Fiona’s Story: I am lucky that not having children has not affected my marriage

My husband and I have been together for 20 years. We are both British. We have no children together, although he has a son from his previous marriage. We would have welcomed a child of our own but it just never happened. I am now 53 and have long ago made peace with it. I haven’t really felt sorry for myself for not having children. I accepted that it wasn’t meant to be and chose to focus on the fact that I live a comfortable life and have a loving and supporting husband to share it with.

Both my parents passed away years ago and so there hasn’t been outside pressure for me to produce grandchildren, as is often the case for some people. And the fact that my husband does have a child of his own means that his parents have a grandchild to dote on.

My stepson has never lived with us and so it has always been mainly the two of us. Our life is very busy both in terms of our respective jobs and the fact that we have a very busy social life. I am often asked if it bothers me that I am not a mother and my answer is always no. No because like I said before, I consider myself fortunate to have the life that I have, and above all, I feel lucky that the lack of children has not affected our marriage.

I do have nephews and nieces, but they are not an active part of our life. Unlike some childless people who feel the need to be around other people’s children, I don’t. It’s just not for me. I have a sister and a brother, both with children, and my sister particularly thought that I would be clamouring for her children to come and stay with us often. As the years went by, she realised that I wasn’t that interested in her brood. I do like them and have enjoyed their company whenever the family has visited, but that’s as much as I can handle.

I suppose for some of us childless people, once we have moved on from the initial disappointment of not becoming a parent, we never look back. There is far too much to do and far too much to discover for me to waste my time and energy on what could have been. There is this idea that some childless people have that having children can only bring joy, and of course nothing could be further from the truth. One just has to look around to see how false that assumption is.

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