As a writer, I’ve done so much in the name of self-improvement.
I’ve modelled naked, jumped out of a plane, attended tantric sex retreats and even planned my own funeral. I’ve had moments of enlightenment and bliss. Epiphanies and crises. Yet as I turned 40, I was a failure by society’s standards. Why? Because I was single and I didn’t have children.
I remember flying back from Europe where I’d been promoting my first book – which had been translated into 25 languages and snapped up by a TV company – only to be quizzed by the Uber driver.
‘You have children?’ He asked.
‘No,’ I said.
Marianne Power says that as she turned 40, she was a failure by society’s standards. Why? Because she was single and didn’t have children
‘How old are you?’ He replied.
‘Forty,’ I answered.
He looked surprised: ‘I thought you were young – but you are not! Why no children? You must have children! I have children, they look after me, they buy me presents.’
And just before I could mount a defence of my life choices, he pulled up at my flat and told me to get out quickly, leaving me literally and metaphorically on the kerb.
A woman’s greatest achievements are still considered to be partnership and children. I might have travelled the world, written a best-selling book and be loved by a glorious group of friends, but to the outside world, I’d got life wrong. Sometimes I worried that I had got life wrong. After all, pretty much everyone in my life seemed to know from their late-20s that they wanted kids, and by their late-30s were making it happen.
In my mid-30s, an older, childless friend told me that when I was 40, a bomb would go off and I would be obsessed with the desire to have a child. I turned 40 and no bomb.
I wondered if I was a late developer, or in denial. I wondered if my ambivalence came from not having met the love of my life. Maybe if I fell madly in love, I’d want their children? Or maybe I avoided falling madly in love because I didn’t want anyone’s children.
When I visited friends with children, I never came home wishing I had what they had. When people talked about physically yearning to have a child and ‘ovaries exploding’, I couldn’t relate. If strangers ever asked if I had kids I’d say ‘No… I don’t,’ and smile, to soften the ‘no’.
I always felt uncomfortable with that ‘no’. It sounded so stark. So abrupt. Like I was a heartless cow who wants to eat children instead of give birth to them. I would back it up with ‘I really like kids’, to assure them that I was not a cold-hearted b***h, followed by, ‘I just never felt the need to have my own…’, but then I’d worry that the last bit would in some way seem like a criticism of other people’s choices.
When people asked why, I didn’t know what to say.
I could come up with various reasons: the fact that even on eight hours of sleep a night I got every cold going. Or that, as a moody up-and-down type, spending too much time with people was exhausting – and, as far as I could tell, being a mum meant being with others 24/7. Or, the fact that, as anyone who has seen my flat will attest to, domesticity is not my strength.
But while they were explanations, I didn’t think they were the reason I didn’t want kids. I didn’t know if there was a reason – I just didn’t.
‘I don’t have any desire to have a mini-me in the world,’ I said once to a friend, and she thought I was putting myself down. I wasn’t.
‘I’m not saying I think it would be a bad thing – I just honestly don’t have that urge,’ I said.
A woman’s greatest achievements are still considered to be partnership and children, writes Marianne Power, and in the UK, 2,000 babies a year are born to mothers over 45
But even as the words came out of my mouth, I doubted myself. Was I in denial? When other women said they didn’t want children, I always thought: you’ll change your mind. I kept waiting for me to change my mind.
Friends worried I’d miss out on something that gave them so much joy. I worried, too, that I’d wake up at 50 and realise I’d missed the point of life. It felt lonely to not want the things that give so many other people’s lives meaning, and it certainly felt lonely not doing what my friends were doing.
Until recently we’d all been on the same path. Even when they got married and bought houses, we still hung out. But when the babies came, things changed.
I wondered whether that was the issue. Not whether I wanted children or marriage, but the fact that I no longer fitted in with the people around me.
One of my closest friends had spent a fortune on having her eggs frozen and was planning to have a baby on her own. I didn’t have that kind of cash. And, even if I did, I didn’t know if I’d spend it on getting my eggs frozen.
I could think of so many other things I’d rather do with it: book a flight to California, buy a trouser suit, give mum a chunk of money, pay off my credit cards…
Why didn’t I want this thing that everyone else did? It wasn’t that I was prioritising my career or that I wanted to travel. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to give birth – although I didn’t. It wasn’t because I didn’t think I’d be a good mum. Actually, I thought I’d be a great mum, as my mum had been to me, and her mum had been to her.
I asked my therapist if she thought I’d regret not being a mother. ‘There are many ways to live your life,’ my therapist said.
‘But you have children, don’t you?’ I asked her. She nodded.
‘And are they the best thing that ever happened to you?’
‘Quite often they are a disappointment,’ she said. I was shocked.
‘It’s important that women are honest about motherhood,’ she said. ‘Very often they are not.’ She continued: ‘Not everyone is built to parent, and the aunty role is very important. It sounds like you’re involved with your friends’ children’s lives.’
And I was. I had been dubbed ‘second mother’ to my best friend’s little boy. I was a cross between stepmum and big sister to another friend’s teenage daughters. I closed the session with my therapist by saying that the conversation might be pointless on account of my age.
‘It might be worth finding out,’ she said.
So on the bus home I googled fertility testing. One site alerted me to the fact that 88 per cent of my eggs would have gone by the time I hit 30. At 40, what would I have left? One-and-a-half hard-boiled eggs?
But then I read that, in the UK, 2,000 babies a year are born to mothers over 45. So maybe there was time.
I went to see a private doctor who told me there were two ways to test my fertility. First, something called an Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) blood test (£55) could be carried out to give an indication of your ovarian reserve. Then he recommended something called a saline sonogram (£395) to check if the inside of my uterus was healthy.
I had the bloods taken and booked in for the sonogram without giving it much thought.
And so it was that I found myself lying with my legs in stirrups as a man with icy hands put a speculum, followed by what felt like a balloon, inside my uterus. It wasn’t in fact a balloon, it was my womb being filled up with saline water, before a picture was taken. By distending the uterus, they are able to see any potential issues such as fibroids or scar tissue more clearly.
I had been warned it might be uncomfortable and that it might help to take a painkiller an hour before, which I had. In fact, as the speculum went in, I gasped with pain, and as my womb filled with water I felt invaded and upset in ways I could not process.
I was so shocked, I didn’t say anything. Instead, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, waiting for it to be over.
I left, 20 minutes later, feeling angry that I hadn’t been given a full explanation of what was involved.
I found a nearby cafe, took more Nurofen Plus and googled: ‘Should saline sonogram hurt?’
On chatrooms I found that while for some people it’s fine, for others it can be acutely painful. I wish I’d been warned.
I also had a sense, for the first time, of just how invasive fertility treatment must have been for friends who had gone through it. The indignity and exposure of having your legs up in the air, while a total stranger reaches into the deepest part of you…
A week later I went back for the results. I braced myself for the likelihood that I’d left it too late and would be told that, after years of working, drinking, stressing, my fertility was gone. I imagined that, in that moment, I would realise I’d been fooling myself when I said I didn’t want kids. I braced myself for the heartbreak I would feel as the weight of a lost life came crashing down on me.
But it didn’t happen like that.
Marianne reflects that her work as a writer has brought her so much love and joy and satisfaction. It has taken her around the world and introduced her to fascinating people
A man with expensive-looking hair and skin beckoned me into a high-ceilinged room where he stood behind a mahogany desk the size of my kitchen.
‘Miss Power,’ he said, gesturing to the seat. He picked up papers and talked about eggs and follicles. It meant nothing to me.
The upshot,’ he said, ‘is that you’re very fertile for someone of your age.’
‘Oh.’
‘Unusually fertile, I would say.’
‘Oh, right.’
He smiled at me and I felt a swell of pride. I was a woman! A real woman! A fertile woman! For a second, I allowed myself to imagine that I was an entirely different person to the one I was – the person who would fall in love, settle down and have a baby. A ‘normal’ person. A wife. A mother. A ‘good’ woman.
But I wasn’t that person. For better or worse, I just wasn’t.
He looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I thought of how many women would give anything to be told this news.
‘Of course, with your age, there isn’t time to spare, but the results are positive,’ he reiterated.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
My second feeling was guilt. What a waste. What a waste to have all this working equipment and not want to use it. But later that day, and over the coming weeks, there was another feeling: relief. The children question had been answered. My mum once told me she didn’t think I’d be able to do the work I do and have a family.
‘Some people do.’
‘Yes, of course – but it would be hard,’ she’d said. ‘Children literally take up every minute of your day. It’s exhausting. It’s not for everyone. You don’t know who you are and or what you are – there’s always someone needing something from you – something to eat, something to be cleaned… you’re a glorified servant.’
‘What would you have done if you didn’t have children?’ I asked.
‘I’d have travelled, had a career, been free,’ she said.
It hit me then that I was living my mother’s un-lived life.
One of the accusations levelled at women who don’t have children is that they are cold-hearted career women. We are warned that our careers won’t love us back and won’t keep us warm at night. For a while I bought into that idea and criticised myself for how much I cared about my work. I wondered if it was all ego stuff. Vanity. Overcompensating for an empty life.
But, actually, my work as a writer had brought so much love and joy and satisfaction. It had taken me around the world and introduced me to the most fascinating people.
One of those people is Anne Boden, a middle-aged woman who one day decided to start a bank. Starling Bank is now worth several billion. Boden never married or had children.
She happily admitted that work takes up her whole life: ‘I think it’s important to focus on what you have rather than what you don’t. I’ve had a great career. I’ve done lots of stuff. I’m proud of what we’ve built. I wish I could help more women understand that you don’t have to conform to the stereotype to be happy, to be successful.
But I’ve been extremely lucky. I had a childhood that was loving and supportive, but with no pressure to be anyone different.’
I was so lucky to have been brought up this way, too, in a time when women have the freedom to choose different kinds of lives. Lives that suit them. Lives our mothers and grandmothers were not able to choose.
When we have the freedom to choose, we choose different things. For some, their deepest desire is to have children and a partner; for others, like me, our desires take us down other paths.
All paths are valid. Nothing is better or worse. I see the great beauty and richness that comes with being in a partnership and having a family. I admire the grit and grace of friends who are parents and partners. They are mature in ways that I am not. But just because my life is different does not make my life — or theirs — any less rich or interesting.
Anyway, who knows how my life will unfold. Maybe I’ll fall madly in love tomorrow with a man who has ten children from previous relationships. Overnight, I could become a wife and mother. What a thought. Maybe my writing will be the thing I put into the world.
Or maybe I’ll keep being a second mother, big sister and stepmother to friends’ children, as they grow up. As my best friend puts it: ‘There are many ways to be in a family.’
Adapted from Love Me! by Marianne Power (£16.99, Pan Macmillan) out August 22. © Marianne Power 2024. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 1/09/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
