What Kind of Mom Might I Have Been?

“Mom, what would you have done if you didn’t have children?” I posed this question to my mother when in my early 50s, she in her 70s. What followed was my favorite conversation we ever had in our lifelong tense relationship.

She didn’t miss a beat, saying she’d have gotten a PhD. in English Literature in hopes of becoming a university professor. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want you or your sisters,” she quickly added.

I liked that she could so easily envision a life without being a mother and told her so. In her moment of candor, she showed me a side of her character I’d never seen. I felt a tinge of acceptance as her only offspring who didn’t have kids and savored the undertone of regret I heard in her voice. She would have been a stern but dedicated educator.

What kind of mother might I have been had I had kids, I wonder?

I was well-prepared to care for an infant, having lots of experience with my sisters four to 10 years younger and the neighborhood kids I babysat regularly. Poopy diapers didn’t faze me, and only once did I get showered when changing a baby boy. I could burp them, cuddle them, and lure them to sleep at bedtime.

I liked playing with the older kids and helping them with their homework. When they cried over something that happened at school, I comforted them and, if asked, offered suggestions.

I did not excel at resolving sibling spats, more often leaving them to figure out their own repair processes. In hindsight, perhaps that was a clever strategy, but at the time I just wanted to remove myself from the fray. I confess, I did lose my cool periodically, too.

Always a frugal person, I would surely have chafed at the never-ending expenditures involved in childrearing. Had my ex and I been successful at getting pregnant, we would have become parents during a years-long period when he was unemployed. Who knows if one or two littles would have goaded him into a more fervent job hunt.

I, on the other hand, was on an upward trajectory in my career and ambitious as a prize fighter for the belt. The man I married was the youngest in his family and had never changed a diaper. He was afraid of babies and perplexed by the raucous nature of most children.

My role at work would have partnered poorly with what surely would have been a home life with me as mom managing almost everything, all the time. I suspect our union would have ended 20 years before it did, and I would have raised the kids largely on my own. I cannot envision that scenario for more than a few minutes without a sense of doom for the kids I didn’t have.

Managing my insecure, anxious temperament has involved lots of therapy and exercise over the years. I cannot conceive how working mothers, especially those who are single, manage the workload and expense involved in raising kids. I know many parents are physically active, but for the life of me, I can’t picture how they do it.

Of course, this is all pure conjecture, and I’ll never know how life may have unfolded differently than my reflections. What is sure, though, is that my feelings about becoming a mother have shifted throughout my life. I am whole as I am, thanks to therapy and a ton of hard work. I continue to integrate my life experiences into the coherent narrative of my life.

Today, I derive great joy from my many friendships with people younger than I, especially those born several decades after me. Many have kids; some don’t. I identify more with the non-parents, of course, whether they consider themselves childfree or childless. I appreciate the travails and delights of the moms and dads before they run off to whatever obligations soon beckon. I am grateful for whatever time they can share.

It struck me this morning while walking in the forest that the only person in the throughline of the story of my life is, and always will be, me. Although perhaps I’ll live on through the lives I have touched in ways I’ll never know. And that’s all good by me.