No Kidding: Women Writers and Comedians

on the Choice Not to Have Children by Maria Popova

“Motherhood Personality Disorder is a complex, interfamilial

compulsion fueled by estrogen, culture, religion, and the Family

Values Industrial Complex.”

Mother’s Day has come and gone, and with

ithistory’s finest letters of motherly advice.

But while most people have a mother or

mother-figure to associate with the holiday,

far fewer than half are a mother or mother-

figure, placing the occasion on a spectrum

from irrelevance to alienation and

discomfort for them. Those of us who have

chosen not to have children harbor

particular unease around the implicit

cultural value judgment embedded in this

holiday — after all, what does it say about a

culture when its only national holiday celebrating womanhood

celebrates women’s uterine capacity or adoptive aspirations?

In No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood (public

library), comedy writer Henriette Mantel rounds up a troupe of

female entertainers and authors whose essays explore various facets

of what it means to be happily childless — or, as one contributor

aptly puts it, “child-free.” Most women desisted from motherhood

by their own volition, and some by nature’s, by way of reproductive

health issues and painful surgeries, but all share a contentment with

the final product of not reproducing. And though some of the essays

hang dangerously on the precipice of defensiveness and apologism,

perhaps this is due to their authors’ genre rather than gender —

great comedy, after all, relies heavily on self-derision.

In the foreword, actress and comedian Jennifer Coolidge, with

equal parts heart, humor and humility — a trifecta that recurs across

the essays — points her inner radar to a lifelong inability to

multitask as a tell-tale sign that motherhood is beyond her abilities:

I knew my limitations at a young age. I was very aware of my inability to

multitask by age five. I admitted this to my mother when I came in from

playing, spit out my chewing gum, handed it to her, and said, “Mom

please hold my gum, I’m going to the bathroom right now, and I can’t

handle both.”

Mantel sets the stage in the introduction:

Years ago, I remember watching The Tonight Show with Joan

Rivers, who was the guest host. Gloria Steinem, who was about forty

years old at the time, was her guest. In her usual obnoxious way,

Joan said to Gloria, “You know, my daughter has been the biggest

joy in my life and I can’t imagine not having her. Don’t you regret

not having children?” Gloria Steinem didn’t miss a beat. She

answered, “Well, Joan, if every woman had a child there wouldn’t

be anybody here to tell you what it’s like not to have one.” Joan

looked at her like that thought had honestly never crossed her mind.

It was a true gift for me to be able to pull together writers who are

here to tell you “what it’s like not to have one.”

Because, after all, there are many ways to leave meaningful legacy

besides childbirth:

[Legendary anthropologist] Margaret Mead suggested that the

generative impulse could be expressed in other ways, such as

passing ideas on to the younger generation through teaching,

writing, or by inspiring example.

Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho pens one of the

collection’s finest, most disarmingly witty essays:

Korean children get a lot of fuss made over them, I guess because life

was tough in the old country, and it was a big deal if you survived.

There’s a big party thrown when you are one hundred days old,

followed by another when you make it to one whole year. My

parents took a lot of pictures of me at these parties, although I don’t

remember a thing as I was really drunk at both. From the pictures I

see the cake though—all these big multicolored rice cakes, each

pastel stripe a steamed layer of pounded and steamed rice flour, not

sweet like birthday cake but a delicious treat all the same. It looks

like a chewy Neapolitan ice cream, or a gay pride flag made of carbs.

It’s the best and I want it, but I think wanting that cake isn’t enough

reason to have a baby.

[…]

Babies scare me more than anything. They’re tiny and fragile and

impressionable—and someone else’s! As much as I hate borrowing

stuff, that is how much I hate holding other people’s babies. It’s too

much responsibility. Of course they are lovely and warm and

adorable, and it’s so funny when they decide they like you and hold

you in return, but I am frightened of doing something wrong that

will alter them forever. Give them a weird look and they might be

talking to their therapist about me fifty years later.

[…]

It might not be a fear of kids themselves, as in truth I usually get

along with them pretty well. They like my tattoos and my

uncomplicated child/adult face. They identify with my orange shoes.

I look like I would let them get away with stuff, and I do. My fear of

having children is that, frankly, I just don’t want to love anyone that

much. I have my own problems with love, and I have processed and

played the same games for a lifetime, but what if I had to do that

with someone I actually MADE?! (Or went all the way to China and

adopted. This is not a joke—I have long thought I would adopt one

of those baby girls from China, because really, who’s going to know

the difference?)

Comedy and fashion writer Bonnie Datt shares her tragicomic

solution to the cultural pressure for childbirth:

“Okay, here’s the truth I can’t have children:” I told my cabdriver

somberly. I attempted to look distraught, my lips quivering. And my

ploy worked. Finally this man, who’d relentlessly argued that I

would change my mind about my decision to not have children,

clammed up and began focusing intently on the road. Yes, after

years of being told by complete strangers that I didn’t know my own

mind, I’d finally learned the secret to get people to stop insisting,

“You’ll eventually want to have kids.” I just had to lie about it.

[…]

I should have just told them to butt out, but I was raised in the

Midwest, so this rude option never crossed my mind. Thus was

born my all-purpose taxicab “confession.”

SNL’s Nora Dunn takes head-on an inconvenient truth about the

perilous potential of motherhood:

In the current abortion debate, there is no talk of children. Those

who are anti-abortion never mention them. They seem to be the

same people who want to cut food stamps and get rid of social

programs that might help children and mothers. They never talk

about nineteen-year-old fetuses. They don’t talk of war or hunger or

about how much it costs to buy shoes and socks and how hard it

must be to have children without a washer and dryer. They never

seem to take into account who the father is, or who the boyfriends

might be. I never wanted to have a baby if I wasn’t positive I could

give it a wonderful life and my undivided attention. I didn’t get that

from my own mother. When I was little, I didn’t understand that

there is no such thing as undivided attention. My feeling was I

needed to become a good mother to myself before I invented a child

that needed one.

Author Laurie Graff examines the root of the palpable pang she

feels when bombarded by images of idyllic family life during her

Facebook voyeurism:

That pang is about feeling out of step with the stages of life more

than of having missed out on them. This is not to say that I haven’t,

for maybe I have, but I have also been too busy to notice. Good, bad;

up, down; I continue to stay the course. Still part of the non-civilian

us, still in the city, I still continue the pursuit of my dreams. It’s who I

am and how I live.

Writer, director, and comedian Debbie Kasper delivers a deadpan

quip:

I was always too self-centered and irresponsible to have kids. I know

that never stopped many others, but I am a narcissist with a

conscience.

In an essay titled “Mother To No One,” writer and crossword-

lover Andrea Carla Michaels illustrates just how deep the bias of

our cultural expectations goes with an anecdote wildly amusing on

the surface and rather poignant at its heart:

A dozen years ago, when I was approaching forty, my eight-year-

old niece Hanna asked me, “Aunt Andrea, are you married?” I said,

“No, are you married?!” She seemed alarmed and asked, “Why

would I be married?!” and I said to her, “Well, why would I be

married?”

She folded her arms and said, “You’re weird.” “Good weird or bad

weird?” She grumbled that she hadn’t decided yet.

But it was already so clear to her at eight that people were married

and had kids, and if you didn’t, you were “weird.” It’s amazing how

young those attitudes start. This “chat” with my niece didn’t prepare

me for the now-daily shock of being mistaken for someone’s mother.

I overheard my other ten-year-old niece Alexa patiently explaining

things to her six-year-old brother, who was piecing together family

relationships. He asked who I was the mother of. Alexa dramatically

turned to Ricky and exclaimed, “Aunt Andrea is the mother to no

one.”

Playwright Jeanne Dorsey considers the ambivalence of

motherhood, reminding us of Hamlet’s great insight:

It is not an experiment in which I will have the chance to participate.

Motherhood is not in the cards for me. Is it a loss? How would I

know? I’m too busy living. I am blessed with a full, healthy, and

interesting life. And then every once in a while, true to my gender, I

ask myself: How would I feel if I were someone’s mother? And how

would that someone feel about me? I will never know. “There is

nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

In an essay titled “The Pathology of Motherhood,” comedian, actor,

and TV producer Valri Bromfield playfully proposes the inclusion

of Motherhood Personality Disorder in the DSM-5, the next edition

of the psychology bible that is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

Mental Disorders, placing it in the Cluster D category of overly

intrusive/dissociative disorders:

Motherhood Personality Disorder, or MPD, is a complex,

interfamilial compulsion fueled by estrogen, culture, religion, and

the Family Values Industrial Complex.

She lists several of the diagnostic features:

Intrusive preoccupation with offspring

Episodes of major martyrdom

Intermittent cooking and cleaning

She itemizes the three main subtypes:

PARANOID TYPE: This type presents in cases where the expectant

mother has seen the film Rosemary’s Baby and clings to the hope that

she will give birth to the demon child. (Note: Only diagnose MPD if

the delivered baby does not present signs of being the offspring of

Satan.)

DISORGANIZED TYPE: This subtype has the greatest impact on the

patient’s family. From the ages of two to sixteen, the offspring must

be transported everywhere by grandparents or other guardians, as

the mother is habitually preoccupied with behaviors incompatible

with child supervision, such as: an inability to find her car keys,

sleeping, watching “her show,” or intoxication; or the patient is

simply not available, perhaps because she is attending a Zumba

Fitness Party or because she flew to Cairo in a manic state earlier that

morning.

CATATONIC TYPE: This has been found to be the most adaptive

type for the MPD mother with teenagers. The patient lies motionless

in bed staring at the ceiling and soiling her clothes, but otherwise

does not really give a shit. The patient’s children often take

advantage of this particular presentation of symptoms, as it

facilitates the use of the family home for underage recreational

activities, since, when friends’ parents later ask if the mother had

been present at the time, the juveniles can reply honestly in the

affirmative.

Under Prognosis, she concludes:

With treatment, MPD patients can hopefully achieve partial

remission, eventually replacing their child(ren) with several dogs or

cats. While personal hygiene suffers with this intervention, the

replacement of obsession objects can allow for the eventual

reintroduction of human children and grandchildren, but only

under strict supervision.

No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood features

contributions by writers, comedians, and politicians like Cheryl

Bricker, Cindy Caponera, Jane Gennaro, Judy Morgan, Carol

Siskind, Suzy Soro, Amy Stiller, and more.

Thanks, Kaye; public domain images by Nikolas Muray via George

Eastman House