Childless and Not Despairing

The Story We Never See

By Wolfen Moondaughter
June 15, 2015

Warning: spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron ahead.

In my long, mostly glowing review of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I took a moment to say:

I was a little disappointed that Natasha seemed broken up about not being able to have kids, though -- as a woman who is glad to be sterile, it'd be nice to see a woman in media like me, someone who doesn't regret the inability to have children. I would have liked, when Bruce said she should stay away so she can have a family, for her to say sarcastically, "Oh yes, because that's the joy of every woman, having children!" At the same time, though, I can see how it's important to express that what the Red Room did to her was a violation.

I realised later that it could be read as me saying that Whedon was actually wrong for not writing Natasha that way, and I ended up editing the review to clarify:

I don't mean to suggest that Natasha being upset about being barren makes her an anti-feminist character, or to criticise her womanhood. I only mean that there is a harmful stigma associated with barrenness -- a suggestion that no woman could ever actually want to be barren -- with real-life, problematic consequences for those of us who don't want children. There is plenty of representation of women who are sad to be barren -- it's the default. Don't women like me deserve a voice too? But for the record, I did not personally associate her line about being a monster with her infertility, only with her status as a killer.

If Ultron could be changed from having been created by Hank Pym to having been created by Tony Stark, then why not that part of Natasha's history? Instead of Natasha being made sterile by Red Room, the story could have gone that she was sterile in the first place, and that could have been part of why she was chosen by Red Room (a horror of its own, as it would have suggested she was chosen because, being sterile, she was seen as expendable). Or that aspect could have been left out entirely, and when Bruce suggested she shouldn't go with him because a life with him meant she couldn't have children, she could have just said she didn't want them anyway, so to her it was a non-issue.

But of course I can't expect another storyteller to tell a narrative that fits my wishes -- in truth, I don't expect it; I simply lament the lost opportunity. It may very well be that it never even occurred to Whedon to empower Natasha to not want children of her own -- or maybe he didn't choose that route because it was less dramatic, or less sympathetic. If it was the first reason or the last, though, it just exemplifies the problem: to the world at large, the inability to have a child is one of the greatest tragedies that can befall any woman. Few believe a woman would choose that fate for herself -- and let me reiterate, that disbelief causes real-life problems. But as this is a personal concern, then it's my duty first and foremost to speak for myself (and state that I do not presume that my experiences reflect everyone's).

Let me tell you a story.

Once day in school, when I was fifteen, I found myself thinking about the future, and the thought of what it would be like to have children -- both the idea of the birthing process and of raising the child afterwards -- left me horrified. Like, "gonna toss my cookies" kind of horrified. Then it occurred to me that I didn't have to have children! I decided then and there that I would be childless -- and that, if I ever changed my mind, I would adopt. As far as I was concerned (and don't take this as preaching, but rather as proof that these thoughts weren't just a teen fancy I would outgrow), there were illnesses in my family I would not wish on anyone, and there were plenty of people in the world as it was. Blood has never mattered to me anyway. If I indeed adopted someone, they would be an older child -- both because older children are less likely to be adopted and because the younger the child, the less I can handle being around them. I've only babysat twice. I don't generally find babies cute in the slightest, and their crying greatly distresses me in a "make it stop!!" way. I don't have much in the way of maternal instincts.

Whenever the possibility of me having children came up in conversations, I was always told something along the lines of, "You'll change your mind when you're older" (even when I was in my late twenties and early thirties), the speakers invariably giving me a knowing -- and rather condescending -- smile, because of course my biological clock would kick in sooner or later, right?

Yeah, uh, instead, my clock tried to kill me.

I went to a doctor for a problem. Looking at my paperwork, she asked me about my irregular periods, wondering why I had never looked into it, saying, "You might never have children!" I said that that was fine by me. She said I would probably change my mind, and kept pressing the issue until I told her to drop it and treat me for what I'd actually come in for. In all her pressing, she never once said anything about other issues that might be tied to a lack of having a period -- certainly not cancer. She was too busy judging my lack of a desire to have kids and trying to sway me towards them.

When I was 31, I had a cancer-related hysterectomy. Both before and after the procedure, people asked me why I didn't try chemotherapy first, and why I also had my ovaries removed, when the cancer was barely detectable and only in the uterine lining. But why would I keep a potential ticking time-bomb in my body when I had no interest in the purpose of the organs? They even asked me to think of my poor parents and how I would be denying them grandchildren. (Not that it should matter, but my parents assured me it didn't bother them that they wouldn't have grandkids.)

No one should ever be made to feel guilt or shame over an inability to reproduce -- especially for someone else's sake. Feeling sadness, if they wanted children themselves and couldn’t have them, sure, but that should be entirely about their own life plan not working out, and not out of some sense of obligation to anyone else.

I admit to feeling a certain amount of evil glee now, when people ask me the children question, in seeing their faces when I tell people, "Oh, I can't have children." At the same time, there's a flip side to why they end up feeling bad for asking the question, one that's another sign of the problem: it involves the assumption that being barren can only ever be a horrible thing.

From my experience, I'd say it's ranked by society as being right up there with rape on the list of tragic backstories for female characters -- indeed, in Natasha's case, it was a type of rape. Can you think of a story about a woman who is happy to be childless? Not a story where a woman puts having a family temporarily on hold for a dream or out of a sense of duty, but where a woman who can't have baby in the first place doesn't lament it, or even states what a relief it is to not have to worry about pregnancy? I'm sure there must be one out there somewhere, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Close to it, there's Sally on Coupling, but running parallel to the story of her thinking she's pregnant and not wanting to be, there's Susan's story of trying to be and having trouble (until they discover it's really Susan who's preggers, not Sally). Then there's the largely unsympathetic Caroline Hailey, on Homefront, who married her husband under false pretenses, in order to move to the US, and then did everything she could to keep from conceiving. That's as close as I can think of.

On the other hand, for more characters that are barren, or having trouble conceiving, or miscarrying, with the state of childlessness being seen as a tragedy, there's Scully on The X-Files, Lucretia on Spartacus, Elena on The Vampire Diaries, Rosalie in the Twilight franchise, Piper on Charmed, Monica on Friends, and both Mary and Anna on Downton Abbey, just to name a quick few from TV and film. (Please note: I am not actually criticising any works for having plots where being childless is a tragedy, only noting the prevalence of the subject! I'm a fan of most of the ones I'm mentioning!)

In the comic ElfQuest, the Wolfrider elf Nightfall and her mate, Redlance, wished for a child; because they hadn't experienced Recognition (a biological breeding imperative among elves), they required the help of a healer to conceive. Lord Voll called the Wolfriders liars when they claimed they had children; his own people, the Gliders, seemed barren. The elves in general have difficulty conceiving without Recognition. Even the Go-Backs, the only elf tribe to frequently reproduce without Recognition, are known to have stillbirths. Human Nonna didn't personally lament a lack of biological children, even adopted a few kids, but was called "childless" as a slur; it can be inferred that her lack of childbearing ability was part of why she's initially seen as a dangerous outsider by her husband's tribe.

On How I Met Your Mother, Robin hated the idea of losing her independence to pregnancy, but was devastated when, after thinking she was pregnant, she learned she was actually infertile. In the Twilight franchise, Bella goes from a character who explicitly does not want children, to wanting one when she's pregnant. Now, please understand: I am sad for Robin, and I am happy for Bella and Edward that they were able to have a child. I'm not saying that sort of thing doesn't happen, that it's invalid to go from not wanting to be pregnant to being upset at being infertile or happy to be pregnant after all, or that such stories should never be told. But the "didn't want children but changes her mind" plot is fairly common compared to the flip side. Thus, society is encouraged to think that any women would really want to have a baby if she were only given a chance, and that infertility is always a highly unwanted state rather than an experience that varies from person to person. That belief is often then imposed on woman, their choices taken away, because some individuals think they know better than the woman going through said scenario. Natasha may not have been calling herself a monster over her infertility, but it's not hard to see why some have interpreted it that way.

I love Stargate SG-1, with Vala Mal Doran being my favourite character. While I did find enjoyment in the Ori / Adria story arc, it did present Vala being impregnated against her will but ultimately wanting the child. Yes, children of rape are often wanted by the mothers, and I'm not saying it's at all wrong for them to do so (or even for such a story to be told) -- when it's entirely their choice to, rather than them being shamed or guilted or even forced into it. But there are those I've encountered who feel a woman should be forced to carry a child of rape to term -- never mind that pregnancy carries some risk to the life of the mother, or a rape baby especially could produce psychological harm to her. I can at least praise the show for making it a complex situation, but it's worrying to me that there seems to be some taboo against showing a woman who doesn't decide to carry to term, rape or otherwise (or if they do decide to, like Julia on Party of Five, they have a miscarriage instead, because Good Girls Avoid Abortion).

I'm sure there must be some story where it actually happens, but I can't think of one -- whereas I can think of other stories where an initially unwanted pregnancy is carried to term: Sha're on Stargate SG-1; Darla, on Angel: The Series (she tried repeatedly to get rid of the baby but couldn't, then ended up sacrificing herself so he could be born in the end); Erica Kane on All My Children -- as well as her daughter Bianca, years later; Viki, on One Life to Live; and Gabrielle on Xena: Warrior Princess, again just to name a few.

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Unending," where the team is trapped in a time bubble, we see a montage that includes Vala wracked with sobs; while it's not explicitly stated in the narrative, it's assumed by many (and confirmed by the writer that such was his intent) that she'd miscarried a child. I myself had assumed the scene had something to do with her not being able to carry a child, and, after my own hysterectomy, wrote a fanfic where she too had a cancer-related hysterectomy. So lest you think I'm only calling judgement down on others, I've perpetuated that narrative myself -- and did so even though I was in a very different mental place after my hysterectomy than I depicted her as being in (to keep her in canon, and to explore a story of creating artificial life forms).

After my procedure, I remember a conversation in Tart's old forums where a certain famous independent comic book creator expressed his feelings that headstrong-and-willful me and those like me (I'm paraphrasing here) had been brainwashed by feminism into ignoring our natural inclinations to be homemakers, and that it was making us all unhappy with our lives -- full of hate, even. His thoughts are typically considered outdated now, I think -- but if activities and statements by Gamer-Gaters and members of the Men's Rights Association over the past year are any indication, not quite as outdated as I'd previously assumed.

News stories of late aren't too reflective of as progressive a society as I would hope for either. Some women may now face a struggle to get birth control (and thus to exercise their right to decide when and if they will have a child) because of employers demanding that they prove they have a medical need other than preventing pregnancy in order to get it through company-sponsored insurance. (Then there is the matter of pharmacies accidentally charging for it when it's supposed to be free -- I should think more care would be taken in charging patients! Has this happened with other medications? It makes me suspicious.) The struggle to prevent unwanted pregnancy is bad enough on its own, but a woman who can't get birth control is also potentially denied freedom from other medical issues she might otherwise be spared if the birth control method in question is a drug whose uses are misunderstood.

When the idea that "not having children is a fate worse than death" is perpetuated, death can then indeed become a mother's fate. In Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died because she wasn't allowed an abortion for a fetus that was non-viable anyway. It's likely that the law preventing her from aborting was tied to the Catholic beliefs of the bulk of the population -- their beliefs were arguably forced upon her. Women in some areas of the US now face the worry that, if they miscarry, they could be charged with murder even though abortion itself is legal, suggesting they have to prove it was an accident even though at least 10% of pregnancies end naturally. (Consider: mothers could face doing this while grieving their loss). And there is a long, ugly history of women dying by way of dangerous illegal abortions -- women who may well have survived if they could have gotten those abortions legally, in a safe environment, but instead died along with their baby. Yet, the struggle to reverse Roe Vs. Wade in the US continues, with the life of a person who cannot exist outside of a body being held by some as more important than that of an already established person and the choices of that person over what happens inside her own body.

And it's not just woman who can suffer by the perpetual "infertility automatically = tragedy" narrative; men suffer their own insecurities about not fathering children, their masculinity contingent upon the ability to do so.

So, if you ever find yourself in need of a character for a story, maybe consider a heroic figure who is infertile and glad to be childless? If nothing else, the character is bound to be pretty unique -- and you just might get someone to think twice about how they behave regarding the reproductive state of real people.