both me and Will are middle children, so I think you're right. The pressure, it's the beauty of being a middle child. The pressure taken off us completely.
Finally, there's a good thing about being a middle The most pressure.
I used to find that older people when we used to live we used to live in this very small village in England and it was mainly populated by people who are much older, and they would often pry a little bit more, why children, life is long? You know, you need to think about that, you need to think about purpose. They would do it in a very nice way.
I mean, you know, I have to say, I don't think from my recollection there's anybody who has really insulted me about it, but there was always and I always felt it was well meaning. But most of the people who were in their sort of dotage would often say, you know, life is long, and think about it carefully.
Which is kind of condescending or passive aggressive in a way, like you're very gracious to say, giving them the benefit of the doubt they were well meaning, and I'm sure they were. But it's interesting, and I know I've done
this myself. When someone says they don't want to have kids, I can sometimes go into almost campaign mode, as if I want you to vote for team having children, and I somehow need to persuade you to vote for my team because you've also had that experience right where people somehow take it as either a challenge or an implied judgment that their life isn't great with kids.
They can be an implied judgment that's right, is that you will have an emptier life essentially, and I definitely have. I mean, I try to always sort of see the best. But yes, that is the implication, which is you need to think carefully because what's going to happen when you're older. But I suppose I had so thoroughly dissected the decision.
One of the things that really stood with me was somebody, and I can't remember it was, but they said to me quite rightly, there is no guarantee, neither should there be, that your children are going to be there for you and your dotage, and you should never expect that that was the feedback I would give to people, which is, there are so many people I know who barely speak to their parents or they've phoned their parents farely and
actually old age without a child in it. You can have a family and you might still not have your children in your life.
Yeah, or they could move over the other side of the world.
That's absolutely right. So yes, I think that's right, and I think it will make some people feel uncomfortable because if you're choosing not to have children, they see it as a judgment somehow on the life that they've chosen to live.
Of course, on social media, you've got some lovely feedback whenever you write about it, including the question that you said you mainly got on social media, which is, aren't you worried about being lonely later in life? Or as it was put on Twitter, good luck dying alone?
Yes, and it's the same. I sort of think if that was the best, it's not so bad actually dying alone or being alone. I'm very good alone, you know, I'm very good alone. I choose not to have a huge circle of friends, so actually, yeahs that could be levied against me. It was like, I'm okay with that, and also there's no guarantee you're not going to die alone either.
You're right that deciding not to have children in your mid to late thirties, which is how old you were when you made the decision, and even into your early forties, always feels like a sort of a cheat. What did you mean by that?
Well, I think what I meant was that you have the possibility to change your mind still at thirty six thirty seven saying I'm child free, Well, of course I still had sort of, you know, a window, possibly even ten years. I'd probably say less than that, but I could still change my mind. It's not sort of so wild a statement because actually, and people did say that, they go, oh, you've still got time to change your mind.
Did that annoy you when people said that, because it's very like implying that I know better than you about your own decisions.
Yeah, I mean I think it is annoyed.
It's very smart.
I think it is. Yeah, And it's like, exactly, we know better and trust you, with the wisdom of age, you will change your mind. So that whole of you've still got time to change your mind. Really, in the beginning I perceived as you will change your mind, And actually there was a part of me that was like, well, maybe I will. I just don't know, but this is the best decision that I can make at this point in my life. And remember, I'd taken on a very
big job at that point. I was editor of Cosmo, which of course was all about women's choice and underlying the decision, which of course you don't go into with strangers, but I think if strangers had pressed me more on it. One of the other reasons was that whole premise, which of course Cosmos star or certainly contributed to the narrative of having it all. I never believed it was true for me. That's a really important thing to look at, which is, of course some people could have it all.
But I'm a worker. I struggle with things. I have to work really really hard to get the success that I've had, like really hard, I think, a lot harder than other people behind the scenes. It's real grind stuff for me. So being the sort of mother I would want to be, and I know what I'm like, I'm obsessive, it would have been all encompassing. But also just taken on this job, which is a job that I'd always wanted. I didn't think that I could do both of them
sufficiently well. And that was a sort of I said. There were a myriad number of reasons why I made the decision, but that was certainly one that played into it for sure.
Isn't it interesting? Because I got pregnant and expectedly just a few months after starting as editor of Cosmo in Australia, and it never occurred to me that I couldn't like it. Never for one second occurred to me that I couldn't both of those things interesting. It's true what you say about when a woman tells you that she does or doesn't want to become a mother, believe her.
That's right, that's right. I mean, that's why I have to really know yourself incredibly well and work on yourself to understand what success and the path to success looks like for you. I am not one of these people who sort of goes along on the ease through life. It takes a lot for me to sort of get to where I guess I've got to. I think that
there's something very important about that. And I always say to younger women, it's like, you should really interrogate that whole concept of having it all and maybe me that you know, a lot of women will be like you and they don't question because is like, of course I can do it. There will be others who go, yeah, I need to stop and have a think about this. The other thing I think is because we didn't, Because me and Will it took years. We were trying for
a long time. What also happened is that introspection or the interrogation of who I was and what I could do, what I was capable of. I had years to think about that. Had I got pregnant very quickly, I'm not sure I would have reached the same conclusion. Actually, I think if we'd have got pregnant at you know, sort of thirty four, I don't think i'd be here today. I don't think we would have had more than one perhaps, but we would have had children. But it was an
aunting game. That's when the question started to form and I had to come up with some answers.
Fara did come up with the answers that she needed for her life and in her self exploration and kind of process of self discovery. Those answers became real pearls of wisdom about the richness and purpose that can be found in life as a non parent as she has. And Farah may have set out to understand her own feelings about motherhood, but what she learned along the way about friendship and about creating our own rituals and defining what family really means, it relates to all of us.
I promise you after the next part of this interview, you're going to want to make some calls or actually some texts. Let's be honest to the people that you love. You wrote basically a fantastic piece for your substat called how Not to Be a Mother, and you sort of said, so many people write about the choice, but I want to talk about what life is like on the other side of that choice, down the track where the gates kind of closed. It's not still up for debate as
far as you're concerned. It's done. You say, it's a list of things from the other side, things we don't really talk about but probably should. Why did you make that list?
I've had sort of almost ten years now of occasionally writing about being child free. I don't always write about it. I get asked a lot, but I don't always write about it.
Is that because you don't want to be defined by it, or because you're bored of it, why do you say no to a lot of invitations to talk about it.
I think a little bit of both. I think it's the two things. I think you know, in the same way that if I was a mother, I would not expect anyone to define me just as a mother. In the same way I didn't expect people just to define me as there's the child free woman. And as you know, in journalism, it's very easy to get in that root of people go child free. Let's get fired to write about it.
Let's get fire and write about it. And look here, I am Farah, come and talk to me on no filter. Thank you for saying yes to me, even though you said notice so many other people.
Very welcome. And also I thought I had written everything that there was to say. I didn't, as a woman in her late thirties early forties, have anything else to say about it. But of course what had happened is in the sort of maybe you know, two or three pieces I had written, whether I liked it or not. There were a number of young women who reached out
to me all the time, constantly through social media. They'd picked up on something and What it made me think is these women are obviously looking for answers, and they'd probably found an old thing that I'd written years ago, and then they walked out to me and they would say thank you. I started to notice a pattern, of course, which was they didn't seem to be many people who were the different or the alternative narrative. And so when I reach forty five, you're right, the choice has pretty
much been taken away from you pretty much. I mean, I cannot imagine a world where I would now fell pregnant naturally. And actually, I think when the choice has gone, you then start to look at the life that you've built without children, because if I'd have had a child at thirty, where it would have been like ten or twelve now, and so it's like, okay, well what did
I do in those twelve years? I'd actually done an awful lot, and the shape of my life actually looked pretty good, and I thought that was probably something worth sharing with people, particularly these young women who were thanking me for talking about the choice to be child free. But actually after that they had nowhere else to go. And so actually what I wanted to say to them was, well, look, this is what once the choice has gone, because that's
coming for you. Next, this is what an alternative life might look like for you.
I want to go through some of the points on your list because they're so full of wisdom. The first one is about relief. What kind of relief did you experience?
Well, I think there's any relief, isn't it when choice is taken away from you? If you're a worrier like me, if you're sort of high neuroses, choice is a difficult thing. There's always of did I do the right thing? Once that choice is gone, it's incredible. It's a whole part of your brain that doesn't have to deal with this subject anymore. And by the way, it probably occupied more
of my thoughts than I probably let on. You know, had we made the right decision, even though me and Will didn't talk about it, I'm almost certain it would have taken up a huge amount of energy. And so now that's gone, it's sort of like this space in my mind which is much freer. Children or the whole topic of children, my children or my theoretical children. It's just gone. So it's sort of a brain space that
I have, and that's a relief. The other relief, of course, is people don't want to talk to you anymore about your choices.
Except me, except me today.
The assument, of course, you can't change your mind because it's too late for you. So people occasionally will still ask me do you have children? And I'll say no, and then they'll move on to something else. And of course that's a two way thing, because I don't feel I have to justify to them anymore how as a forty five or a woman I don't have children. But also I think people just realize, you know, they look at me and they go, well, she's a woman of
a certain age. She probably can't have children anymore. She's obviously made some decisions in her life, and it doesn't really go any further.
When we were talking about that earlier, about that question do you have kids, I think we've also learned. I'm now very careful not to ask that. Occasionally I will, and every time I'll regret it. You're right, it's okay asking someone our age, or you're younger than me, but someone who's kind of mid forties or above. But when you ask someone who's perhaps in their late thirties or very early forties, you can accidentally trip over a landmine.
And there can be some very difficult, devastating answers to that question. It can be around child loss, it can be around not everybody chooses not to become a mother. You know, some people are child less, some people are child free. You don't like either of those terms. For the reasons that you've spoken about. You prefer non parent
and I think we've understood as a society. I hope to be a little more discreet and to just be careful about rummaging in people's pockets of maybe things that are very close to their heart.
You're one hundred percent right. And actually I think Mia when people used to ask me, and I used to bring out this monologue that was me working my way through something, it was probably my own sort of themy here. So I think you're right. I think if it's a woman of a certain age, I agree. I don't go near it unless they prompt and ask me about it.
Okay, So the number two thing on your list, the second thing that you've discovered and you want people to know, is that other relationships will blossom. Can you explain that you wrote about your mother and your relationship with her.
Yeah, I mean, once the sort of mother child dynamic is out of the equation for you, then you have this time to think about, well, what are the other relationships which are open to me now? And the other relationships are I'm lucky that my parents are still alive. My mother is still alive, She's in good health, and we have become much closer. And I think one of the wonderful things about me not being a mother is getting to know my mother as a person as opposed to.
A mother, yeah, or a grandmother exactly.
There's no conversation which friends have told me, will you talk about the kids. That's what you do when you start to understand your mother as a mother, while she wants you're a mother, you have that incredible link with each other because you empathize with her and what she went through. I don't have that, But what I can have with my mother is an understanding of her and what she was like as a middle aged woman like me. And so we have a you know, I was just
away with her at the weekend in Cambridge. We have a really wonderful relationship now where I think I probably get to find out much more about her Linda as a woman, as opposed to her as a mother. You know the other thing. Throughout my whole career, I never had a lot of friends. I just didn't have time. And now I'm a point in my life where I can lean into friendship much more now. Of course, women
my age, most of them do have families. So actually the women that I have friendships with just turned out that way. They are mothers, but they're in their fifties. And that's not to say just aren't difficult, but they've
got a bit more freedom in their life. And so those relationships with older women is something that is incredible, and I feel really lucky that as a forty something women, I get to have a lot of women in their fifties and sixties in my life who I think are at that point in their lives where they have an enormous amount of wisdom and space in their life to give to friendship. So there's that as well. So there's all these different relationships.
So I'm glad you said that, because unexpected friendships was another thing on this list, and because I had kids, I was a lot younger than any of my friends. I was completely out of step. So when a lot of my friends had really young kids. I was in a very different life stage because my kids were older. And I remember saying to someone or observing that I had more in common with my friends who didn't have
kids than with my friends who had little kids. Yeah, And it was like a coming together again with my friends after our paths had diverged for a while, when I was in the thick of it. Suddenly I had the same kinds of freedoms that they had when all my friends with little kids were kind of locked down for years and years.
I think that's right, isn't it. And I think there is a lockdown, and I sort of understand that. So I don't particularly pursue relationships with mothers who have young kids because I know there's only so much they're going to be able to give. And that's quite the paint. That's absolutely yeah, And I'll probably see them on the other side and if the friendship's worth anything, it will
be absolutely fine in ten to fifteen years time. So I've sort of gone looking in different areas for friendships, really, and who is available to give the friendship at any point in life.
I'm available. The unknown is another thing on your list. I really love this. You talked about making your own rituals and defining family. Can you talk a bit about that.
All the rituals that sort of families have, so Christmas and opening the presents together and someone dressing up as Sansa, and we don't have that, and so you have to sort of make your own patchwork quilt of what your own family's rituals look like. So you knows the presence in the evening or for Christmas, actually we go away to like a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. We don't really see anybody. It's just us and the dogs, and that's a ritual for us. We escape from the world.
We miss out on a whole load of these things. So Halloween comes and goes. Of course you see these parents with these kids going out in the streets, and that's sort of not available tools, which is absolutely fine. But around that time we always go away and minigrate with the dogs. But it's not the same. But you have to start making different patterns because the ones are not available. But actually just because they're not available doesn't mean that you can't find a replacement.
Find meaning in other places. You say that another thing on your list is that your worries will differ. What do you worry about? It's perhaps different to a parent that you've noticed.
I think the one thing where those people were right when they go life is long, except of course now I think life is very short. When people say life is long and you really need to think about it, I think actually it was a very good sort of jumping off point to start thinking about, well, what is the purpose or what is the point? I mean, purpose is now such a bloody cichepe. And of course people's
children are not always their purpose. But I worry now about sort of what, which is very arrogant to say what I'm going to leave behind. I worry probably a lot more about health, old age. I worry probably more about social problems because I have the space to start thinking about things outside of rabits. But I don't have to worry about raising a human being. So my worries are, well, will I ever leave an imprint on the world. I might not leave an imprint on the world, but you
sort of have to try. I think. So my worry are what good can I do? Or what can I do? Or what I think? Actually it's what can I build? I think that's a big thing. I think when you're building a human being is a huge amount of energy and people will probably take this the wrong way, but a huge amount of creativity into building a good human being for the world, I imagine. I mean you're a mother, you'll know much better than it.
Yeah, also money, of course, money time you know side, there's a lot of emotional energy. And they also say you're only as happy as your least happy child.
I really remember that, I mean the constant threat. I wasn't sure again that I wanted that in my life. That is a selfish thing.
I don't know. I don't know if it's selfish, but I just think it's more contained. It's not that your life will be happy necessarily if you don't have kids, but your happiness or your unhappiness will be your own, like your heart will not be living outside of your body. It will be living inside of your body.
You can't rely on another person ultimately, whether that's your child, to bring your happiness. So I think that was another thing which that phrase is bleak in a way, but I think it's probably very true. I mean, don't they say that every time a child walks out the door, they're taking them mother heart with them.
Yeah, it's just walking around out in the.
World absolutely terrifying. So you know, I suppose I think a lot now about well, actually I do want to put my heart out into the world. I actually do want that, not in the way that we're talking about, but you have to talking about how are you going to do that, and actually what is the thing you are going to build? Because actually I do think most people need projects in life. They need personal projects, they need meaning, I need the grind, I need to keep
building something. So you start thinking about that, what's the thing that I want to build? If there's not a human life here.
Another thing you want people to know that's on the list is that your feelings about not being a mother change. And you talk about in your thirties it still felt a bit fraught and you perhaps had to justify it and because there was, as you say, there's still that opportunity to change your mind and questioning have I made the right decision? Okay? Do I still not want kids? Okay? How about tomorrow? What about next week? Well, I still
not want kids. Then then in your forties you said you felt relieved, and then how do you feel now in your mid forties.
I don't even think about it. It's not anything apart from I knew we were having this conversation, and I actually had to remind myself, Okay, well what are my thoughts about motherhood? Because actually it's just not a thing. It just doesn't occupy my mind at all.
Now. You used a word though that I found really interesting, and it's proud. You feel proud? Can you remember what that word means in this?
I think I feel proud in that everything that I thought about, which was how am I going to build a life, how am I going to have purpose? How am I going to have a narrative to other people about why I chose not to be a mother? I feel like I've wrapped a lot of that up now and I feel like, I mean, who knows, things can change, but I feel like I've reached a place where I'm
happy or certainly content. I feel pretty full. I have good relationships which are alternative, perhaps relationships to those some you know, forty five year old woman would ordinarily have at this point in a life. And I suppose I feel proud that I made a decision and that has helped some other people. And actually I'm able to show that actually not being a mother isn't going to define your life, because that's the other thing I worried about not being a mother would define my life. And of
course what I'm proud of is it really doesn't. It actually becomes after a certain age, very immateial really finds your life is what you choose to build around your life. So I think I feel proud of all of those things.
Actually, another thing on the list that you say people should know is that people will be less awkward around you, And you talk about the difference between thirties and mid forties, which we've touched on, that there's less of that oh are you okay? Why like that idea that at forty five it's probably more likely to be a scar than a wound. Whatever, that your reasons for not having children, whether they were proactive or they were sort of thrust
upon you. Is that what you've noticed that there are less of those probing questions.
I don't go to many dinner parties, but the truth is it's not up for common Nobody asked me anymore. I imagine new people think I'm a woman of a certain age, so probably I have older children. They just don't ask and those people that do know me and know that I chose not to have children, the concept of do you ever regret it? Nobody ever over asked me. What I do get a lot of is people going what do do any time where you're going away? What you know? So I get a lot of that.
I think.
The other thing that I get, actually, which is interesting, and I wonder if this is because I'm not a mother, is I get a lot of women, mothers talking very freely to me about being a mother. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think it's because there's no possibility of judgment because I possibly, however they feel towards their child, nothing's going to shock me because I've got nothing to compare it to. So that is actually not
something I don't think was on my list. But actually that's a very privileged thing I think I have, which is I find a lot of women because I've spoken to a lot of women over the years about motherhood, and I feel that as a sort of very open dialogue which might not I feel it might not be available to them with other mothers, because of course, other mothers, I imagine, bring so much of their role of being a mother, so anything you're going to say. So there
was a woman I spoke to recently. I interviewed her actually for my substack, and she loves a child, and
I think that goes without question. But she talked about, you know, moments of her son was heavily autistic, hearing a car one day drive past and he was outside in the road, and she thought for one moment he'd be run over, and then there was a part of that went life would be much easier, and then the thought went, but I don't think had I been a mother, it might have been as easy for her to talk to me about having those momentary dark thoughts.
That was an incredible piece that you published on your substack. I think her name was Jill, and she said, to be honest, my son has ruined my life, but he has also enriched it in ways beyond measure. And I love the level of honesty that she could have. That idea of you know, women feeling that they could confess to you about regretting motherhood, which is another data point. I guess that it's not always happily ever after, It's
not always a wonderful thing. There are a lot of women with children who would be looking at your life and feeling incredibly envious of the choice that you made and wishing either that they'd made the same choice or that they'd had the opportunity to make the same choice as you. And that's taboo in our society.
Because of course, not being a mother is not a possibility for a lot of women. I mean, when I put a call out, I was very lucky to find Jill, who I think had done so much work on herself. She spoke with such absolute clarity about that that he'd ruined a life, but also he changed in enriched in a way she could never And that, of course is the dichotomy, isn't it. And that's why when I put a call out saying, is that anybody who will speak
to me about regretting motherhood? Every single person started it by going, I love my children, but.
So things can be true. I love you ruining my life, right?
But I remember I had one woman and I never got in touch with that. We sort of never were able to cross paths. But she just said I feel trapped in my life, and that was it. I think sometimes people just need the space to be able to say that, and then you know, to let out these thoughts and then retract. But I think the interesting thing for me is, and actually this is thanks to mothers.
Is that because mothers like Jill and actually so many since you know, I'm very lucky, I'm forty five, so I've had sort of twenty years of this conversation around motherhood not being easy. I don't think that was probably available to say my mother's generation. But with mothers talking about that, actually it can be hard, that helps other women make the decision about the realities of what motherhood looks like. And I think Jill spoke about this. You know,
Jill was a little bit older than me. I think she was in a mid fifties. She had an idea that had been sold to her about what motherhood was. It was prams and it was you know, getting together with other mothers and it was like, yeah, but there's got to be a whole other narrative, but that nobody was telling it. So I think that's where I feel
very strongly about that. And that's down to brave mothers who are willing, who know that talking about the dark side of motherhood does not in any way in the gate how they feel about their child. So you know really important, I think.
And just finally on your list, you will get obsessed with your dog. It's a cliche. But it's a cliche for a reason, right, tell me it's a cliche.
I mean, of course, the devastating thing is is that they're gone too soon.
It's another kind of empty nest. It's like empty dogbeds.
Ken of these constant empty dog beds go through our lives. So, I mean, I do remember, but I don't know if she was half joking. A friend said to me, you know, far if I haven't got the dog, she's got a dog. Now, if I've got the dog before I had the kids, may not have had the kids.
Funnily enough, when your kids become older, that's when the dog has its time to shine in. Or you need a new dog because as someone wants, right, if you have teenagers and you want someone to be happy to see you when you walk in the door.
Get a dog. That's totally right. You know, the dogs don't fill they're different. People go, oh, do they get dogs because they didn't have children. It's like, no, it's a different hole.
Yeah, it's what you say in the list about you get to lean into other relationships in your life, right, whether it's with your dogs, whether it's with friends, whether it's with your parents, there's a space that perhaps people with children don't.
Think that's right. And I think that's the thing. You're constantly looking, as you should be in life, to fill the spaces. It's like, what's going to fill the space. Because I think that's what when those people would say to me, life is long, what you're going to do with it. As long as you're filling the spaces, then life is going to be good. And I think that's
the point. I think it's those who maybe decide not to have children and then there's nothing, because I do think you need to think about, even whether you're a mother or not a mother, what's going to fill the space of life? And I think that's just an important question you need to ask yourself, regardless of whether you're a mother or not. And I've definitely spent the last five years thinking very keyly about that, which I think everybody should anyway. I think I've just come to it
a lot earlier. And I suspect maybe mothers once the teenagers have left the house, they start thinking about it too.
Thank you so much that was just a mirror. I love that conversation, and I think what I liked about
it most is that I don't know. On the surface, it's about the question of whether or not to have kids, and about as far as personal journey with that decision, But really this conversation is about a woman making the very deliberate decision to get to know herself and her identity as well as she possibly can, and have that identity exist separately from what society expects of us and perhaps what we internalize about what it means to be
a woman, what we expect ourselves because of that. And I really love that, because as women, we give a lot of ourselves to other people, and that's true for women who have kids and for women who don't, and so often in history and still today, we define ourselves by who we are to other people, like we're a wife, we're a mother, where a daughter, We're a friend, we're a sister, And I think Fara is so many of
those things. But she's offering us all this kind of imitation to think about our identity apart from what society expects of us and apart from what we're told we should be as women and all of that really begins with honesty and vulnerability, which is how Fara shows to approach her life. And she's such a good writer. People tell her things like really personal things, And if you want to read more of her work, I'm popping a
link to her substack in the show notes. And what I hope you take away, and what I've taken away, is that for every woman who doesn't have children, there is a very distinct story, and it's often a very personal story, and it's often a very complex story and a layered story, and it's not necessarily yours to know. And here's me saying that, as the nosiest person you'll ever meet, don't ever assume, and I'm talking to myself here, that someone owes you an explanation for the choice that
they've made in their life, whether it's having kids. No one asks anyone, oh, why did you choose to have kids? It's just seen as the default. And maybe we need to just start thinking a little bit more, Noah, before we ask that question to women who have lives that look different to our own. This episode was produced by Naima Brown, the sound production by Leah Paorges. I'm mea Friedman thanks for listening to my croaky voice. I'm going to go and rest it and speak to you soon.