Kerry Norton* never wanted to be a mother. She wasn’t a “maybe one day” woman, and never had any doubt that she wanted to remain childfree. But that changed when she turned 38, and her life was thrown into an emotional turmoil of yearning, of longing, of mourning and of loss.

 

“When I was 38 I suddenly started to panic about my age,” says Kerry, who until then loved her life of freedom and possibilities; she and her partner, Gavin*, dreamed of one day leaving the rat race and moving to a foreign country where they’d live an artsy, alternative lifestyle. “A lot of my childless friends kept turning to the subject of ticking biological clocks, and I started to panic. There was a nagging voice telling me that it was now or never – and never is a very long time to regret something.”

 

So they took the plunge. The couple stopped using contraceptives, but they weren’t properly committed to the idea of becoming parents: secretly they hoped that Kerry’s age would hinder conception. Ironically, she was pregnant within a few weeks.

 

“I felt shock, horror and disbelief,” she says of when she took a pregnancy test. “I felt

like my life was over and that I'd made the hugest mistake.” As the reality set in Kerry, totally overwhelmed, contemplated having an abortion. But 11 weeks later, just as she had begun to accept the prospect of motherhood, Kerry miscarried.

 

“Gavin and I were both left reeling with emotions of a different sort – loss, as well as grief mixed with some sort of guilty relief that we had our normal life back...”

 

“Normal life”, however, became a vicious cycle of opposing thoughts and emotions and while she was convinced she had a happy and fulfilled childfree life ahead of her, the “now or never” argument played out in Kerry’s mind.

 

“I decided that even though I was 50/50 for and against, I might end up ignoring that 50 percent at my peril,” she says – and within a month, the woman who had been so adamant she didn’t ever want to have a baby was pregnant again. “This time I felt differently about the pregnancy. I was glad but helluva shocked and scared. My main concern was miscarrying again or finding some abnormality with the foetus due to my age.”

 

She needn’t have worried: one week before her fortieth birthday, Kerry gave birth to a healthy little girl.

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Nature or nurture?

 

What triggered Kerry’s switch from being so adamant she didn’t want to have a child, to trying to get pregnant? Was it social pressure and expectations that had been gnawing at the back of her consciousness, or did something in her genetic make-up switch on and shift her body and mind into mommy-mode, to ensure the continuation of our species?

 

The answer is complicated.

 

“What makes someone become a mother – or even a good mother – is a complex quantitative characteristic that is influenced by the interaction of numerous genes as well as the environment in which a woman grows up,” says Dr Carolyn Hancock, a geneticist from KwaZulu-Natal. “Environmental influences could be the manner in which you were raised, if you had a happy childhood shared with many siblings, whether you have a serious career, whether you have a partner, and so on.”

 

These environmental influences are very apparent in Naomi Mitchel’s journey to motherhood. The oldest of eight siblings, Naomi (34), is now a mother of five. “I was 16 when my youngest sister was born,” she says. “I had to help from necessity, but I remember loving it very much. I think circumstance was certainly part of my desire to have lots of children, but mothering is definitely in my nature too.”

 

Mikateko Maluleke, a 28-year-old technical sales trainee who has a three-year-old daughter, played mom to her dolls when she was little, and always wanted to have children. She says that her desire to be a mother was influenced by her upbringing. “According to my culture it is natural to have children,” she says, “but it is the way my mother loves her children that inspired me to want to have my own.”

 

It is environmental factors like looking after siblings and having an inspirational mom that influence the ultimate appearance of a characteristic, such as wanting to be a mother, says Hancock. In scientific terms there is an equation that makes sense of this: phenotype = genotype + environmental influences. In other words, the desire to be a mother (the phenotype, which is the occurrence of a characteristic) is the result of the genetic basis of a characteristic (the genotype) combined with environmental influences. “In terms of the desire to be a mother, there are a number of genes that would be involved,” Hancock says. “These may include the genes that affect the level of hormones like oestrogen, testosterone and oxytocin in the body.”

 

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Great expectations

 

While scientists acknowledge that the desire to become a mother is the result of a complex mix of biological and environmental factors, research psychologist Dr Tracy Morison, a research specialist at Human Sciences Research Council in Johannesburg, maintains it’s rational decision-making – and if there is any biological drive to have a baby, we’re able to override it if we choose to do so. “Humans are able to master and overcome their instincts in almost every facet of their lives, including eating, sex and sleeping,” says Morison. “There is no reason to believe that reproduction would be any different.”

 

However, Morison believes that the behaviour we learn – nurture rather than nature – could strongly influence our motherhood desires. Depending on what having children means to different groups of people, culture may also be a factor. “Having children may be socially necessary for a particular set of reasons,” she explains. “For black Africans, for example, having children has traditionally been linked to virility and wealth.” Regardless of the cultural nuances, however, deliberately not having children is generally seen as strange or abnormal and according to research Morison has conducted, most heterosexual people do not even question whether they can or will have children; it is simply assumed that they will.

 

Natalie Swart* knows these assumptions well. The 31-year-old chartered accountant from Durban now lives in London with her husband, where she’s working her way quickly up the corporate ladder. Most of her friends in South Africa have started to have children, and Natalie says she dreads the probing questions and conversations with friends on her annual trips home. “I feel under pressure to be a mom and to have it all,” she says, “but I just don’t feel ready to have children yet – or know if I want to.” Natalie’s scared that she will leave it too late and that she’ll miss the opportunity to become a mom, but there is so much that she wants to achieve before she starts to change diapers. “The pressure comes from society and the way I was brought up,” she says. “I know that I should be able to ignore what the world expects of me and to do what I believe is right for me, but in reality that’s very hard to do.”

 

What Natalie is struggling with is “pronatalism” – the idea that parenthood and raising children should be the central focus of every person’s adult life. She’s confused, and isn’t sure whether she really wants to have children, or thinks that she does because of the ingrained assumption that she will have children, because she is a woman.

 

It’s a topic that American psychology expert and author Laura Carroll is passionate about and her book The Baby Matrix challenges and gives alternatives to pronatalism. “This assumption dictates how we’re supposed to follow the ‘normal path’ to adulthood,” she says. Get a good job, meet Mr Right, get married, put up a picket fence and have babies. What Carroll highlights in her book is that people shouldn’t mindlessly enter parenthood. And society shouldn’t simply expect women to be mothers. “Just because we humans have the biological ability to conceive and bear children does not mean that we have an instinctive desire to become parents, or even the ability to parent,” she says.

 

That ability to parent is something Dr Ana Ribeiro, assistant professor of biology at College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York, has been studying for the past four years. She’s been conducting research into mothering behaviour in mice, and has found that genes play a major role in the females’ abilities to raise their young. Her research has shown that there are genes that are associated with good mothering behaviour, such as nursing of pups and protecting them from intruders, and that when these genes are removed the mother’s skills are lost, and they do not care for their young.

 

But, she says agreeing with Hancock, it’s not only biological: there are other ways to influence maternal behaviour. “The expression of these genes depends on the pup’s upbringing. For instance, if a pup is raised by a good mother, their DNA will be modified to turn certain genes on or off,” explains Ribeiro. “On the contrary, a sibling of that mouse (with same DNA) can be raised by a poor mother and their maternal behaviour will also be poor.”

 

Are humans affected in the same way? It’s hard to say, because for an animal the evolutionary pressure to reproduce is not confounded by socio-economic and other influences. “The bottom line is that there are many genes that collectively contribute to maternal capacities, and the loss of many them severely impairs the ability to be a good mother,” says Ribeiro. “The human maternal drive is very different from that of a mouse. If I were to speculate, I would guess that there are many more non-genetic factors affecting humans as opposed to rodents, but the genetic component is still a significant one.”

 

It’s important to note, says Carroll, that negative experiences in childhood – having a “bad” mother – does not often result in women not wanting to have children. “Many people who’ve had negative experiences grow up to want children because they have the desire to be the parent they never had,” she says. “Whether it is conscious or not, parenthood can serve as a way to heal one’s past.”

 

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Feeling broody – or not

 

So what happens when you feel broody? Is that your mothering instinct kicking in; your body telling you that it’s time to reproduce? And what happens if you’ve never felt that urge – does it mean you’re never destined to be a mom?

 

According to neuropsychiatrist Dr Louann Brizendine, certain smells, like that of an infant’s head, carry pheromones that stimulate a woman’s brain to produce oxytocin. That triggers a chemical reaction that induces “baby lust” (her term for broodiness) which, she says, is nature’s sneak attack to trigger the desire to have a baby. But, argues Carroll, if that’s the way our bodies work, then all women should feel this way – and we don’t.

 

“As far back as the 1970s, researcher and psychoanalyst Dr Frederick Wyatt said that when a woman says she is craving a baby, she is actually putting biological language to what is psychological,” says Carroll. “The woman realizes that her reproductive years are coming to an end and that she might miss out on what a pronatalist society tells her is the most fulfilling experience in life. Believing she might not get to have this experience can create quite a yearning for it.”

 

Cindy Andrews* has never felt this urge. The 47-year-old lecturer from Cape Town says that while she loves to spend time with children, she has simply never considered having a baby. While she and her husband are very happy with the childfree life they lead, other people are fascinated and sometimes even seem embarrassed. “I think the fact that we are a mixed-race couple [Cindy is Indian, her husband is white], and that we’ve been married for more than 20 years, makes things more intriguing for people,” she says. “But also, it seems as if the concept of not having kids is one that never crossed their mind.”

 

Things are changing slowly, and in South Africa there is an increasing number of people who’re choosing to remain childfree – but statistics aren’t available because demographers haven’t differentiated between voluntary and involuntary childlessness. “This shows a taken-for-granted assumption that people want to and will have children, unless they can’t,” says Morison. “These sorts of assumptions are difficult to challenge because it disrupts people’s ideas about the value of children and normal (heterosexual) adulthood.”

 

The idea and the process of choosing to remain childfree can be quite complicated, and international research suggests that rather than a definite decision, childfreedom is often related to an evolving series of decisions—it is more of a process than an event. People don’t always actively choose to remain childfree, explains Morison, but may postpone having children and end up childless by circumstance. They may also be unsure about whether to have children and wait until it is too late to conceive.

 

That concern was the trigger for Kerry to try to get pregnant, and it’s something that worries Natalie too. Clinical psychologist Dr Colinda Linde, who’s based in Johannesburg, says that she’s noticed two trends among women who have been focused on their career and didn’t give much thought to having a baby while they were establishing themselves, and have often deferred the decision to the distant future. The first trend is the “I’m almost 40 and my clock is ticking, I’d better have a baby now” – the biological or in some cases societal clock. The other trend is less prevalent in the media, where career women may reach a stage where they’re burnt out or are no longer fulfilled by their job, or a relationship reaches a plateau, and having a baby seems like an option to provide meaning, to escape work or to shift focus from a career that is not going anywhere.

 

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Becoming Mom

 

For women like Mikateko, Naomi and Cindy, the decision to be a mother is simple: they know from a very early age which way they’ll go. Whether their desire is influenced by their genetic make-up, their environment, or by society, it doesn’t matter; for them there is no angst, no questioning, and no fear of regret. For women like Kerry and Natalie, however, that decision can be harrowing and as Kerry said, forever is a long time to regret something.

 

Although there is nothing easy about being a mother, the decision to have a baby is the easier one to make. Socially, that is still seen as normal. It’s the decision not to become a mother that can be harder to make and to justify, and Morison offers sound advice for women who’re in this position: “I would encourage women to see their choice as a legitimate one and to understand why it is that they have made it. One doesn’t always have to justify one’s decision to others, but it helps to know your own mind and heart if one does decide to explain.”

 

What about Kerry – was the decision to have a baby the right one for her? It’s been a tough journey, she admits, and while initially she’d thought her struggle was deciding whether to try to get pregnant or not, she soon found that the real challenge for her was post-birth. “I have learnt that it's a case of 'adapt or die' and that I need to embrace this experience and not fight it,” says Kerry, who battled with severe sleep deprivation and chronic chapped nipples for the first few months of motherhood.

 

Her daughter, Alexa*, is now eight months old, and Kerry says she’s started to see the magic of motherhood. As Alexa becomes more and more of a little person, Kerry finds her love for her daughter grows daily. “Because I love her so much I really can't say having a baby was the wrong decision but I also know I could have found fulfillment and excitement – all be it of a very different kind – without a child,” she admits.

 

“You need to look at what you've gained – the added depth and richness in your life, the privilege of introducing this pure being into the world – rather than focusing only on the freedoms and future experiences you feel you've lost, which is something I did in those first few difficult weeks and months. My life is not better or worse,” says Kerry, contemplating what could have been. “It is just completely and utterly different, to the point that you really can't compare.”