A Meaningful Life for a Childless Woman
Kids are great for sure, but some of us are meant for other things. Neither having or not having children is better or more important necessarily.
So I’m a single and childless woman. Not by choice. I have been unlucky in love. It’s not through lack of effort. But I’m not alone in being alone. Many people in my generation, Generation X, have never gotten married or had kids.
Perhaps you can blame it on our parents for the divorce and the whole latchkey kid phenomenon. The reality is that my generation was the first to start to really step away from the traditional family structure.
I’m certainly not thrilled about my situation, and I realized that as I get older, I am going to miss out on the joys of having grandchildren, and I will not have any children there to help me when I am old and not well. This can be scary to think about.
However, we should not have children just so that they can be caretakers for us in our old age. That’s kind of a selfish reason to bring somebody into the world. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a nice perk, however, it’s not a guarantee even if you have children.
I don’t know how many people I’ve met over the years who had children who stopped talking to them for whatever the reason, even if it wasn’t the fault of the parent. Sometimes politics break families apart unfortunately. And sometimes the child ends up having issues of their own, and they are unable to be there for the parents later on.
The point being, that you cannot have kids just because you think they’re going to provide you some security in old age.
What gets me is that there seems to be this growing viciousness towards women in particular who for whatever the reason end up single. I am not sure why this sort of negative energy is not directed so much at the men who end up single, even though if we are talking about “traditional” families, it takes two to tango, and the men are a big piece of this puzzle.
So I recently saw this ridiculous video that was originally tweeted by Libs of TikTok, and then retweeted by Dean Cain, the actor who played Superman on Lois and Clark. Now, I used to be a big fan of Lois and Clark, and I loved Dean Cain as Superman. So I’m not here to bag on him specifically.
However this video, which I am not entirely certain wasn’t just a straight up satire, showed a blonde woman who was talking about how great it was that she didn’t have to worry about kids, and escalated things to the point where, in a typical day, she was doing everything from eating marijuana edibles to climbing Mount Everest.
I didn’t find the video to be that funny, but I also didn’t think it was completely flattering towards single people, perhaps intentionally. As such, I think it was somewhat meant to be ironic and not to be taken entirely seriously...because it’s ridiculous to think that all single people are able to sleep in until 12:30 PM, be lazy as all get out, and still end up climbing a mountain at the end of the day.
But because the woman in the video was saying hey it’s so great I don’t have kids I can now meditate while on the airplane, which didn’t make any sense because she could still be sitting next to other people’s kids, the reaction to this video was unfortunately predictably negative in a big way.
The constant refrain is: oh it’s so sad, this woman has no meaning in her life, her life is so empty and horrible because she’s single and has no kids.
Well, screw me, I happen to be single with no kids and it’s not because I wanted it to happen. My life just went on a big detour that I didn’t plan.
Now I could blame it on any number of people, including the woman who was supposedly a friend of mine who hit on my live-in boyfriend in our house...when that was probably the guy I would have married otherwise. But be that as it may, here I am no husband and no progeny.
I am not worried about my genetic line, because my sister has had three children and that is pretty much carrying on the DNA of Stephanie Brail.
And, as much as I’ve had to mourn the kids I’ve never had, I’m in some ways quite relieved that I don’t have them given the state of the world right now. Not having kids actually gives me a bit of freedom, and by freedom I don’t mean the freedom to slack off and just be a dumbass all day. I mean the freedom to take some risks that I might not be able to otherwise, if I was worrying about taking care of my children or protecting them from harm.
What’s quite unfortunate about the constant self-righteous harping on single women is that it is extremely insensitive towards women and men who for whatever the reason weren’t able to have the families that they deeply and genuinely wanted.
The message that is persistently provided is that those people who don’t have families and kids of their own are horrible losers who are destined and doomed to be miserable and lonely for the rest of their lives. Oh, and by the way, those lives are apparently inherently “meaningless” without having little munchkins running around.
Certainly, there are joys and love that you will experience as a parent that I will never, not having been one. At the same time, not having kids does not mean that your life is meaningless or without purpose. And we should not be telling people that the only way to happiness is to get pregnant and pop out a little one.
Would you have told Mother Teresa that her life was meaningless because she never got married and had her own children?
Oprah has never had kids and she is filthy rich and apparently enjoying her life.
Betty White never had her own children. She was married, I believe multiple times, but don’t quote me on that. However, America’s grandma never had children of her own. Betty White took that need to nurture and applied it to animals. Are you honestly going to tell me that this made her a sad, miserable, lonely woman?
What about all of the nuns and female mystics who have lived throughout the ages marrying God instead of man? Were their lives wasted?
Would you go back in time and tell Hildegard von Bingen that she should quit being a nun and stop writing all of that beautiful church music, so she could go get pregnant just like all of the other women in the Middle Ages who died an early death in childbirth?
It is so sad to see so many people who claim to be Christian being so nasty and judgmental towards people who have different life circumstances. Granted, I shouldn’t assume that all of the people sneering are Christians, there are probably married atheists who are also smug about their own domestic life.
However, some of this attachment to women having to bear children does come from the Protestant ethic. And as much as I’m not a fan of the Catholic Church, one of the big problems with Protestantism is that it removed the convent and monastery system from the church equation.
What this means is this: in Protestant Christianity there is no outlet for people who are single and might want to contribute to the world in a spiritual way as opposed to a procreative way.
In the Catholic Church, becoming a nun or a monk is considered a vocation. It is something that people can choose instead of the family life. Instead of marrying a husband or wife, those who choose a life of religious chastity are making God their spouse and the whole human race their children.
It is from the mystic celibates of the Catholic Church that many of their most famous and wonderful saints arose. These monks and nuns wrote beautiful books, composed ethereal music, helped the sick and the poor, and actually lived like Christ, in many ways much more so than the priests who were running the actual churches.
Evangelical Christians don’t have this outlet for the single people among them, and think that every single person on the planet needs to shoehorn themselves into a nuclear family. It’s simply not realistic.
Now, granted, everything I’ve just said does not say anything about a secular singlehood that provides meaning and inspiration for the average person. However, we have already seen that single or those without children can contribute in their own way and have a great impact while enjoying fruitful lives.
But I am focusing on the spiritual precisely because so many so-called spiritual people are the ones who are being the most nasty when it comes to the single female who chooses not to have children.
We need to have an awareness that a single person can have a purpose and a meaning in life, and it’s not an instant death sentence, where you’re doomed to a life of ramen noodles and lonely nights watching old episodes of Ally McBeal.
Even when I was younger, I often thought that it might be nice to be a nun. I don’t think most people think that way, but I did. I felt drawn in some way to a religious life, and yet I knew that the Catholic Church wasn’t really the home for me.
I did do some training to join a religious order in the Anglican church for women, but I didn’t take the final steps to fully join the order. This wasn’t a big deal, in that this was mainly a group of women who might meet once in a while to volunteer and they agreed to pray a lot. You weren’t going to be publicly doing anything different than most other people, and this was a don’t quit your day job situation.
When I finally found Sufism around the age of 50, I found a way for me to feel like I was part of a spiritual community with a purpose and still live in the world. I guess this is one of the main attractions for me of Sufism.
As I’ve said before, Sufism has a lot of cultural connection to Islam, which is frankly not my favorite outward religion. As a cultural Christian, I still want to sing hymns and get communion as my personal rituals. But, in choosing to follow Sufism, I have chosen to work on my spiritual growth and attempt to live the life of a modern mystic. (Since I’m relatively new at this, despite my advancing age, please forgive me for not embodying the wisdom and poetic quality of Rumi yet.)
Now, Sufis don’t have to be single. My Shaykh and his wife, the Shaykha, are a team. Joining a Sufi order does not require a vow of celibacy in the same way joining a Christian convent or a Buddhist monastery might. But in Sufism, there is far less focus on outward success in the form of good jobs, money, or perfect spouses as what sometimes unfortunately infects modern evangelical Christianity.
No Sufi is on TV like Joel Osteen preaching a mystic prosperity gospel.
One of the reasons I feel kids are so lost today is that they don’t have many options for meaning in their lives. It’s find a good job, get married, raise a family, make yourself famous on Instagram.
If we had more spiritual options for people, options that did not require marriage as a prerequisite to happiness, I think a lot of people would actually be happier and have more meaning in lives.
In contrast, the rebellion against marriage expectations currently takes more negative forms such as MGTOW, or “Men Go Their Own Way,” and the incel movement.
Incels aren’t all wrong to be pissed off at the modern pitfalls of dating; we as a culture have become shallow and materialistic and they are as much victims of it while also perpetrators of it.
Maybe back in the 1950s these guys might have joined their local “lodge” ala Fred Flintstone and his Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes. However, those groups haven’t translated well into the modern era, and some have unfortunate and alleged “Illuminati” connections, like the Freemasons. Plus, we don’t need to be going back to the days of the “women’s auxiliaries.”
There is a gap of meaning here, which is unfortunately being filled by divisive politics. We can do better.
So, for those sneering at the single, consider welcoming them and giving them a home in your spiritual community instead. Being single is not a disease, nor is a moral failing. Married people aren’t better people. Some are lucky, but many settled for less than what they really wanted out of the stigma against singlehood. In that sense, many single people are living lives of far more integrity, for not pledging a lasting love they didn’t really feel.
What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Nice, thoughtful post. The Chelsea Handler video to me comes across as defensive; however, I’m not familiar with her work as a comedian. She might be as funny as Amy Schumer for all I know. I’m a childless Boomer who was recently in a large jury pool (200) and was surprised about 25% of the mostly middle aged group (I’m in Florida) responded “No” to the question “Do you have children?” I understand why people with children say being a parent is the ultimate, but I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. We don’t all have that urgent need to breed.
I like your attitude Stephanie. We all have our unique life journeys and anyone trying to qualify the very individual life experiences along the lines of parenthood
is very shallow. Kudos to you, I like your attitude! 😊