Elba Teresa, an Argentinian with Italian origins, first exiled in Patagonia and then to London, a cosmopolitan human rights activist, tells us about her own path in the choice of not having her own biological children, while experiencing motherhood on an energetic and spiritual level, able to give life to her true self and to projects aimed at caring for others.

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ELBA TERESA: «When I found out… When Paola asked me if I would be interested in an interview to talk about my choice not to have children, I was surprised. I was really surprised by the request, surprised that somebody was going to talk to me, somebody who didn’t know me. But also, I was surprised by this topic, a woman who chose not to have children, because here it’s taboo. There are many taboos in this society: death, old age and also motherhood and euthanasia. Birth and death are words that became really heavy, far from being able to be, from existing, from expressing oneself, from being free to experience other dimensions, thoughts, other ways of being. No, I would never have imagined this unwillingness to talk, to confront each other. Yes, let’s talk again but within an encounter, within an encounter that is unknown, an enigma. But if to me, life has value in terms of of unknown, of enigma, of risk. I would never experience these aspects as negative, but rather I would always expect something positive. That’s how it works, I’m not prejudiced, I don’t know why or how, luckily I’m not prejudiced, I open up. Of course, sometimes, after opening up I feel frustrated, disappointed, but that’s part of the game. Other times, opening up has been very enriching, it made me grow.
Yes, I am Argentinian with Italian origins. My grandparents were Italians from Calabria. I was raised with a European culture and I believe that the Italian dream of being cosmopolitan was accomplished back in Buenos Aires. Because when I came back here, attracted by its myth, I realized Italy is not cosmopolitan, it’s not open to the world, it’s not… It’s not cosmopolitan. This cosmopolitan experience had to be reassessed from a different perspective: where there is much fear of the other, of the different, of the non-conformist. I was lucky because I was born into a society where each of us, though from different backgrounds: Italy, Spain, France, all of Europe, Asia, all of South America… Each of us was an Argentine citizen, a citizen of the world. We were citizens. No one would have said: “You are Argentinian, the other is an alien foreigner”. Not even in London, where I’ve lived for a year, this thing “I’m English and you’re foreigner” this discrimination does not exist. One thing is saying I am different, and diversity is richness. By being different I can enrich, express a different thought. Here we see discrimination.
Those different get discriminated, different not meant as being other from myself, or a similar to myself. No.
This I couldn’t… So I felt awful living here in Italy, because these values that I had experienced and that I had… That I had enjoyed much because here there is space for socializing.
There’s private and public space, just like I saw in London, whereas here I couldn’t find my social space. At first, maybe, at the Festa dell’Unità, but that’s not the social space where you can feel like a citizen, a woman who is active in politics. Politics is belonging to a polis… It makes you feel not only like a woman, but also like a human being, a citizen. These are fundamental values to me. I felt that I was being robbed of all of this. Then, I was also surprised to realize that very few people here in Tuscany, know something about Argentina. They know “Argentina-Maradona”.
Yes, but also Piazzola, Borges, I don’t know… So many people of culture, art… “Buenos Aires… The capital is Rio de Janeiro”. “I mean… Argentina.” I’m not saying that I know everything about Africa, of the differences… But in school, we’re supposed to study all of Europe, all of the world. In geography, history and literature.
Certainly, this brought us to desire the European dream. I got to live through the dictatorship, therefore Europe represented the implementation of human rights that there were lost under dictatorship. So after that, being here… It’s tough. But not because I’m here. It’s tough because I say: “Where are all the others fighting for a better world?” The beautiful thing in Argentina was the possibility for many people… That’s why the dictatorship was born, because the concept of change was true, the change was there, the possibility of making an impact in the society was so strong, so real, that it had to be stopped with a dictatorship of that dimension.
Women in Argentina… When I was a child most of the women that I saw… They were so… Women, teachers, the neighbor. All of these women that I saw as I child as a teenager, in school… They were fearful, submissive, boring women. They still believed in the old values such as: “Virginity is virtue”, and so on. So I… Of course, there were remarkable women too, exceptional women that I used to find interesting, smart, who thought and fought, and who valued other beliefs. And this closeness to them and those parents that just like mine never stood up for themselves. So my generation started fighting back, opposing the dominant ideology, to that pattern of formal thinking, for me puritanical and hypocritical. So we exposed ourselves. I exposed myself. The majority of us, not all of us… Those women who had picked up the ’68 ideals, the hippie movement beliefs, all the literature that was being unfolded. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, psychoanalysis. All of that existed and it was unconventional. It made me develop a different way of thinking. It gave me many possibilities that I did not have within my family. I had a religious upbringing: I was supposed to get married, have children, be a good mother. I could work, but that wasn’t that important. I had to find a man who supported me. This was the shared belief of those frustrated, bored ladies: marriage, children and a normal family. So, growing up the way I did, whenever I fell in love I wanted to have children. That’s why I say I made a choice. A choice isn’t a choice if you don’t have it just because you don’t want it.
The choice involved a work on self-awareness and it implied saying no to something to affirm something else. Choosing is letting something die in order for something else to live. Not just wanting everything and accepting what’s already there. No, that’s not a choice. I think a choice involves a conflict that needs solving.
If I had a child each time I fell in love I would have plenty of them, since I fell in love often, thankfully. But clearly, there was always something holding back, something that stopped me from… I’ve never decided to get pregnant, and have a baby. The only time in my life that I got pregnant with a partner I was really in love, I had an abortion, I had to make a choice because he didn’t want it and I wasn’t interested in being a single mother. Having a child without a… I didn’t want a child just because I had gotten pregnant. Having a child because I need to fulfill… Not my thing. It was difficult, but that’s when I started thinking, because it was the only time I actually got pregnant. So that was my first choice. It was really difficult due to another problem: the abortion taboo. It got me thinking that what I aborted… it was a fetus, not a human being. That brings us back to birth and death. So, a human being.
I questioned myself about many things: what motherhood means, what being a mother means, what raising a child means… And I wasn’t feeling ready, because, I realised later, I needed my own rebirth first, I still needed to be my own mother and father. If I had a child, I wouldn’t have had the energy, the strength, the time, all you need to heal, to be reborn into a life of freedom. For me, the most important thing in my life has been freedom.
Initially, it was a constant fight. It was awful. I had stopped talking to my parents, because… I lived in Buenos Aires, after that I exiled domestically, I went to Patagonia, where I’ve lived for two years. There I distanced myself from my parents because of the constant arguments and fights, especially with my mom. It was a scandal. I was the daughter, the black sheep, the first child, the eldest one, giving a negative example… That had to be condemned and disinherited. They threatened me and I kept saying: “I don’t care about inheritance, I want to live! I want life!” There was always something stronger in me that brought me to choose life, freedom, and live the way I am, the way I feel, and not how the others want me to. When they saw that in my own way I accomplished many things, I worked, I was a respected and constructive person and all, then they totally changed their minds.
They changed so much that I became, and probably have always been, the good daughter. But they were very disappointed during my teen years, because all my choices were totally against their way of thinking. It was very difficult for me. But then it helped me starting an analytical path. Without it, maybe, I don’t know… I still would have paid too high a price. But it’s very difficult getting through it. You think… Why? What are the fears?
If I don’t do as they say, they won’t love me, they’ll leave me, they’ll disown me… Getting through this is very difficult, but it would have been much harder not loving and respecting myself. So I thought: “I have no choice, as I can’t have both things. I can’t have their love by giving up my love for life as I want it and intend it”.
So, going to therapy was wonderful for me because it allowed me to treasure so many matters, to work through it and to keep evolving. But it also has helped me see so many realities, work with a lot of people that were influenced by this idea that they had to have a child.
The really terrible thing is, for me… Back when I was in Patagonia, I lived in a small town and I saw much more closely the reality of the politics, of the social issues, the workers’ issue, the production dynamics… Back then there was oil still and there were workers who went underground to extract it. A wearisome job. I remember the wife of one of them really distressed because she was pregnant with their third child. She was distressed because her doctor said to her: “Keep this baby, make your husband happy!” The very same doctor that her husband said would not certify how wearisome his job was and that he was risking losing an ear. For me, this… It’s just a small part of a much wider situation. Such injustice is not only there, it is everywhere. I might have thought it was only there.
Growing up, and traveling the world I discovered that this way of thinking is globalized, it’s global. It was difficult then because I was by myself. There were a few like me fighting back. There were threats, obstructions… People became aware of these “human” themes. “Human” as in considering their own subjective situation and not being slaves of the system. Slaves of a master, totally enslaved… So for me it was a very strong human experience, which gave me all the tools I needed to handle it later in London. Because when I was living in London escaping from other dictatorships, many political prisoners were arriving, that particular time from Colombia. And I worked, as I had already dealt with my dictatorship in the past, I was able to help those coming from other dictatorships, as in South America dictatorships come and go all the time. So, yes. Being a mom… I gave up having a child, my own flesh and blood, but my life is full of… All that I nurture, all that I create… All that I take care of, and I am accountable for, they’re all children. In the end, what for… Now I’m really grateful because I haven’t given up on being a mother, which is not a matter of body and uterus. I don’t care about having my own flesh and blood and the possession that comes with it. I haven’t given up on being my own energetic, spiritual, psychical mother, because creating, inventing, generating life, to me… Yes, I’m a mother and a father, too. I can be a father, a mother and many other aspects of my being, So why should I reduce myself to being a biological mother?
If a woman desires it and has this vocation, that’s good! But there aren’t many examples of mothers who became mothers because they love their child and themselves.
Well, in my family… I have a small family, and none among those I’ve met. But I have a grandmother who I’ve never met, my mom’s mother… They used to say that she was dead. But then, hearing here and there, I understood that she wasn’t dead. I tried to dig in as much as I could, but my mom didn’t want to know. So, this woman left abandoning my mom and her sister with her father. Growing up, I’ve said to myself: “What the heck”.
At that time, when I was born, being a daughter in Argentina… having a child without getting married, being an abandoned daughter, it was society still terribly… Discriminating. A child born outside wedlock used to be totally despised. So, I thought, this grandmother, this mother… I suppose my mom must have suffered very much, and she made me and my brothers pay for it all our life. But growing up I thought, back then, leaving your two kids with your husband, must have taken some guts. It was something totally uncommon. So this grandmother I never met did quite a strong thing. But others paid a price for her choice a price I didn’t want others to pay for me, and that’s why I didn’t have children. Understanding what my mother has been through, a suffering she has not processed… I think that my mom’s biggest problem was that she didn’t want to know. But I did. Awareness gives you the chance to work, to understand, to leave the past behind, to let go of what you’ve been through and keep moving forward. This is what I learned, I didn’t want to pay that price. That’s also why I didn’t want children.
I had a sort of relapse, when I fell in love again, in my 40s. That’s when I reconsidered it, like many other women, until you biologically can. I gave it some thought again such as: “If not now, when?” But always when I was in love, so in a state of mind not totally rational. Not rational. Falling in love is a wonderful experience but it’s not a determining factor. The things you choose to do when you’re in love don’t necessarily represent a fundamental matter. So back then I got lucky and I missed the opportunity.
I was tempted, but… Then, finding myself already… I think that’s when I’ve actually realized. I chose again. And I keep choosing every time. I realize that I never needed to have a child in order to feel fulfilled. Not feeling a woman, I don’t think you need to be a mother in order to be a woman. Quite the opposite. I always feel like a woman and I’m glad to be one. I never felt that I was a lesser person because I never had a child. I don’t regret not having children. I don’t. I regret many other things but not having a child of my own. However, I felt myself classified as a different woman. because I didn’t choose to have a traditional family and children. I really felt hostility coming from many women, from many men, people in general. The skepticism. I was a bad person, because what’s a woman who doesn’t want a traditional family? That, I felt. I always felt it in the beginning, mainly.
When people get to know me… I care that people who know me can like me. But it’s not easy to live in a society… I haven’t felt this way in London. I’ve felt it here mainly, as when I was young, in Argentina… “A childless woman”, “different”, “alone”, that’s what they said about me. That’s what I’ve been called: I’m alone, foreign, or rather a non-EU immigrant. “You foreign women come to steal our jobs and our men!” Do you think they invite us to dinner?
They think that we steal men, husbands, jobs. Would they invite you to dinner? Certainly, we aren’t reliable women.
Our Lady, the Mother… There’s this need to have redeeming figures, that actually don’t have a redeeming function. By contrast, we are not reassuring. Not at all. We are the living proof that it’s possible to have a good life by living differently, and it’s possible to feel good. Sometimes, I’m even happy that doesn’t mean that I don’t struggle. I went through bad things, but also good things. That’s because I’ve learned from the bad things. I had the chance to learn from all the bad that happened, from all the suffering.
If you think the bad things must be avoided at all costs, that bad things come from the others, that the Pope, that Our Lady… That is better to be with people who can rescue you and redeem you, in this case we are a terrible obstacle, because we’re aware that life and death don’t exclude each other, they go side by side. I remember when I went to the theater to see Garcia Federico Lorca. He has this incredible awareness when talking about women. Yerma: it’s a tale about a sterile woman, and as such she is rejected by her family, her husband, everyone. So, the woman who is unable to procreate, is to be rejected, to be stoned as an adulteress, a prostitute…
So, yeah… When I was younger I saw some of my friends very worried about the “child, no child” topic. Reaching a certain age they asked me: “Aren’t you worried about not having children?” Not having children never made me feel like I was missing something. It wasn’t me, it was more of an issue for others. The problem was brought to me by the others, it wasn’t my own. Yet…It depends on education, on social classes, because one thing is being a woman of a certain class. Ruling class is one thing, the poor class another, the middle class yet another. It’s a matter of class, of ideals, of values which makes a difference. Luckily, I belong to a generation where the discrimination wasn’t so strong against women who decided not to have children.
The women who helped me on my journey were an exception, exceptional women. They were all different from one another, but they were all conscientious women. Very passionate women with their own lives, who had an attitude that I liked I felt enriched by their stories, by their words and thoughts. While other women, those domesticated by television, are so boring… They care about their figure, they used hair rollers. Typical, really. They depend too much on their image. But they don’t care about it to express themselves through a style. They do it as they’ve nothing else to do besides going to the hairdresser, or going to the grocery store. Here in Italy, I really like Margherita Hack.
Also… Margherita Hack and Ken Loach for me, they’re very youthful elderly people.
Two persons that… In my time, Ingmar Bergman, with all of those movies… Again, about women. This awareness that I identified with. “How can a man be capable of explaining so well what I feel as a woman?” That film that portrayed a mother-daughter relationship, it was important. They all made an impression on me, but this especially.
Then, the women’s literature, Isadora Duncan, which I read when I was a teenager. A life marked by art, female artists, female politicians, female lovers. This, yes… Then, Simone de Beauvoir, poetesses…
Many pregnant women… Many… I see a lot of them. I hear people saying that we don’t make children anymore.
I think the exact opposite! There are too many children, I mean too many children and not enough parents.Not enough parents, that’s the point. Well, I wonder about… this need to keep reproducing the traditional family. This need to keep bringing children in this dying world, a world so broken and so polluted, a world where we need to grow up, where people can create a place where one can… Then, if there was a place where these creatures could live a better life. For me, this need to have children just because it’s imposed on us, like an order: “We must be mothers. We must procreate”. I can’t stand it, it seems incredibly violent to me. I think that ours has been a generation of mostly separated parents.
There weren’t many families staying together. I noticed that the responses of people coming from separated parents are two: either no family or making big, close-knit family, with many children. Always looking for the solution through action, never by saying: “No, I won’t do it.” Before acting, I need to consider what I want and what I can do. From the outside, this attitude for everyone to be more self-aware This constant need for salvation, this need to propose and to continue… To continue this chain. I felt very happy when I said: “I broke the link in the chain started from someone remote” It worried me. But I still see this need to continue to pass on the same, sole mindset, a way of thinking that I’m really tired of.
My home is a free home. Meaning that I can have everything that I want including those that can break. I don’t have to have a functional home avoiding things that can’t be broken. I really like my home because I’ve tried to make it cozy and creative. I don’t have children in my home but, luckily, I’m still capable of playing. Being able to play and keep this space alive… People keep telling me how a child gives you joy. Yes, but… It’s not as if… I think that for a child the most important things are curiosity, intelligence, wisdom. But all of this doesn’t count, after.
So, mine is a living house, a house that is full of those things that can be dangerous for a child. So it’s a dangerous house. Yes, we’re dangerous people. Who went missing during terrorism? Conscientious people, artists, those in the unions, those who taught reading and writing. People who could think, those who could bring new ideas, who questioned fake ideals, and lies a thousand years old born from constant stupidity. No one did what they were supposed to do. The militaries instead of protecting the people they destroyed it. The priests instead of saving the believers, they sold them out. So what are we talking about? Are we the dangerous ones? We’re in the hands of assassins, over and over again.
Yes, that’s why I insist on this topic. Bringing a child into this world? No.
I can’t live in certainties, because for me certainty equals death. I’m always in need of reinventing myself, I crave for surprises, enigmas, of life. To me, death is a certainty, but life with certainties bores me because when I tried living in comfortable situations… Many people tell me: “You sacrifice too much in your life.” Okay, but then I remember the time when I could lead a comfortable life: it bores me to death, I can’t live a comfortable life. I like to give myself comforts sometimes, but a comfortable life bores me. I always need to be on the move, to risk, to try, to strive, to struggle, to succeed… Comfortable life bores me. On the other hand, idleness… I can comfortably laze about, but that’s different. Look, I did, because what I did is… I’ve always studied and traveled, and had nothing. At some point, everybody was questioning me: “But you don’t own anything, you don’t have a home…”
I had a rented house, but that was it, so, no… So I decided to buy a house. That’s why I bought a house here in Montevarchi Square. I bought this house, but for me it wasn’t a matter of ownership, it was another child to care for. But it made me more responsible about many things things that weren’t a reality when I was a renter. Taking care of your own home, paying for certain things, mortgage and all, is different from being a renter and being able to leave overnight. So, this house experience… I discovered only after that it has many meanings for me.
So, I live in the moment. I thought about whom I shall leave my stuff to. Whom do I leave my things to? I will see. I don’t know. To anyone who can appreciate them. I don’t know. We’ll see. Honestly, I don’t live wondering about it too much. I just live. Everything will… When I’ll come to it, I’ll decide. Right now, I can only guess. But I’ll only be able to know when the time will come. I have to live it.
Yes, I would like to leave those things to people who can value them, I don’t need a person to be… I’ve had many children. Some were students, some patients who chose me, in a way, as a mother figure. Those were my children. I don’t need to share my things with someone biologically related to me. No, it will be someone I appreciate, who appreciates me. And if it’s a stranger that’s fine too, I don’t care.
Well, if moms are happy when they talk, if they are pleased and satisfied, perfect. But when they are too bossy, too whiny or too… Creative… Then I feel sorry for their child. Yes! “You don’t have children. You wouldn’t know!” Or: “You can’t know, because you don’t have children!” “You don’t suffer.” As if everything was easy for me. But they’re the ones who don’t know.
With people who think they know all, who never question themselves. With those who are so narcissistic to the extent that she is everything: mom, wife… You are nothing. “What would you know?”
Dead branches. I’ve seen so many dead branches in mothers who have had many children. Despised, abandoned, and unwanted by their children. With dead branches, you can… With a dead branch you can even fuel a fire.
So, this is not a problem, It depends on what you do with these branches. It’ll never depend on your children, it’ll always depend on you, and on the children you’ve conquered beyond your own flesh and blood. We’re back at it again. To me… Why does it have to be your own? Why your own flesh and blood? I don’t care. That’s not what a child is. A child means care, love, passion. You can have a lot of them like this. Why do you have to limit to one child. One, two, seven, your own flesh and blood. I don’t like that approach: “What would I do when I’m old?” Having children for that reason… I find this terrible. It’s selfish having a child for oneself. That’s what I don’t… To me, it’s totally selfish.
Las madres de plaza de Mayo. At first, they were very few and anonymous and they began their long and silent march, every Thursday. When I was in Argentina I used to march with them on Thursdays.
I’ve been invited to an event on Monday, May 7, where… There’s a book by Orlando Baroncelli, Las madres de Plaza de Mayo… No: “Heads up Argentina!” about the whole dictatorship process and las madres de Plaza de Mayo. And while I was reading this book, that’s very well written, I thought about las madres de plaza de mayo weren’t all the mothers. They were those mothers who understood the importance of life, of freedom, what it meant to be mothers beyond your own children. Because many other mothers were afraid, they disowned their children, saying: “They must have done something”. Not all mothers… that’s why they’re valuable, because it was a group of mothers who spread awareness, personal, political and civic awareness. So that’s why for me it is of invaluable importance.
Along with them were students and all the people who… All of us who had experienced injustice and we knew what was going on, we wanted to know. It was a way of witnessing, shaking people’s conscience for those who didn’t want to know. Because of fear, helplessness, many understandable things, yet they didn’t want to know. It was a real movement… Monday the 30th. Today is Saturday, Sunday, Monday… It’s the thirty fifth anniversary of the first march. Thirty five years from the first march de las madres de plaza de mayo.
Let’s say that motherhood that is convincing occurs later, in hindsight, when a mother, in addition to being a woman, exercises the function of a mother. So, she helps children to grow up, helping them becoming free beings. As Kahlil Gibran says: “Your children aren’t yours, they’re life’s children.” The real, convincing mother, for me it’s the mother that generates life. Not the mother that… The mother who failed to become a woman first. So, she’s a child herself, who searches in her own children the father or mother that she never had.»

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