We’ve had some elections recently in Ireland, both for our local authorities and for the broader European Parliament. They’ve meant that a variety of literature has come in my door (mostly straight to the recycling bin). This means that the thoughts of a variety of people whose thoughts I really did not wish to know have been made more public than they previously would have. Sometimes, the people you think will do a brilliant job get elected. And other times, somehow, people who have views you don’t think should really be considered the views of people creating policy, they are the ones who get to sit in those seats. Whether they know that said seats won’t give them half the power that they think they possess or not is a whole other issue.
One of the very last electoral candidates for the Local Electoral Area elections in Ireland, in an area called Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Tom McDonnell, announced upon his election (without reaching the quota) that he “wanted to look after the women of Ireland and make sure they have more children”. In saying that he further planned to run for national government come the next General Election (which is hopefully in the coming months), he added “My agenda going forward will be to look after the women of Ireland and make sure they have more children and give them tax incentives. The more children they have the more tax breaks they get.” His phrasing went on “If we don’t have women breeding, we die out as a breed. We don’t want that to happen.”
Now, the man is offering free childcare and tax breaks for people who have more children. I cannot argue with free childcare, because as anyone who has ever even so much as googled creche fees (or after-school care fees) in this country can tell you, you’d have a mortgage on a palace in Dubai paid off for the price of full time care for a couple of children by the way they’ve been steadily increasing over the last decade. I’m sure it’s longer been creeping up, but my first foray into the terror of ringing creches and asking if they had space for babies is about ten years ago at this stage. (Not to mention the difficulty in actually obtaining a place in one of the facilities - it turns out that when you don’t pay your childcare workers a liveable wage, it becomes more difficult to run a childcare industry during a cost of living crisis.) So, if the free childcare is for all of us, he has my attention. We disagree fundamentally on a number of different fronts politically, but hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
But back to the breeding.
I’m a mother of one child, a son, a wonderful, intelligent, funny little boy who has all of my stubbornness and my grandmother’s put together, which is one hell of a combination, as well as boundless energy I can never (and could never) keep up with. I wasn’t always someone who wanted children, it wasn’t a big thing when I was little that I was saying I’d have loads of kids or that I’d love to be a Mam. My pregnancy came at an unexpected time, my pregnancy was traumatic in a number of ways, and I have a vivid memory of telling the midwives (who were denying me a caesarean section 24 hours into an early failed induction at 37 weeks due to pre-eclampsia because “Well then you’ll have to have one for your next baby and you don’t want that”) that I was VERY much planning on never having another baby. I should make it exceedingly clear, in case of any doubt, that I love my son very much. As many days as we frustrate each other, as many days as I am exhausted by him, that is a love that is inbuilt and one I would not change. But the circumstances of his birth, the fact that I hated being pregnant, followed by a few years of crippling postpartum depression, and several other factors later, I have never been so sure that I am a one-and-done mother.
It is not to say I have never wavered with this belief. My Dad died suddenly in March 2020, shortly after the much more expected death of my grandfather, and in both cases, I relied heavily on family for support through our grief. The bonds I had with my brothers grew stronger through the grief, we knew what the other was experiencing. The thought occurred to me repeatedly, that I was leaving my son alone and that he would not have that similar support system when the day comes that I shuffle off my mortal coil. Doubts flustered. Biological clocks ticked. Conversations happened. I debated the age gap that would be there between my son (six at the time) and any new child who came along. I looked at how possibly healing it could be for the trauma that surrounded my previous pregnancy. Several months of trying to conceive ensued, complete with the ovulation strips and the testing and the line eyes and the craziness (I look back now and see it all as craziness). I am thankful to this day that it did not work out. Life is very different now, four years later, and it would be a very different type of different if it had. There are many Sliding Doors moments in this life and that is one of them where I feel the universe went “Y’know what? We can see what’s coming down the pipeline, let's let her have some sleep instead”.
I have had a lot of time to think in the last two years about where my life is at and what my life in my thirties looks like. I spent the vast majority of my twenties a sleep-deprived mess, with little identity outside of Mammy. I know that I’m lucky - I obtained a degree before I had my son, and was able to return to university when he was four, to study for a Masters degree. While the majority of my friends were out doing shots and going out late to bars and rolling into work the following morning, I was rocking the late nights because my child didn’t sleep properly until he was two and a half, and could be found at 5am watching The Postman Pat Movie simply to pass the time. This is a stage that many of those friends are now at, having their very-planned-for babies with their very-planned-for husbands. I am reaching peaks of freedom because I’m no longer tied to a nap schedule while they’re hitting those troughs of willing a child to maybe please stay awake in the car so that they won’t be up until all hours that night. I’ve realised that the age gap now between my son and any potential sibling would be so immense, that it would in essence be having two only-children, which isn’t what I would consider to be ideal for my family. He is perfectly happy having no siblings, he has made that clear.
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My mother commented to me when my son was a newborn that she didn’t know how other women in their forties did it, having babies, energy-wise. She was 24 when I was born, just two years older than I was when I had my son, so had become a grandmother in her mid 40s, and could acknowledge the absolute difference in energy that was there already from just not being as young and spry as she had been when she was helping me with night wakings when he was tiny. Honestly, I know it’s probably the fibromyalgia1 fatigue talking, but I don’t know how women in their thirties are doing it, because I’m barely keeping up as it is. The idea of spending another two-and-a-half years getting no longer than a four hour stretch of sleep at a time (and those were the good nights) sounds like my personal idea of hell. I am out.
Women are not broodmares. We may not have managed to get rid of the section of our constitution which states our place is in the home yet, but I do feel we have come a long way from being barefoot and chained to the kitchen sink with several children trailing at our feet. If people want to have several children, and are able to look after them, then absolutely, I am thrilled for them, fire right ahead. That is an active choice I give my total support to. I do agree that our country is inhospitable to the idea, particularly when it comes to the provision of childcare, the cost and the availability, which means that in many cases, women (because it is, predominantly the mother) who do have more than one or two children find themselves dropping out of the workforce as it becomes financially not viable to stay in. Not only that, but people of my generation are struggling to find homes to live in, secure housing, the rental market is a disaster and to buy is becoming the privilege of a select few in a country where the property market is being soaked up by external forces. When my long-term relationship of almost a decade ended, we lived together for eleven more months before we could both find accommodation that was suitable for us to live in with our son that was within budget and within the confines of Dublin (so he would not have to switch schools, again2). This was not a good situation for either of us, I’d not recommend it, but it had to be done. I, and most of the friends I know who are renting, live on a wing and a prayer that our landlords will not decide to sell up their property for fear of having to find yet another place that is overpriced and probably not ticking all the boxes but “it’ll do”. Adding a child into that mix, especially with the stress of sleep deprivation and getting used to newborn life, that sounds like an absolute disaster, and is definitely contributing to the reduction of the birth rate from my generation. Tax breaks are not going to fix that.
The Ireland we live in currently, in 2024, is a very different Ireland to the one I was born in, in 1991. We have progressed a long way, even just in the last decade. My ten year old son remains in disbelief that not only did we have to vote to allow same-sex marriage within his lifetime, but that when I was born, being openly gay was a crime. The last Magdalene laundry closed in September 1996, when I was in Senior Infants. Divorce wasn’t legalized until it was added to our constitution by referendum in 1996.3 We have come from an Ireland where contraception of any kind was illegal until 1979, where brave women travelled to Northern Ireland by train to bring contraceptives into Dublin in 1971, where the sale of condoms was prescription-only until 1985, to becoming a country where women can obtain a number of different forms of free contraception from the age of 17-31 (set to change to 36 next month). Condoms are dispensed freely by sexual health clinics, students unions and a variety of other sources. Sexual Education is a topic that is spoken about, while still a bit more controversial than it really should be. We repealed the 8th Amendment of Bunreacht na hEireann in 2018, which in theory, legalises the ability for a pregnant person to obtain a termination of pregnancy, and allows doctors to perform life saving care on pregnant people without risk of facing criminal charges. (The “in theory” is down to lack of service provision, meaning many pregnant people still find themselves needing to travel to obtain this vital healthcare). These wins were not easily won, they took the fight of generations of Irish people who repeatedly told their state and those who led them that they needed better for them and the generations that came after them. We know that there are a minority who are currently elected officials in our government who disagree with a number of, if not all of those changes, to hear that we are still electing even more of them is a depressing thought.
Parenthood should be a choice that you enter into freely. It, alongside pregnancy, is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and while yes, it does have rewards, if it is not entered into freely, it is a hardship that can be ruinous to both physical and mental health, for both parent and child. Every child who is born deserves to be loved and treated with kindness, compassion and cared for well. For that to be true, it needs to be the choice of the adults entering into parenthood, and not the Revenue Commissioners offering a reward scheme to up the numbers. Women are not here for the breeding like livestock. We are here for living our lives as we see fit. For some, that will mean having several kids, for others, happily remaining child-free.
As for me, I’m a one-and-done mum, and I’m happy with my lot. I’m getting to discover who I am outside of motherhood, getting to have actual free time, getting to be a little bit selfish with who and what takes up my time now that I’m not tied to a fragile tiny person who needs me every second of the day. I can move forward with career, and hobbies, and other facets of life that will make up my days long after my son has moved out into his adult life (she says, hoping there will be accommodation for him to move out into). Getting to be an actual person again, outside of someone providing care to another, is something that has taken getting used to - but I’ve really grown to like it.
I’d love to hear if you have any thoughts on any of what I’ve said. If you’re still reading this far in, thank you for sticking around!
After a few years of to-ing and fro-ing from doctor to doctor, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2018. I plan to write a bit more about it at another stage.
We’d moved to Dublin the previous Summer which meant that after two years in his school in Cork, he started all over again up here.
While the referendum which allowed for the legalization of divorce in Ireland took place in November 1995, the act itself was not enacted into law until June of 1996.