Losing life purpose

Chronic worry and fear induce anxiety. In a similar way, the uncertainty most participants have appears to remain inside them without finding a way out. This generates complex emotional reactions at a deeper level.

For some participants, living a life without children is shown strongly as having a sense of loss of meaning. This is evidenced in Penny’s account of her loss:

sometimes when I’m down, I do think…‘Oh my life is meaningless…I’m not looking after…a baby…I’m not directly bringing up a child…so what is my worth and value’. (26.12-15)

The absence of children affects Penny’s entire life. Her contemplation on this is reflected in the following expressions: ‘I’m not looking after’ and ‘meaningless’.

These expressions signify ‘directly bringing up’, suggesting that ‘care’ for her own desired children would have given her life greater meaning. Penny has not got this.

She lost her ‘worth and value’ in life. This loss is depicted in ‘when I’m down’, which further suggests a possibility of a prolonged depressive state.

Maggie, who previously talked about her hidden sadness over a life without children reflects:

I worked in procurement, then, we…er, went to…then after that I went to work for a charity. And just five years ago I decided I’d had enough, and I erm…and I gave up. I was struggling, really. I was lost. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. What to do with my life. (2.28-29)

Maggie’s reflection suggests that she was trying to find something ‘to do’ with her life; one possibility was through her work. However, the emotional impact of

childlessness seems to prohibit the finding of fulfilment in her life. She ‘was lost’ and

meaninglessness took over her life. It is worth noting that the sense of loss she had manifested itself ‘just five years ago’, suggesting a long period of struggling to find meanings in her life.

For Heather, a self-employed physical therapist, work seems to be the centre of her life. However, in the passage below, Heather’s account of possible meaninglessness appears differently in her response to my question:

Int: Do you think of yourself as having goals that you are working towards?

Heather: Having goals…now…Goals…I don’t know, erm, not really, no…

Because, actually, that’s the other thing you know, this, this age, erm…it’s horrible, because, it...it really is hard, cos you, you, you erm, I’ve been in my clinic for 23 years, so I was twenty, I was…er was I thirty, no…thir…thir, was I 32 when I started…And then, you suddenly realised my God, you’ve done all those years and now you’re nearer to retiring…[little laugh]. It’s so weird, so weird and yet you still feel like, you know, that little girl at school or whatever…

erm…so do you know…I don’t know...goals…no, not really. No, I don’t really have any goals. (19.33-34)

Heather does not have a goal. This raises the question of why. The answer seems to emerge together with her account of grief and uncertainty expressed in previous sections. For Heather, the absence of children seems to impact greatly on her self-esteem, meaning she has lost her motivational force or ‘goal’. There also appears to be a sense of loss over time as she ‘suddenly realised’ she is ‘nearer to retiring’. This passage perhaps illustrates Heather’s feelings towards her childless life that has no particular meaning. Her life at the moment appears to be going with the flow, without any clear purpose or direction.

Understanding the inconsistencies between beliefs and outcomes needs higher levels of cognitive activities. Penny, who ‘veer[s]’ between cognition and affect, talks about her struggle:

So it’s like I…I veer between my logical understanding of the situation and my emotional response. And it’s almost like I get upset and my logical side says,

‘Penny we don’t need more humans’, you know. ‘You did your bit for the environment by not having children…’ (13.45-46)

Alana also finds struggles in freeing her tangled emotions.

it’s funny how…you know when you break it down and think about what if…and er what the scenario would actually be… So, there’re a lot of very, very mixed and complicated feelings that I’m constantly trying to unravel. (14.36-38)

Both extracts show the emotional and cognitive incongruity Penny and Alana experience. Their sense of helplessness appears as they confront their childlessness.

A lack of evidence for positive outcomes of being involuntarily childless often results in a sense of hopelessness. Renee expresses devastating feelings of not finding a childless role model:

Who do you…you know…who’s found a life...from that…that you can actually put there and say, ‘OK, they’ve been through this, they’ve struggled with it, but now they are having a great life’. I want that. And there seem to be absolutely nothing. (21.30-34)

As with all the other participants, Renee feels the absence of her own children in her life is an unwanted outcome. Having a life with children for Renee was envisioned as having ‘a great life’, and that was lost. Here Renee demonstrates her sense of an endless search for positives on childlessness. She ‘still’ desperately ‘want(s)’ to find positives that a childless life can bring. However, in the expression ‘absolutely nothing,’ her strong sense of hopelessness appears.

Hopelessness is, as a general term, a feature underlying depression. Clare, who has been in ‘deep, deep depression’ talks about her experience:

for me the fact that I couldn’t have children for me made me feel really helpless, powerless, and I went to this deep, deep depression. So, I thought I can’t do anything about this, I can’t change it…and…I probably stayed there for about a year…It was a terrible, terrible place to be. (6.17-22)

Clare has lost her confidence, and a sense of powerlessness over her inability to change or control the childless situation further impacts on her mentally. Repeated use of ‘I’ and ‘for me’ referring to herself also suggests her sense of self-blame. This illustrates her state of depression of being trapped in ‘a terrible, terrible place’.

Kelly, who has experienced both failed IVF and miscarriages, talks about her life here in response to a question about the biggest change that has happened to her:

I think it would be…well it’s weird, isn’t it? Because, at the start of trying for children, I didn’t have children, and the end of trying for children I don’t have children, but that has still been the biggest change…and I think the change has been the change in expectation of how I thought my…so the change’s been how I thought my life would…be…and I think that also it’s a…[long pause] a…it…

makes you realise all the…erm…assumptions in society, and that you never really knew existed…erm…and having to... kind of find your own path...and what is important to you…so that…I think before I was happy to follow the path that you know, er…get a, you know have an education, get a job, erm get married, have children, and…so…I think that’s been the biggest change. (14.26-36)

Kelly summarises her experiences, in a way trying to understand her life objectively and logically. A lot of thinking - ‘I think’ - is happening here. It is interesting to note that Kelly points out three different times in her life: ‘at the start of trying’, ‘the end of trying’ and now, ‘I don’t have children’. When change happens, it usually opens up many different possibilities in life, but her life has not been changed. Change for Kelly would have been made by establishing a new role through motherhood as a part of ‘the path’ to follow. Disabling this could have initiated hopelessness in finding meaning in life. This extract captures her sense of stasis in an unchanging childless situation, and possibly her sadness over the wasted years.

5.4 Discussion

All of the participants reported their profound feelings and many different emotions over their lives without hoped for children. Consistent with most of the existing literature which discusses mental issues regarding infertility (Connolly et al., 1992;

Demyttenaere et al., 1991; Schwerdtfeger & Shreffer, 2009), depression and anxiety were the most salient features that the women in this study expressed.

This was found not only in women who experienced failed fertility treatment, but also two women, Clare and Emily who did not pursue ARTs, either because of religious or partner’s medical reasons. Clare’s sense of hopelessness over her inability to change her childless situation led her to a ‘deep, deep depression’. Emily found that being in a situation with children in itself triggered for pain and sadness, and brought a sense of unpredictable and ineffable loss in everyday life. Everyday life in itself becomes one’s own reflection of what one has not got (Mälkki, 2012).

Among the women who had failed IVF and/or miscarriages, the childless situation was perceived beyond the outcome of failed medical interventions or clinical issues.

Rather, it was perceived of as the personified experiences of the death of a heartfelt little person. One participant, Heather, felt a hidden sense of ‘disaster’ that appeared as to point to the death of ‘all the eggs’, and another, Kelly, said ‘the little embryo, the fetus had died…’.

Persistence of sadness and embodied pain were chronically experienced and developed silently as prolonged grief (Cousineau & Domar, 2007; McQuillan et al., 2003;

Kirkman, 2003). Infertility becomes a long-term and emotionally insecure experience.

These findings agree with Johansson and Berg (2005) illustrating ‘life-grief’, and Daniluk’s (1996) paper, suggesting a long-term adaptation process rather than the temporal life event found in Sundby et al. (2007). However, in addition to these papers, many others tended to be solely based on the experiences of women who had failed fertility treatments (McCarthy, 2008; van Balen & Trimbos-Kemper, 1995).

Although the number of participants were small in this study, the inclusion of women who had not experienced medical interventions offers an opportunity to explore the

experiences of involuntary childlessness beyond the boundary of medical consequence on which much of the existing literature has tended to focus.

The current exploration revealed the women’s deeper sense of ambiguity. A coexisting sense of the loss of an imagined child and having a prolonged desire for children resulted in an uncertainty developing in their lives. Penny’s sense of unresolved childlessness brought her an endless sense of fear about the future that appeared as ‘an onion’. In contrast, Kelly showed a sense of sadness and regret over the years that passed without having any changes towards her desired life.

Renee also showed a sense of ‘regrets and the negatives that come in’ her childless life, because her strong desire for the ‘wanted’ child is still in her present life. She attempted to search for a symbolic role model, hoping to gain positive meaning.

However, she ended up with ‘absolutely nothing’. She could not find a positive solution to her childlessness, leaving her in a state of uncertainty.

Most of the women in this study showed a certain degree of angst with difficulties in

“making sense out of what they are experiencing” (Boss, 2006, p74). Boss (1999) introduced the concept of “ambiguous loss” – “loss without closure” (p. 35). She explains this as an “unclear”, “traumatic”, and “uncanny loss” (Boss, 2010, p.138).

According to this concept, there are two features of ambiguous loss that people may experience. One is “physical absence with psychological presence”, and the other is

“physical presence with psychological absence” (Boss, 2006, p.7). The hidden

emotional struggles the participants uncovered in this study suggest that involuntarily childless women may suffer from physically absent, but psychologically present, ambiguous losses (Burns, 1987).

Living with both unresolved and uncertain emotional struggles in the present, some women talked explicitly of their existential concerns. Penny’s ambivalent sense towards her life further refers to her own existence. She is concerned with what her

‘legacy to the world’ would be. Heather talked about her equivocal sense of her own death without ‘having experienced having a baby’. For Heather, the loss of not having a life with her hoped for children in itself seemed to be perceived as a traumatic experience that became a source of existential angst. This appeared also when she

talked about not ‘really hav[ing] any goals’, suggesting her state of meaninglessness.

This points further to her concerns for the future.

This chapter has examined how childlessness has impacted intrapersonally on the lives of these women. Existing studies have highlighted depression and anxiety as outcomes of being infertile or childless. This study adds to understanding the depth of internal suffering that involuntarily childless women face.

Chapter 6

Encountering relational losses

Living with the emotional impact of loss and interacting with those whose normative lives often revolve around children or family can become quite challenging.

Participants demonstrate diverse degrees of complexity as a result of being in such a world. This chapter explores the three themes that emerged which capture participants’

perspectives on issues around social connectedness. The first theme, ‘Unshared

normative social values’, elucidates women’s experiences of being judged, and having a sense of deviation from social expectations. The second theme, ‘Being detached’, exemplifies how childlessness creates isolation, exclusion, and separation from the normatively constructed social world. The third theme, ‘Losing affinity’, explicates women’s sense that they could no longer share life endeavours with people who have children, a feeling of inferiority, and the experiences of the loss of trust in intimate relationships.