When my childfree idols get pregnant
I'm happy for them! And then I spiral. Some notes on admiration.
Recently, Ann Friedman, who I love (in a para-social kind of way; we’ve never met), announced she is pregnant. It was a gorgeous, honest, thoughtful newsletter post, like all of her writing, and continues to be an engaging week-by-week series recounting the unfolding of her decision. Prior to this announcement, she openly identified as someone who did not want children.
If you are an elder millennial woman even tangentially in the nonfiction scene (as a consumer or writer or both), you’ve probably heard of Ann Friedman. She was killing it with her newsletter far before Substack was a thing, and gained esteem with her (now retired) podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, co-hosted with the fantastic Aminatou Sow. The two popularized friendship as a valid if not essential part of family, celebrated non-traditional milestones outside of marriage and children, navigated ambition on their own terms, and regularly untangled modern feminist issues.
At 41, I can generally drown out people who urge me to consider children. These people are not me, I tell myself. They do not struggle with depression, they do not feel insane without an abundance of time alone, they do not cherish the grueling, time-consuming process of attempting to write, they do not value the everyday work that goes into supporting their adult friends (I tell myself this, although very certainly all of these could apply to them).
But when Ann Friedman gets pregnant, I spiral. She is like me, I’ve told myself for the past, I don’t know, decade? Or rather in my dream scenario, I am like her. And now, she is deciding that a child is what’s best for her? What am I missing?
I’m not proud that I feel a silly disappointment when someone who has said publicly that they do not want kids—especially someone I identify with; the magnitude of disappointment proportional to the extent to which I identify—announces they are pregnant. It’s a familiar feeling by now, as I’ve noticed a new wave of pregnancies hit around forty. Even Michelle Wolf—a comedian who famously made fun of “having it all,” and was clear that parenthood was not for her—just had a child. This feeling I have is not anger by any means—people change their minds! big deal—nor does it preclude happiness for them. It’s way more personal; not at all about the other person’s decision, but my reaction to it. Something like abandonment starts to bubble up.
Abandonment stems from insecurity and it’s true that I possess a deep, almost clinical sense of insecurity around this decision. It may seem to follow that this debilitating ambivalence may imply I secretly want kids? But the fact that a part of me does want kids is no secret, least of all to myself. It’s just that another part—a larger part, the more I sit with my specifics—crunches up into a ball, the feeling of being locked into a sort of dungeon when I picture that reality. I used to think this crushing sense of dread was fear (possibly from the increasing narratives of maternal exhaustion, which are crucial in the depiction of motherhood, but I know are not the whole story), and so I should move towards it—I can do anything! etc. But as I observe my physical and emotional reactions to the idea, I think it’s just my body telling me what I want. Even if, as many parents tell me, something in me will change if I have a child—my priorities, for example—I’m not sure I want that kind of change.
The more I think about this question, which anyone who reads this newsletter knows is verging on an unbearable amount, it’s clear that my ambivalence stems less from indecision and more from an inability to trust that decision in the face of a society that, by and large, chooses the opposite. This is not grappling with my own wants as much as it is trusting my wants and accepting them as different.
Some people love being an odd-ball, relish in looking and acting outside the norm. I’ve done a lot of work to try showing up authentically in my life, to even know what that means for me, and that results in me approaching parts of it a little differently than what I once perceived as standard. But I don’t relish that difference—it’s uncomfortable. If I feel like I’m the only one walking in a particular direction, I still wonder if I’m insane and going the wrong way! Which is why knowing other people are making that same decision (i.e. my para-social childfree idol friends!) is profoundly helpful and why I feel a little crushed when I hear more pregnancy news.
People think of idols as childish. And it’s true they are—in both the good and bad sense of the word. As we get older and confront our own flaws and limitations, we tend to shut out sincere admiration, knowing everyone else is flawed and limited, too, defending ourselves from influence. But it’s exhilarating to let yourself admire a person so fully it becomes disarming, intoxicating, inspiring you to want to be better. The shadow side is that it can make you feel bad about yourself, a trap I’m far from immune to (and maybe even drawn to). The instinct to map the circumstances of our lives onto someone else’s and feel bad about the difference, which can feel particularly shitty when our idols are strangers whom all we know of is what they choose to show us. It’s why I try to steer clear of Instagram and focus on writers and artists work, instead, to connect with what I perceive as someone’s interior, and not just the visuals of their lifestyle. Even if everything is just performance in the end.
But I’m not great at following my own rules, and when I do learn of (or compulsively seek out) details of someone’s lifestyle—like a pregnancy—I latch on. The thing I’m working on sitting with, which I know on an intellectual level but forget when I’m scrolling social or spinning in bed, is that you can want to be like someone and also be very, very different from them. Admiring someone is not at all about mapping your life onto theirs—their success, their look, their family life—but emulating the specific parts of the person that inspire you, in order to make your own choices within the context of your own circumstances. And the way those choices play out will invariably look very different in your own life.
I suppose this is the difference between admiration and idolization, and why people laude the former and mock the latter. But I still think there’s something acutely thrilling about putting someone on a pedestal. A kind of modern-day-worship that instills the bone-deep excitement we associate with (and often envy in) children, awesome if we can harness it with a some learned self-awareness.
I look forward to Ann’s Friday installments about her decision as if I’m ten years old again waiting for the TGIF lineup. Her ability to admit that she changed her mind and masterfully and authentically represent the complexity wrapped up in that, while keeping her own integrity and boundaries intact, is classic Ann. I know it will be honest and thoughtful and make me see myself and the world a little differently. The same reasons I’ve admired her all these years.
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Okay, still. It is also helpful to know there are other people who are going down your particular road when that road feels particularly lonely. Which is why I dipped back into a favorite essay last weekend from Meghan Daum’s 2106 anthology Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed. In it, the brilliant Sigrid Nunez writes about her decision not to have children in her piece, The Most Important Thing. So if anyone is feeling similarly, here are some excerpts. It was a comfort, a relief, another thing to admire.
41-year-old male here, and still very interested in following your thoughts+feelings in this realm. Keep it up!