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I. Childless by Choice? Ambivalence and the Female Identity

Some time ago I received a phone call from Finnish national TV asking me to participate in a new talk show. A famous Finnish male psychiatrist was going to interview me about voluntary childlessness. I was supposed to represent a heterosexual woman who has chosen not to have children. After a long and rather intimate discussion with the female member of the show’s workteam I accepted – only to find out a few weeks later that the programme team had rejected the topic. After unnecessary procrastination in informing me about this, the embarrassed woman who had contacted me in the first place told me that the topic of ‘voluntary childlessness’ did not, after all, fit in with the other subjects scheduled for the show – namely, psychiatric disorders such as ‘hearing voices’ and ‘depression’. I was stunned, twice: first, on the day that I had originally accepted and, second, when I was rejected – and in a clearly unprofessional manner. In fact, I found myself trying to make the poor woman at the other end of the phone feel better about herself by convincing her that I did not mind and that it was okay. But it was not okay, I did feel uneasy. Why, what was wrong? More than 20 years ago, Adrienne Rich made the distinction between motherhood as ‘experience’ and as ‘institution’ and argued convincingly that the institutionalization of motherhood reduced our feminine identity to maternity (Rich, 1976). Maternal work was considered in our societies as a ‘natural’ aspect of a woman’s identity: you are either a mother or a non-mother. The fact that I had been invited to discuss my choice of not having children with a psychiatrist in a programme on ‘disorders’ indicated to me quite clearly that my deviation from the female norm was considered as some kind of a problem, even as a sign of mental disturbance. I was a case to be investigated. The way I was invited to the show – that is, followed by a long and almost therapeutic discussion – and the way I was rejected – with hasty embarrassment – suggested to me that childless-