On Miracles: Musings on the Journey From Childless to Childfree
My life is a miracle, or so I’ve been told. And I agree, though not for the same reasons. I have a wonderful job, a loving husband, no debt, good savings, close family and friends, tolerably good mental health and a cat to dote on. In the world we live in, all that is pretty miraculous. By this point in my life, a few days before my 30th birthday, the fact that I was born with a serious heart defect that should have killed me or left me with the IQ of a kumquat is little more than an odd little anecdote that my parents inevitably trot out around my birthday (Valentine’s day, naturally). I exercise, do martial arts, climbed a (very small) chunk of the Great Wall of China, got my Master’s degree—all typical accomplishments for most folks with “corrected” heart defects. I can do most any physical feat you can do, though I may need a bit more time to get there. With one exception.
Between 1 in 8 and 1 in 12. Those are the odds of me passing on my defect, or a worse one, to my biological child. For comparison, the average newborn has a 1% chance of having a heart defect, and about a 1 in 500 shot for one as serious as mine was. And one other point—I’d probably survive labor, though the odds are significantly worse for surviving it with the same state of health I enjoy now. Those odds don’t inspire confidence. I’m not going to second-guess women in a similar situation who had children (many without incident), but knowingly putting a new human life through those kinds of odds seems unethical to me, or at least poorly thought out. I also grew up with a chronically ill parent, and while that experience made me who I am, again a deliberate choice pre-parenthood is different than my dad losing his own genetic roulette game when I was 5 (in his case, epilepsy). Forgive me if this seems clinical, but I got “the talk” from my cardiologist around the time I started seeing my first serious boyfriend. I’ve had about 15 years to mourn my “loss,” think things through logically, and make the decision that’s right for me re: pregnancy.
Okay, that explains the childless part. But why childfree? Why not one of the other “paths to parenthood,” as the adoption brochures delicately put it? Well, I do want to say that I haven’t closed the door on adoption as completely as I have on pregnancy. It’s possible that my husband and I could develop a strong enough urge to run that particular gauntlet, but I just don’t see that happening. Domestic adoptions take forever and don’t come without risks. The fact that we would want as young and healthy a child as possible wouldn’t help. A few years ago I researched international adoption, particularly China, for “when we were ready.” However, most countries’ rules are getting tighter, not looser—and China’s new rule about physical disabilities may knock me out of eligibility, depending on how they choose to interpret my medical history. In any case, the mountains of forms, home studies, interviews, marketing spiffs (excuse me, “biographical profiles”), etc. seems too huge a pile to conquer. Fair or not, my path to parenthood is more complicated than most, and I’m just not sure I want it badly enough, occasional sepia-toned fantasies aside.
No, I won’t give birth. I also won’t run a marathon, earn a black belt, or play piano as well as my brother. But I do have all those miracles I mentioned above—the husband, the friends, the cat. I could be a mom, and I could probably do a decent job. But it seems like these days, the parental urge and talent have to be so strong as to be almost a spiritual calling (which it was for my parents) to do the job right. I do not have that call—at least not now. I am active in charitable work, I work hard as a college librarian, we travel and own breakable furniture and go out for sushi every payday—in short I have built a happy, full life that revolves around what I have instead of what I don’t. While I “probably” have a similar life expectancy to what I would have without my defect, the oldest survivors with my anatomy are only about 10 years ahead of me. I don’t have the luxury of postponing my soul’s deepest desires until retirement—but then, do any of us have that luxury?
So, unless and until I hear that call, I will stick with my childless, childfree life, using my time and talents to serve others though my job and through other activities, and I will have no regrets. As my cardiologist said the day he gave me “the talk“—and on many occasions before and after—“Don’t let people tell you what your limitations are. If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” And so I work to live as full and unlimited a life as possible—be it parenting or childfree, be it 60 years or 100. And that is the true miracle of my life.
Copyright Sarah Clark. Published 1 April 2007 in Editorials.
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