Being detached

All participants have shown their concerns about relational connections in society.

More than half of the participants explicitly described their detached feelings from others in everyday life. There appear to be three different, but interrelated features:

isolation, exclusion and separation.

The term isolation here refers to participants’ feelings about a lack of or losing contact with people who have got children. There are difficulties in ‘widen[ing]’ one’s social world, as Renee describes:

it’s difficult to make new friends to to…widen your circle, and I think that’s something that I feel…as I say more acutely, as we’re losing people…that that…that it’s this idea [little laugh] of shrinkage rather than expansion…

(11.15-19)

There is a deep sense of loss of connection that makes Renee feel isolated. She

‘acutely’ feels a disconnection from society. But, sadness and fear also seem to play a part in her felt sense of ‘shrinkage’. Sadness embedded within the loss of having her own children appears possibly as a metaphor here for the physical image of the loss – shrinking rather than growing a pregnant bump. And because she does not want to experience another loss, a sense of fear appears around ‘this idea’ of ‘losing people’.

Engaging in society means interacting with people in various situations. Since children are everywhere, being with others in itself often evokes isolation. Clare and Kelly both have made boundaries themselves from ‘people with children’:

I distanced myself from people who’d…were having babies or got young children, and I lost quite a few friends. (Clare. 2.48-3.1)

…I think because I still find it hard to be around people with children, um…so I think it…brings up, sort of too much sadness…so it’s nice…I kind of feel…I’ve, I’ve deliberately avoided my friends with children. (Kelly. 3.23-24)

As both extracts illustrate, children trigger ‘too much sadness’ (Kelly). The

participants’ avoidance is a way to protect themselves from emotional pain. At the same time, this behaviour disables social connections and contacts and, therefore, leads to isolation.

Isolation for Maggie appears differently. For her, it results from role differences:

when ordinary friends’ve got children erm…it’s nice to find…it’s hard to find…

let me go back there…when you don’t have children it’s hard to find new friends, because parents find friends at the school gate. (3.36-40)

Children initiate social bonds. Maggie is isolated from social roles that ‘ordinary friends’ of hers find, in this case, their friends ‘at the school gate’. Since Maggie’s friends are ‘parents’, they connect with each other through parental roles in common everyday life. Maggie is in midlife role-isolation, and so finds it difficult to connect with her friends who are parents. It is interesting to note that her sense of childlessness

is perceived as not ‘ordinary’. Having a sense of abnormality regarding childlessness may also limit social connectedness.

Participants often talk about their feelings of exclusion, particularly when they are engaging in common, everyday conversation. Renee, who previously described her difficulties in expanding her circle of friends, makes the comment that she ‘feel(s) excluded quite a lot of the time’:

I can talk about holidays, I can talk about walking, I can talk about gardening, but I can’t talk about these things that all these other women have got in

common…and that...you...you feel excluded…quite a lot of the time… (8.32-33)

Exclusion for Renee results from an inability to participate in a conversation.

Ironically, what she ‘can talk about’ are the things that she does not have in common with other women. This is an important statement, illustrating her sense of detachment and exclusion from norms. Not having had children or family makes Renee feel vulnerable in everyday situations.

Similarly, Clare shows her sense of exclusion from ‘a group of mums’:

I still…feel a little bit…out of it. If you’re with a group of mums and there’re talking baby talk or children talk, it’s quite difficult…to join in the conversation.

And they most of the time they don’t mean to but you do get excluded. (3.41-46)

Babies and children are common and naturally engaging subjects for mothers. Clare’s sense of exclusion seems to point to her powerlessness to change her relationships with mothers. Even though she cannot ‘join in the conversation’, the mothers ‘don’t mean to’ exclude her. So, there is no specific object that causes Clare to ‘get excluded’.

Without particular sources to work on, it may be difficult for her to find a solution.

If everyday conversations become a trigger for having a sense of being ‘left out’, it will be hard to associate with other people in everyday life. Maggie’s account confirms this:

all…when people have children, all they wanna talk about is their children, really…and…erm…erm it can be hard…it is hard. If you’re...you can’t join in…you feel really left out, you can’t join in the conversation. (20.39-43)

There appears to be a conceptual shift in this extract that shows Maggie’s real sense of self with regard to relationships to ‘all’ the people with children. Here, first, she uses a passive when she says that ‘it can be hard’, and then, her perception turns inward and she speaks out using her own experience saying ‘it is hard’. Maggie finds that as a childless woman, it is difficult to participate in conversations in general, which leads to a disparity between herself and those people with children.

A life without children in a child-oriented world can create social boundaries. Kelly positions herself in society and compares her life with the norms:

I think, erm…realising that I don’t have children and a lot of people do have children, and that I’m different from them…and also different from…what I perceived of society normal to be. (15.5-8)

Kelly finds herself ‘different’. She now has a sense of separation from ‘a lot of people’

who have got children. Also, doubt about her situation in life emerges through a sense of losing connections from the social world which she once ‘perceived’ herself to be a part of. Now she seems to be ‘realising’ that her life path will be different.

Heather’s account echoes that of Kelly:

you have to find other ways to kind of fill your life and…you know, it’s a different way of life when it’s just you and your husband and…and no family…

(10.39-40)

Heather feels that she is living ‘a different way of life’ from a normative course.

Absence of children in life is indeed a big loss and she needs to ‘find other ways’ to

‘fill your [her] life’. There is also a sense in her utterance that her life is limited in terms of social connections, because her life is ‘just’ with her husband.

Clare advances Kelly’s and Heather’s accounts as she says:

with children you can see your life’s progress, can’t you? Without children,

…you think ‘Well, what have I done?’, ‘What have I achieved?’, ‘What am I leaving behind?... (18.28-29)

In this transcript, Clare raises three questions that matter to childless life as a whole. In a general sense, these seem to refer to values, achievements, and legacies. She has reflected on what she has ‘achieved’, and addressed future concerns, suggesting that these are existential questions. Ultimately, having a separate life course from that with children can result in having difficulties in finding ‘life’s progress[ion]’ embedded within society.