Fedora, director and documentary film maker, explains the reasons that led us to have no children: age, the search for the right partner, work, and her determination not to choose something out of selfishness or just to fill some gaps. On the background of her reasons, the loss of her mum at a young age.
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FEDORA: «My name is Fedora, I’m a programme planner and director at RAI TV, and a documentary filmmaker, so I’m usually the one on the other side of the camera. I chose to do this crazy thing, since I usually struggle when I am the one interviewing, is because it is a very heartfelt topic. It’s a common thread I’ve carried all my life, with or without partners, and so… apart from the affection I have for Nicoletta. Now I’m here, in front of the camera, which rarely happens, I take this opportunity to play “Art Attack”: a wedding book for a friend who gets married in May.
I am 43 years old and I don’t have children, both by choice and by chance. At first when when I was the right age to have children, I was too busy with my job and with the dream of achieving a career path that would allow me to continue what I had studied. And also because the partners I had during the right time frame to have a child I felt they weren’t reliable enough, or the right motivation to even think about it. And then, afterwards, when I reached the age which was somehow already…. let’s say from the age of 30 onwards, so an age which was no longer really ideal, it seemed to me a form of selfishness, at least as far as I am concerned. I had the feeling that a child for me would only be something to make me feel complete, hence it was more of a selfish motivation.
My current partner has a daughter and maybe he was the right person to have a child with, …but I never thought about it again. I saw it as a form of selfishness because I often heard: “At least I have him or her”, as a sort of personal fulfilment. As if you had gaps and you had to fill them with a child, who is there for you, forever, anyway. I never had any regrets, never, but in some moments of my life I just felt the desire because I had found the right person, in order to give, at least… How can I say? At least a standard family: a father, a mother, and love, the love of the two parents. When I found this “standard” situation, it was too late, I had already reached an age when it would have been really hard to start a process…
I even started to go through some gynaecological check-ups, but I stopped very soon, as it seemed to me a very forced situation, as if I was forcing myself to do something, and maybe the motivation was not strong enough, to carry it on at a medical level. So I’ve never had any regrets not even now, I enjoy the affection of my friends’ children of my partner’s daughter, who fills me with affection. I think there is no difference whether it’s mine, whether… whether it’s a human being that I created or someone else created it. Love is not measured by DNA or by something physical, so that’s the reason I have no regrets.
It often happens to talk to friends, to acquaintances, about your family situation: if you have children, or if you don’t. When they hear that you are 43 with no children there is a sort of taboo, as if they thought you had problems, or there is something wrong, or simply you understand that there is a world behind it. But maybe because of my character and also the people I’m often closer to, they can see that I don’t have problems if they talk to me about baby food or diapers… Because I think that’s where the taboo is, in talking about daily matters about children, with a woman who doesn’t have any. As if somehow you couldn’t fully understand the difficulty of raising a child, or you couldn’t fully understand certain subtleties. Or just because they are afraid of hurting you, of hurting you about something that you could not experience, and that you can no longer experience. But I think that my attitude… I think that the taboo is internalised in people who let this problem transpire, even just through a simple look, or feeling uneasy when other women talk about their children. I think the key is in the attitude and in the peace of mind that you show on this subject.
For example, when I’m with other women who struggled to have children, but who tried really hard, I see that these topics become taboo, because the suffering comes out, about not being able to share certain things because you couldn’t, or you didn’t manage to have a child, or because you are suffering. The process for those who want a child and can’t have it naturally is a real agony. So I think that’s where the taboo lies, in the attitude, in the peace of mind that a woman feels about this subject.
My friends and acquaintances tell me about their children, even about the smallest things, that I might not understand, because I don’t… but this is not a problem as I am very easy about it. Other friends of mine instead feel stressed out by the daily routine; pick up children from kindergarten, then back home, one child is sick. The classic remark: “maybe you can’t understand because you don’t have children”, it does come up from time to time. Maybe from acquaintances, not people close to me, who know me well, therefore they would never tell me as they know that I understand them even if I do not have children. That’s the way it is. This happened to me but it never made me suffer, because it is true. Not having children there might be things I can’t fully understand, but it has never been a problem for me.
I don’t feel less of a woman because I don’t have children, and I don’t feel less complete, I don’t feel empty with no children. I feel fully complete, both physically and mentally with regard to this topic. And I think that sometimes this is a way to fill some gaps, which maybe in the past I filled them with food. Others fill them with extreme sports or obsessive care of their body, and many others… I don’t want to judge anyone but many others fill these gaps with a child. And even if at some point I desired a child, but it was only to complete the love relationship with my partner, I never felt the need to fill the gaps with this. I absolutely don’t want to diminish how powerful it is having a child, nor the beauty of it, by saying gaps can be filled with something else. But this can also be part of the choice.
My family is a bit peculiar, I mean that the real family unit, apart from my partner and his daughter, is composed by my brother and my sister-in-law, who don’t have children either. My father remarried as I lost my mother when I was 18, he remarried and lives far away.
He’s a very unconventional man, so maybe he asked me a couple of times: “Don’t you think about having children? I’d like to become a grandfather”. Actually he tells me every now and then, or rather he used to tell me, now that I’m 43 I think he’s given up: “Your uncle always asks your cousins to make him a grandfather”. So he preferred to talk about his brother, rather than about himself, but I’ve never felt any pressure. Probably also because my brother and my sister-in-law, who are more or less my age and don’t have children, so there isn’t this family made up of many children.
As far as the future is concerned, I believe that often when you think about having children, you think also about old age. For example, being left alone when you grow old, because your partner is older, or other…. When I think of old age, I see myself travelling, I don’t know how to put it, I am not scared by the thought of not having somebody close who’s younger, and who somehow will be able to help you. As regards to material goods, for me they are not a concern. This house where my partner and I live it is the house my mother left me. I have never really gave it any thought, maybe this is the first time I think who will inherit it, because it is a material thing so for me it has no value. I mean, it has a value now because I live in it, because it represents myself, and it contains the love I share with my partner, tomorrow it will be dust for me.
Our house represents me a lot. After years and several moves I got back to my roots, because this is where I used to live with my parents as a child. Now I have only the essentials, very few things, and for me perhaps even too many. And I think it would be the same even if I had a child, because sometimes when I go visit my friends or acquaintances who have children I see so much stuff piled up, that somehow… they kind of destroy a child’s creativity, and fill the houses with plastic and all kinds of materials.
Often friends who have to move after having two or three children they really need lorries, because they cannot give up the game their child played with as a baby or just a toddler, and so tons of material, they look like recycling centres.
I lost my mum when I was 18 years old, and I never thought whether this painful event in my life somehow influenced my choice to have children or not.
I am actually thinking about it only now, so maybe if I never thought about it it was not such a big influence on me. My mother was a very maternal mother, both with us but also with children of friends or relatives, so she was mother in each and every aspect of her life, very cheerful and tender. So I don’t know if maybe… She was also a mother who sacrificed herself for others, so maybe if… if she was my ideal of a mother, and in some way… I had to be like her to be a real mother, because she gave me a lot even in the short time she was with us. So maybe yes, this influenced me, because for me a real mother had to be like her. And maybe I thought about it and thought that I could not devote myself like that to a child. Maybe that’s why.»
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