What do “family values” mean when you’re old and childfree?

“I’m looking for someone with strong family values” is the mainstay-sentence of most TV dating shows.  Mostly, this is because everyone on TV dating shows is young enough to start a family, which they NEED to want because that’s the default “happily ever after” story everyone recognises.

(Nowhere in any fairytale, or Disney movie, or romantic novel does anyone say, “Actually, I’m not that fussed about having kids.  Do you mind if we don’t?).

A few years ago, someone left a review of my book, I’d Rather Get a Cat and Save the Planet… saying they’d like to have heard from women in their 60s and 70s. (The book is a my own ‘childfree’ story, interspersed with a collection of interviews I did with other childfree women, mostly in their 20s, 30s and 40s).  “There’s increasing discrimination against us as we age out of the possibility of ever having children,” this person wrote.

I was 38 when I started writing that book.  At the time, I genuinely thought it said most of what there is to say about life as a childfree woman.  For me, the hard work – that of deciding not to have kids and declaring it to the world – had already been done.  Menopause would put paid to the cloth-eared “…oh, but you’ll change your mind eventually!” brigade.  There would be nothing left for people to do but simply accept you for who you are.  It would be something to look forward to.

But as it turns out, that decision is just the hairline fracture that forms between you and the larger, childed world.  That fracture has nowhere to go but deeper as time warps and lives diverge and, as a childfree person, you can start to feel yourself disappearing from view.

Quickly, you realise that the “…oh, but you’ll change your mind eventually!” brigade has now dismissed you as a lost cause.  They move on to the generation behind you instead, as someone did at a family barbecue last year.  “You’ll understand when you have kids!” this person trilled, oblivious (I think) to the fact that I was even there; a non-understanding, non-person quietly eating her vegan burger in a grassy corner.

(Why didn’t I challenge this family member?  Well, to challenge them would have meant challenging their entire world view, and from a standpoint they had already waved aside as meaningless.  They weren’t going to be up for it, and neither was I).

I’ve found that many parents don’t want to look too closely at childfree lives; not just because they’ve dismissed them, but because (I think, again) they don’t want to acknowledge what might have been.  You are also dangerous to them, because your life doesn’t have the same constraints and obligations.  Their rules don’t apply to you.  Somewhere along the hard, messy, unpredictable line, they forget that becoming a parent was ultimately their choice.

Resentful comments start getting thrown in your direction.  Things like, “I know what your life is like, but you have no idea what mine is like.”  (Some people honestly do think that if you don’t have kids, your life is frozen in time).  “It’s so hard having kids,” is another comment I hear more frequently than I need to, and always in a plaintive tone that underlines how little I understand.  (Geoff Dyer, a childfree author, once wrote, “people have kids because they want to, but they always emphasise how hard it is”).

You also see just how much of life is geared around the traditional family; from tax breaks and benefits to everyday cultural life.  (Those janky TV ads about funeral plans are particularly depressing to me.  You’re born, you have your family, and then you clean yourself up nicely afterwards, without any hassle, “knowing we’ve done the right thing for our kids.”  Ugh).

Self-help no longer applies to you; it always assumes you’re childed.  So, you’ve got no choice but to roll your sleeves up and work harder, to feel accepted in life, to get to know yourself, to have enough self-confidence not to end up as the family skivvy.  Because you don’t have kids, people start assuming you’ll live for their kids instead, or that you’ll “step up” and do the lion’s share of care for family members you never liked (and who categorically do not like you).

You have to have some traditional ties… don’t you?  What are you, without those?  Not stronger, not happier, surely, because that isn’t possible.

Isn’t it?

Which brings us hurtling back to the “strong family values” sought by those poor, doomed TV dating show contestants.  It might be worth pointing out to them that the people with the strongest family values imaginable are members of the Mafia, and look at the state of them.

(Needless to say, I am seriously thinking about that follow-up to I’d Rather Get a Cat… mentioned by my insightful reviewer).