Between doing the final edits for a special issue of the journal Psychoanalytic Perspectives I’m organizing entirely dedicated to the topic of maternal subjectivity, and preparing for a group retreat centered around writing the maternal body (more details below!), I’ve been contemplating a familiar question:
To have, or not to have, another baby?
OK, I know that probably sounds ridiculous. Especially if you know that I’m a mother of three (!!!) teenagers, divorced from their father, and unpartnered. Most days it seems pretty insane for anyone with even one adolescent to so much as consider having a baby! My home is no different than most, filled with hormonal outbursts which often sound like, “Mom, you’re so embarrassing!” or worse, “Ugh! You’re ruining my life!” Yet, even as one teenager is preparing to go to college in a year and I glimpse an open road to creative freedom ahead, my children occasionally plead with me to have another baby. “It would be amazing if you had a baby on your own,” they say. I have to admit, they’re not the only ones who think about it. I still find myself imagining family building in all sorts of different configurations.
So what is it that keeps compelling not just me, but any of us to desire more children? And when is enough, enough?
My colleague Aurelie Athan has written about Reproductive Identities — parallel to theories of race and gender identity — naming that every single person’s identity includes issues of whether, when, and how to have or not have children. However, we tend to neglect this aspect of identity. Maybe that looks like moralizing a “right” approach. Or, we can assume that a person either does or doesn’t want to have children, as if this choice is without ambivalence, loss, or life complications. In actuality, with every single new possibility of a child, a person’s reproductive identity is stirred up again.
However, even in therapy, it’s pretty uncommon to talk about these decisions. Another colleague of mine, Hillary Grill, shared her experiences in therapy both before and after having children: “We talked a lot about my mother and the effect she had on me but not very much about my thoughts regarding myself as a potential mother. Nothing was articulated about the possibility of remaining childless, and certainly nothing was mentioned about the merits of doing so. We acknowledged my biological clock, and without full exploration, I concluded that I didn’t want the option of motherhood to slip away. The notion of ambivalence was not mentioned. Most of my barely known thoughts about potential motherhood were not fully processed as it was assumed by me and my therapist that this was an expected part of my development and not worthy of detailed therapeutic inquiry.” Then, she added, “When my kids were school-age, I began another analysis. The desire to become a mother was moot at that point. We addressed the challenges being a mother presented but didn’t focus on the meanings of my identity as a mother. Again, we spent more time unpacking my relationship with my mother then we did on me as a mother.”
That’s one reason I and a cohort of feminist psychotherapists have been focusing more on reproductive identities and mothers’ own experiences. Like all other major life events, to have or not to have a(nother) baby is significant. As people struggling with infertility, loss, or the inability to find a desired partner know, reproductive identity is never just about choice. However, developing intention through acceptance of one’s circumstances is an expression of identity, and we get there in part through talking about it. No matter what, these reproductive realities impact a person’s identity forever.
I’ll bury the lede here, as I’m sure you’ve been on tenterhooks: I’ve decided not to have more babies!
For sure in the long road of divorced co-parenting I’ve wished to have one home with love flowing between mother-father-child. Not necessarily even such a heteronormative nuclear family. Love flowing between sister, her child, my child, me. Like when my teenage daughter babysits my friend’s toddler girl — wouldn’t it be idyllic to have a home where this happened more days than not? An unbroken chain. But, this expanded family didn’t materialize. And even when I met a partner who wanted a child, I knew it wasn’t right. It turns out that there is enough — a whole family lineage, in fact — already here that needs my love.
Some might say, simply, that there is a difference between reality and fantasy. What any of us wish for in fantasy is rarely the same thing as what reality delimits for us. And I think this is precisely where it gets interesting, because fantasy also has the power to imbue our reality with vitality. This is also where reproductive choices about the future have everything to do with memory keeping.
I know enough of birth and motherhood’s magic to know that inside that navel there is an unbroken chain. This crazy desire any of us have to make more babies is, on some level, an urge to return to that timeless realm and fuse our connections with love. Love, that is, that the reality of incarnated life has often turned into broken links everywhere. For some that is in racialized access to medical care, where the magic of birth is tainted from the word go. For others these breaks are between birth parents, a conception story that is violent or hateful or simply just avoidant. They can occur with a child’s or parent’s illness, or bullying, or so many forces that try to separate us from originary oneness. The point is, we have to keep going back to that magic spot, remembering it, one way or another. Sometimes the question of whether to have or not have a(nother) baby is about a new life; and sometimes it is about returning to the source of all life.
Another therapist I know found her patient asking about reproductive identity in elder adulthood, but not in the way you might expect. She kept being inundated by a retrospective image: “What was it like to mother my grandmother’s mother?” I have become obsessed with this question. I also hear it like this, “What if I put some of my maternal desire into my grandmother as a baby? How would that change the story of my family inheritance?” Now is a time I can hold my grandmother’s experience in mind more without covering it over. And I can make space to remember the childhood’s that have already happened — those of my children who are already here, as well as my own.
In my maternal body, in this body that has been born of a mother, I will always keep returning to the magic of birth, the links that can be made there, and the flow of love that remains possible between our connections at the source.
I’d love to hear how you’re thinking about your reproductive identity, whether that’s past, present, or future. These are highly individual choices and deserve a lot of attention. You can leave a comment in the discussion or reach out to me directly.
And if you’re feeling led to lean into this question more, my Writing the Maternal Body Retreat might be right for you. From July 19-21 in upstate New York, I’ll be hosting an intimate, women’s only writing retreat where we will explore the specific intergenerational crossroads that a mother inhabits at the site of her body. In addition to dedicated writing time over four led sessions, there will be ample time for delicious food, group sharing, and restoration in the natural world.
This retreat is focused on helping you enhance your psychological, physical, and emotional connection to your maternal identity, using nonfiction memoir writing as the primary method. As such, this retreat is appropriate for women-identified participants who have any level of experience with writing, ranging from those with a manuscript-in-process who could use new inspiration, to those who want to incorporate journaling more into their self-care but don’t know where to start.
This retreat is definitely geared toward mothers, but you don’t need to be a mother to participate. The maternal body can include your own birthing and mothering experiences, as well as reproductive choices, infertility, and your experiences coming from a mother’s body and the ripple effects any one of these experiences may have on the others. Email me at info@tracysidesingerpsyd.com for more details.
Until soon XX T
Tracey, thank you for this heart medicine.