I was in a private hotel suite at a summit of African leaders at Victoria Falls, trying to persuade the president of Uganda to tell me what had gone on inside the meeting. He tried evasion tactics and asked me why, like so many European women, I “refused to have children”. My stumbling explanation was that I was too busy, that I travelled a lot and was quite happy without children.
“I have known you since 1986, and you still don’t have children! This is not good,” he said. “You were in Rwanda during the genocide and now you are committing genocide against the name of Hilsum! You are a genocideur!”
People in Britain would probably not look at it quite like that, but books and articles about the misery of the childless middle-aged career woman are proliferating and, with them, a sense that women of my generation who have chosen not to have children have made a mistake that we will regret for the rest of our lives. A cartoon a few years back showed a high-flying executive in her power suit rushing from meeting to meeting, with the thought-bubble: “Damn! I forgot to have a baby!” I keep waiting for this feeling to assail me but, as my 44th birthday approaches, I still have no sense of panic.
The economist Pamela Meadows has written: “We need to recognise that jobs that are incompatible with normal family life are exciting and rewarding . . . If the price is paid in lack of hours available for another sort of life, then it is one that some women (and men) are prepared to pay.” Some work is not family-friendly by its nature, and there is little any employer can do about it. I am fortunate to have a job I like and one that challenges me. But it would be difficult to combine it with having children. I travel frequently, often to dangerous places and at a few hours’ notice. I rarely know when I’ll be back. Female foreign correspondents with children seem to feel constantly torn.
People ask if my job is stressful, to which the answer is no, because I am not divided between work and family, between a needy child and an interesting story. I made a choice. And when I have time off, I can spend it with my partner or my friends. I can do what I like or nothing at all. One day I will no longer be a foreign correspondent and will have to find something else to absorb me. Maybe that’s when the regrets will creep up on me.
Our culture has a deep fear of ageing and the inevitable sense of regret and loss it brings. Although I view the prospect of nappies and sleepless nights with horror, I accept that I have missed out on one of the most profound feelings human beings can have. But even if I did regret not having children, why would that be a different order of regret from other missed opportunities? And what about the regret of those who had children? Most women love their children, but that doesn’t mean they do not pine for the things they might have done if they had not had children. Following one course of action precludes another. We childless women do not have a monopoly on regret, but may express it more clearly because it involves no disloyalty to someone we love.
In a recent case, a woman who had an abortion suffered from profound regret that manifested itself as depression. Backed by an anti-abortion group, she took the doctor who performed the termination to court for failing to warn her of the psychological danger of the operation. Well, what about women who are not sufficiently warned about the possibility of post-natal depression? Can they sue? And those whose children turn into juvenile delinquents and visit no end of misery on their parents? Can they get recompense? In our society, the joy of having a child is meant to overwhelm all other concerns, while remaining child-free is rarely seen as a positive choice.
The crucial word here is “choice”. A happily childless friend recounts a conversation with a woman on a plane. My friend – then in her mid-thirties – responded to the normal questions. No, I’m not married, no, I don’t have children, yes, I’m quite happy. The other woman, who was in her fifties, started to cry. “Don’t make the mistake I did,” she wept. “Don’t leave it too late.” But my friend had not left it too late. Like me, she had made a decision, which is quite different from never meeting the right man, or finding you’re infertile.
When I lived in Kenya I once watched a barren woman being “cured” by a Christian medium called Mary Akatsa, who spoke in tongues and claimed to know the mind of God. Her “cure” was simple – the unfortunate woman ran up and down among a jeering crowd, pursued by Mary, who kept whacking her on the head with a large, hard-backed Bible. I have no idea whether this did the trick, but the fact that the woman endured it spoke of her deep need to conceive. In Kenya, women must have children to prove their worth; men must keep the family and clan line going. The identity of both parents is subsumed by the child. The woman becomes “Mama Charlie”, Charlie’s mother, and the father “Baba Charlie”.
In our fragmented society, where culture does not tie us to family in the same way, a sense of self can be derived in many ways. The social pressure to be a mother is weaker than the fear of not being valued.
Children can be more or less guaranteed to love their mothers – at least initially. Maybe this is an overwhelming reason for many women to have children. The unhappily childless may feel unloved, while those of us who are happy to remain child-free are simply saying that we have found love and fulfilment from other sources.
Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News diplomatic correspondent
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