Meh About Motherhood

LOOK AT THAT FACE.

What does it make you feel?

A Awomb-deep ache of longing.

B Not for me, thanks.

C Nothing at all. Here, confused writer Nikki Osman explores maternal instinct to discover why she feels zero desire to become a parent but struggles to give up on the future she always assumed shed one day want.

- Nikki Osman

I’M 30.3 YEARS OLD – that’s the age the average woman in Australia will have her first child – and I’m ticking boxes. I’m in a happy relationship with a man who knows his way around a Nigella cookbook. We live together. There is talk of getting a cat. But, the next box is the one marked ‘parent’ and filling it presents a problem. While most millennial women today will become mothers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that one in four won’t. And somewhere between these two tribes is a fence with a group of us sitting on it. We have a fondness for particular baby names even though we might never need them; we could win awards for our ability to subject-swerve when relatives bring up the ‘b’ word, and if you see one of us cooing over a tiny human, sorry, but there’s a chance we’re faking it.

“When I said at 18 that I didn’t see myself having children, people insisted, ‘You’ll want them by 25’. At 25, when my feelings hadn’t changed, they smirked and said, ‘Just wait ’til you hit 30’. Well, I’m 33 now and I still don’t want them. Will I ever?” So says Claire*, an HR manager, who admits she’s 70 per cent sure she doesn’t want children. Her list of reasons reads like mine: never again experiencing the joy of a weekend spent entirely alone; childbirth horror stories; being broke; fear of raising a child alone if her relationship crumbles under the strain. “Do other people have these fears but choose to have children anyway?” Claire asks. “Or does the fact that I’m having these thoughts mean I shouldn’t be a parent? Is this normal? Or am I over-thinking [it]?”