Valeria Viganò, writer and journalist, tells us of her choice not to have children, and how nowadays many gay women like her can fulfill their desire to become mothers, thanks to the women who fought for their rights in the seventies. Taking the cue from her own experience, Valeria touches many themes including personal fulfillment, and compares the Italian situation with other countries.
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VALERIA VIGANO’: «I’m Valeria Viganò, I’m a writer and I have also been a journalist for many years. Well, my desire to not have children derives of course from my personal history, that began when I was a girl, at the age of the first loves, the first relationships realising that my heart beat for girls and not for boys.
This meant that obviously, as we are talking of the seventies, it was implied you would not have children in a relationship between two women, Now, everything has obviously changed, it’s totally different because it’s possible for two women but also for two men, with artificial insemination or a variety of other techniques.
However, I have to say that beyond the constraints, as back then no one could even imagine two women having a child, on top of that the reality of my life, on top of that, I had no desire whatsoever to have children, which is, in my opinion, irrespective of sexual orientations.
I never thought about having children, maybe because I have never had the natural, biological urge, whereas other women who love women, for example, have felt this strongly, back then, but also nowadays.
At that time, a woman who wanted to have children and was homosexual, clearly had to get married or have a relationship with a man. Today, this can be avoided. I have never desired having children, but surely I would have liked that the person I loved had them. I would have happily been part of something, with an atypical role maybe, but I would have liked it.
In the past I had relationships with women who already had children, evidently from previous relationships or marriages and I had a very good relationship with these children, because we re-created a family unit, but at the same time I have never felt the real desire of being a mother.
By the way, it would have been also difficult because of my body shape, well, how can I say it, it’s as if nature had indulged me; it would have been difficult for me to have children, and at the same time, there wasn’t this kind of call, so, I did not get into that frightening tunnel where one desires children without being able to have them. Basically, this is my story. Now that I’m almost 60, I don’t regret not having them, I’m happy as I am.
Of course, not having children means having less on the one hand and more on the other, I mean, there’s a huge freedom. I travelled a lot during my life, I enjoyed total freedom over my own life.
Clearly, I did not have the greatest love, but I have made up for it in some way because I have almost adopted, it feels like one, I had even thought of doing it, to be a protective figure for a girl younger than me, who no longer had parents, who was a fragile person.
And up to now, I have been representing this role for many years, even if it remains atypical, not like a real mother, I am not a real mother, I could not even be one. But there is the possibility to give protection, help, listening, making sacrifices, learning to be patient for another person when you love them, and it is a maternal love on one side, and filial love on the other. It’s a very strong feeling which I think I will carry with me my whole life.
Another element that influenced the fact of not wanting children, or not feeling this need, was the total independence which I associated to my life.
I’m an only child and my parents have been… like all the other parents, good and bad at the same time. Certainly, some households are not a great example, and mine was not a great example.
Since I was a child, I felt this strong need of freedom, of independence, of not depending on anything and of being able to do something, setting myself no limits… I was born in 1955, and at that time girls were very limited, the female gender was full of constrains.
“Don’t do this”, don’t do that”, “you can’t do it”, “boys do this”, and I didn’t want any. Maybe this desire of having no constraints included the maximum constraint represented by a child.
I have had friends who had children very early and their life has radically changed. Many people of their life, almost all, have had children, they had partners, also marriages, and I have seen how much their life changed.
We are a very small family, we don’t have many relatives, I myself no longer have any.
I had two aunts out of three who didn’t have children, one married, who couldn’t have children, the other one with a much more dramatic background, and she didn’t have children either. Therefore, they were much more independent and that, for me, was also a model to follow, because it was possible in the 50s, 60s and 70s to be women and not be mothers.
And I thought very highly of them, and I have never heard a sort of reproach from the outside because they didn’t have children. My married aunt suffered more, of course, instead the other less.
The feminist revolution of the 70s was a real turning point, that then lasted many years. Both practice and theory lasted long, and the female role was completely overturned; for the first time women were considered as individual beings fully owning the choices related to their bodies and this was an epoch-making change.
Above all, in the big cities, in Milan as in Rome, clearly women became aware of themselves; so also the relationship with motherhood changed a lot because it was not the only option, there were others.
If I think about the years ahead of me, which are inseparable from those I have spent, it’s a sort of continuum with no interruptions, and I believe that, even though I didn’t have any children, I have tried to build something through literature, through my books, whenever I created something, having chosen this profession.
However, I don’t think that a book could be compared to a child. It is indeed very intense, with which you have a very close bond, just as a child, because it is always there, but then it goes away. It goes away without such a great pain, while, when children leave home, they don’t do that anymore, but when they did, for a mother it was a painful separation, it was a loss. The artistic creation is not a loss when it goes to others, so it cannot really be considered as that.
Obviously, what I have, while before I was… strangely enough, when I was younger, I did worry thinking about my stuff, What will happen to them… They will be ashes. I don’t anymore. I think that my things will go to my loved ones, and I have many in my life. I will spread them out, and they will carry on this legacy.
However, I have enough love for these people therefore I am very happy to leave everything, I don’t’ have the desire to hold back, and know they will make a good use of the material things I will leave behind, but also in terms of ethics and moral, it’s a sort of transmission. Not necessarily transmitting myself but transmitting ideas the very same that pushed me to do this work, and to shape it in a certain way.
Writers have responsibilities, because they say things, they are listened to, they can influence others, so, there are responsibilities because they can also widen or narrow others’ way of thinking, broadening or closing horizons.
And since I consider myself a very ethical person, I hope I will succeed, or better I hope I have succeeded in transmitting, and I will continue to do so even when I am no longer here because I wrote books, articles… I have had a very intense life, and whoever searches for them, will find them there as well, not necessarily in the material part of the existence.
However, there is a thought of course, and I’d like to think that it can be passed on, and live though others. I’d like to think that what I have done, written and said during my professional and emotional life, could have a value that it would be carried forward to help those who want it.
I have a writing school that has existed for more than twenty years and it’s funny because when, especially in the United States, the first schools of creative writing were born I said: “you can’t teach how to write, they are worthless”. But than developing my own personal system very much linked to what students write and to what they are, working on their texts, on them, talking, it’s a very much a seminarial school, not a one-size-fits-all. So each time it is enriched with the contents that they also bring, and we work on that together. And let’s say that I like it a lot, first of all, because it allows an emotional relationship, that for months is very intense.
The more personal aspects emerge; in writing, you can’t really hide, and for this reason I understand a lot about them quite quickly , it’s a sort of revelation, a moment of truth, so some true bonds spring from it.
My students, even those from twenty years ago, remember me tenderly, they remember the course, and many have told me: “this course changed my life”. And this because it’s not just a dry teaching but a true transmission of knowledge. If we want, this is also a form of motherhood, because it’s like welcoming those who have a deep desire, that of writing, getting involved, working with them, growing together.
I also held a two years’ writing course for a group in San Lorenzo, with San Lorenzo’s centre, for people who have physical not psychical disabilities, and when I finished the two courses, I felt enriched like them because this is what should happen between children and parents, namely, a mutual transmission of knowledge. Instead, this does not often happen, often those with children do not realise the responsibilities that this carries. Sometimes they feel crushed, understandably so, by the reality that surrounds us.
I have never considered the family as the founding core of our society, in term of man-woman-children.
Loving units are much deeper, they include of course also traditional families, but they can also be much more, they can be many things, life is unpredictable, they can be stepchildren, or simply people who don’t live together.
The traditional family, let me use this term, is a hoax, because it does not exist in itself, it does not have a value in itself, as we can see nowadays what happens in traditional families, with the most binding roles.
It can cause greatest conflicts, which is terrifying, with very serious consequences.
I believe that a family should not be a family and should not continue to be a family, if there are deep disagreements: go separate ways! But accepting the separation, accepting to create other units, accepting to have other children or not any more.
It is simply the goodness of what you create, not just the fact of creating it, according to set standards, according to a tradition that is largely outdated. We are not talking about families of the nineteenth century, nowadays we live in a completely different world, there is a total communication.
It’s no longer the place to take refuge, but the place where we can share, where we can exchange views and this makes a big difference. Also because the children’s role… before parents used to have absolute authority, especially the father. Today, this authority no longer exist, so there must be other forms of moral transmission and teaching. This transition from a time when it was not conceivable that a single woman would have and raise a child on her own. It was shameful not to have a husband, and there are a lot of single mothers who raise children alone, there are loads of them. This was the first step and the next one was: “but after all, if we can raise a child on our own not necessarily having a male figure…” Bollea, a great neuropsychiatrist, claimed that in reality the male figure, the father figure is different from the mother figure, because it can be replaced by any other figure such as a teacher, a coach, namely, a man who has always taken care of children and teenagers.
It was clear then that single mothers could have children alone, with the help of a friend who would be a donor, or with the artificial insemination. Let’s say that it was a landmark turning point. It was such a welcome breakthrough that all rushed to have children.
Clearly abroad, such as The Netherlands, London and in various other places, whereas here in Italy, the situation is totally archaic. Furthermore, for two women who are together, naturally, one of them has a child, but it also happened that one was the ‘container’, so to speak, and the other the raw material, or else that first one had a child followed by the other.
It’s clearly a natural event, because when a woman has the desire to become a mother, it is feasible, while it’s different for two men, because they need to have a woman in order to have children and this makes quite a big difference. But not necessarily women must have a child… The choice of having or not a child is a very personal one, a choice clearly thought through and shared.
It often happens in long lasting relationships which are very steady, between the two women. But the are also a lot of women who do not have children, after all, having a child through the artificial insemination is a pretty complex process, it’s not a simple journey, one goes through a long period of treatments, cures, exams… It becomes almost a clinical path, a highly medicated journey. But honestly, now that is possible, I obviously couldn’t any more, but I think even if it was possible, I would not have done it.
I believe that we can finally open our eyes and focus the attention on women who don’t have children, who chose not to have them, who didn’t want or couldn’t have them… in short, a huge number of women. There are people, women who did not have or want children because they didn’t want to give up something of themselves.
It may seem a paradox, because a child is considered an enrichment, but life can be rich without a child too, it is very important to understand what is happening in Italy, what is happening to women it’s key to understand how many women, in Italy, don’t have children. How many no longer see it as the only way to realise themselves, and I imagine that nowadays they are no longer considered outcasts, as in the past; because a woman with no children was a outcast, in regard to her family, or her working environment… she was like a half woman. She’s not half a woman she is just a childfree woman. It’s much simpler, isn’t it?
She is seen as a half of something, as long as the common place, the common thinking was much more conservative, obviously. It’s easier to confine a woman to a role, through motherhood, which should be a beautiful aspect of one’s existence; instead motherhood has aloso been a yoke even in the twentieth century, not centuries ago, we are talking about a recent past. You had to go through motherhood to be complete, otherwise you were just a half.
What a bizarre vision, because we are individuals; a man with no children is not considered an empty half; on the contrary, he is even much cooler without a child. A woman who doesn’t have children, or doesn’t build up a family
is an incomplete woman, she hasn’t done what she was supposed to do.
I think that nowadays things have changed but we should talk about the choice of non-motherhood, or about the lives of women who have not had children but who have done so many other things, it is vey important, because it’s not a forced destiny, it is chosen, and free choice should be the foundation of a civil society, in which women and men are equal. And you should be considered, for what you are, for your integrity, and values, shouldn’t you? Not because you are something or another, or because you fit in a role rather than another.
A person’s value is independent from that, one’s worth is a value in itself. If they decide to create a family, to have children and all… very well, but those who don’t do it and didn’t want to do it, have the same rights and the same human dignity of those who are inside an established structure, that is the tradition, especially in our country.
The situation abroad is totally different. In the Nordic countries, which I love and visit often, we are on another planet. Iceland, which is a small island on which I wrote a book, women and men have basically the same roles in everyday’s life. If they have children, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the mother or the father takes care of them. Any man or woman with no children? Very well. Procreating is not a must, and that’s the best thing because procreation is not something that can be imposed on you, or else you are not considered an adult, mature, whole person. And this makes a huge difference, a really huge difference.
In Italy today, in 2014, unfortunately, we are still tied to certain patterns, certain expectations from women, and if one does not conform it’s still strange. When people ask me: “Do you have children?” I say: “No, I don’t … “Mmh”. There’s always this subtle… So I feel like saying: “is there problem with it?” At that point the answer is: “no, no, no, it’s not a problem”, maybe because of the determination in my answer, which is rather simple. It is not a problem.»
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