Welcome to Fully: The Conversation We've Yet to Have
Wanting Children and the Silence Around Not Having Them
“I know my people. I see my people. I want to be able to talk about them fully.” - Mara Brock Akil
Motherhood is a central focus in our society. Just look online and you’ll see countless posts of celebrity baby announcements, parenting blogs, and conversations centered on navigating motherhood. In recent years, there has been a welcome expansion in the stories highlighting the spectrum of women’s motherhood experiences—the joys of motherhood, the challenges that many women and couples face in becoming pregnant, navigating postpartum depression, and consciously deciding that having children is not for them. In all cases, women are openly and courageously sharing their stories about motherhood albeit from different perspectives. And this is beautiful.
Yet, as I think about the progress we’ve made in breaking the silence around motherhood, there remains a noticeable gap in the stories that highlight the lived experiences of women who desire children but don’t have them.
Being unable to have biological children despite wanting to—often referred to as being childless by circumstance—affects women across all races and ethnicities, educational backgrounds, income levels, and political affiliations. While this shared experience connects many women, as I mentioned in my recent holiday post, the reasons for not having children—and the ways those reasons are lived—can differ significantly. For example, there are notable racial disparities in uterine fibroids, with Black women more likely than white women to develop fibroids and twice as likely to undergo a hysterectomy to remove the uterus and fibroids (due to a number of factors). And although we often think of being childless by circumstance as solely a “women’s issue,” men can experience this too—yet societal expectations and biological realities continue to make the experience distinct for women.
Despite how prevalent being childless by circumstance is, it is still often not discussed, even in the spaces where we feel safest. I know this from personal experience. Several months ago, I shared this piece with a few close friends who, like me, do not have children but desire them (either currently or at one time). To my surprise, they deeply resonated with the piece. One friend even shared that she felt “seen” for the first time. I was excited that my words connected with them. But I was also saddened that, despite decades-long friendships during which we had shared beautiful highs and unimaginable lows, none of us had ever openly talked about this shared experience. Perhaps we had navigated this experience alone when, in fact, we never had to.
It is time we break the silence around being childless by circumstance. Doing so requires that we talk about the fullness of this experience—the joy, the uncertainty, the grief, which often coexists.
This includes highlighting the ways that women who do not have children live abundant, fulfilling, and beautiful lives. Tracee Ellis Ross illustrates this in her travel show, Solo Travel with Tracee Ellis Ross. She shows us that you can be single, desire children, and have a delicious life. In one interview she shared:
“So often I look around and I’m like, why are there not more examples of owning your singleness and owning your childlessness with joy and with abandon, or also with choice?”
But breaking the silence also means talking honestly about the more difficult aspects of this journey. For many women, this includes navigating uncertainty about becoming a mother in the way they once envisioned—or coming to terms with this reality. Ellis Ross has openly discussed grieving not having children, including on the IMO podcast with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. And during a 2020 interview with Oprah, Vivica A. Fox shared that one of her greatest regrets was not having a child. “I don’t get to see my eyes in a child,” Fox shared.
Unlike women who have suffered a miscarriage or had a child pass away, people don’t always associate women who have never had children due to circumstance as having experienced a loss. As a result, these women’s grief, sadness, or even guilt often goes unseen and unacknowledged, perhaps, in part, because the loss itself is not tangible. Yet, we have all likely had a long-held dream—whether to start a new career or to buy a home—only to realize at some point in the journey that this was not a dream deferred but rather a dream that would never be. And it is often those dreams, the ones that we actually never touch or experience, that are the most devastating to our spirits and the hardest to accept.
Discussing how women navigate these feelings is also integral, especially when there are cues at every turn—from Mother’s Day to graduation season to back-to-school photos—that their dream went unfilled. As a friend once shared, “As a woman who does not have children not by choice, surrounded by women who are mothers, it’s a constant reminder of what could have been.”
Breaking the silence also means talking about how women make peace with their circumstances and courageously reimagine motherhood in different ways. Some adopt or foster children. Some go through IVF. Some become the very best bonus moms. Some love on and care for the children who surround them in their personal and professional lives. Some birth projects, stories, and businesses. And some do a combination of the above. There is no right or wrong path, only varied expressions of mothering that may look different from what was once envisioned, yet are no less meaningful, beautiful, or joy-filled.
There are many more aspects of this journey that deserve attention and conversation. As more women who do not have children but desire them share their stories, it allows for these women to be seen and understood fully—in their depth, complexity, nuance, and humanity—by themselves and others. It reminds them that they are not alone on their journeys. And it creates safe spaces for connection, community, healing, and hope.
I believe we are ready to start having these important conversations. Welcome to Fully!
I find that when people share their sorrows in full honesty - I feel more human. Thank you for this.