Embracing Childfree Choices: Supporting Your Childfree Children with Rosalba Fontanez
Your childfree children aren't failures, they simply have a different purpose and mission
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In Part 1 of this conversation celebrating Non-Mom May, we talked about some of the questions my community asked my mom for this session. In this portion we’ll cover 2 of them:
How do you navigate loving your children the same when one has children and the other doesn’t? From attention, to how you leave things to them in your will.
Does she have any advice for people with unsupportive parents, if there’s anything we can say to help them understand?
If you’re finding yourself feeling like you’re pitted against your siblings who have had kids, then this next section might be for you.
Paulette: My overarching goal with the podcast in general is to just normalize that childfree people exist and we are not what we are portrayed in the media. We are not bitter, we are not sullen, we are not unfulfilled, and we are not weird. Because all of those things can apply to people, whether or not they have children.
That is not the box that we fit in. Childfree people exist. We live completely fulfilled lives. And it doesn't have to be an us versus them situation, with us on one side and parents on the other.
Rosalba: You are quite right there. Not everybody is born to have children. And from the the spiritual perspective, we all have a purpose and mission.
And for childfree people, that's the norm. Let's normalize that because they have some endeavors that they have to fulfill that are connected and in alignment to what they are meant to do in this lifetime. And it doesn't mean that they have to have children in order to to create.
How do you navigate loving your children the same when one has children and the other doesn't?
Paulette: So here's an interesting question that came from the community. "How do you navigate loving your children the same when one has children and the other doesn't?"
They wanted to look at it from, from attention, like the attention that you give each individual child, and how you leave things in your will.
Rosalba: The answer to that is my children are individual people. They both have very different life missions and they each follow a path of their own. This includes being a parent or not. And I love respect and honor that, and each one of them. Not everybody was born to bear children. Let's keep that in our mind. Let it settle in the middle of your brain.
From the attention to how I leave things to them and my will, uh, you'll be happy to know that my wills will state that there's a collection of China cups, photographs of your childhood, and a collection of miniature unicorns. When I'm gone, there's no money. But there are those three things in abundance. So you can take whatever you want and what you don't want, you can take to the goodwill.
Paulette: That's hilarious. What we see play out sometimes is that an estate is divided instead of equally among the first generation of heirs—like me and my two brothers—I would get a smaller portion based on the fact that they have two additional heirs, so to speak. So it would be divvied out based on the number of children. I think that sometimes that is understood as favoring the people with children versus the people without children.
Rosalba: Personally, I find that kind of harsh, so I don't subscribe to that. I'll say this, the three of you are my children and whether or not you have children, the grandchildren are not my responsibility.
But if I had a lot of money, I would leave one third [to] each of my children. You can give your children or your nieces or your nephews or whatever, whatever they want, but I would do this for my children. One third equally.
Paulette: The question leads to, can you put a value on my love for you?
Rosalba: There is no value to whether you have children or not. There is value in my love for you. That's period, that's that's the end of it.
There is no, "oh, you didn't make me a grandma. No, you don't get enough." No, there's none of that. I don't subscribe to any of that mindset.
So for the person asking this question, they feel like they're disappointing their parent. What would you say to a parent if you had the opportunity to talk to them about this?
Paulette: Let's talk about people who do then, because the next set of questions came from people who have unsupportive parents. It's heartbreaking when one feels like they have disappointed their parents. I can speak from experience to that.
So for the person asking this question, they feel like they're disappointing their parent. What would you say to a parent if you had the opportunity to talk to them about this?
Rosalba: Let me tell you, yes, I do understand, and yes, I do have friendly advice from the bottom of my heart:
Parents out there: this is not about you! You did not have children to make you a grandparent. Stop putting a burden on your children to bear babies, and I'm very serious about that.
Now, mind you, I was raised by my grandmother and I'm a grandmother. And I love it, but more than anything is my respect for those people who are not here to bear children. And who the heck are we to make them feel less than who they are?
Now, I'm talking this way because I know that everybody has a purpose and a mission. But if there are people out there who are putting pressure on their children because they decided that they're going to go childfree, there's no reason for you to make them feel less of what they are, of who they are.
That is horrible.
Editor’s note: I had to cut out a lot of the interview here because her statement made me cry. I didn't realize how deep her feelings went on this topic, or just how strongly she felt about parents who don’t support their own kids.
So for all of you, childfree people out there without supportive parents, you can borrow mine if you need them. But also maybe send them this specific part of the discussion.
Paulette: I'm not the only one in our family who doesn't have kids, and I'm not the only one in this generation or the generation before me. And I thank the people who came before me for that.
And I hope that for the people who come after me, for nieces, nephews, their friends and whatever, that if they feel they don't want kids, that they can point to us, their aunt and uncle and and the cousins before us to say, “well, they were happy. I can do that too.”
But I also did not know that you felt so strongly about this. Like I said, we've never talked about it.
Rosalba: Right, because again, like I said in the beginning, I'd never really thought about seeing my children as parents. So I wanted my children to have an education and to have life experiences, to feel great and to live a joyful life and plentiful life.
Perhaps earlier on, I didn't know how to verbalize that. But taking these questions into consideration, it was a journey through the past to check the markers at my life of what my perception was as a mother or as a future grandmother perhaps, and the thoughts were never there.
I just wanted my children to be happy and fulfilled.
And so when I became a grandmother, of course, I was gaga all over our granddaughter. But then every child has been quite different. And there's a connection just like with my children and all of that.
But more than anything else is I am aware of what every one of you has brought to life, to our lives, and how much I have learned by your decisions to become who I am today.
So, when you guys decided you didn't wanna have children, it's like, “yeah, it's okay!”
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