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Honouring the People Without Children Who Have Shaped my Life
I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without them
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My favourite ever teacher was called Mr. Dancer.
Firstly, great name, right?
I never found out if he loved to dance but I like to believe he did.
Secondly, he has shaped my life in ways he will never know.
He was the head teacher of my primary school. A gentle giant and a gay man; he had no children but was a wonderful and engaged teacher who taught me in my final year.
After a series of largely bored supply teachers, he was a breath of fresh air. He was truly interested in — and invested in — the children. He spent time with each of us, getting to know all of our interests and hobbies and little quirks.
I loved to read and he noticed.
He pushed me to go that little bit further, to try the book that was just that little bit too hard. He nurtured my fledgling interest with all the love and care of either of my parents — more, in fact, because they were busy working hard to pay the bills.
His kind words of encouragement sparked a thought in me that would eventually solidify into self-worth — perhaps this is something I’m good at?
Years later I started a new job and was fortunate to be assigned a brilliant manager. I started writing at that time and he took an interest in it and even asked if he could read some of it.
Our one to ones — which we’d often spend rambling around the local area with a coffee — became one of my favourite times of the week.
I had lost my dad in my early twenties and whilst there was never any sense of my manager being a stand-in, his gentle, thoughtful interest in me filled a gap in my heart I didn’t even realise I was carrying. He has since had a child and I am overjoyed for him — and delighted I got to share some of his loving, fatherly energy.
There are so many more. My friend Amy who doesn’t have children and has informally mentored me for years, eventually giving me the confidence to set up a business as she had done before me.
Ali Hall, Editor of Medium publication Life Without Children and cheerfully childfree, whose thoughtful reviews of my writing have pushed me to think more about how I can hone my craft.
Looking back on my life, I can see now that so many of the people who have nurtured my love of reading and writing were those without children.
Perhaps they had been compelled — or were excited to find — meaning outside of parenthood and so were more finely attuned to the things that sparked joy in those around them.
Perhaps they wanted an opportunity to nurture and pass on their wisdom to someone else.
Or perhaps they’re just kind.
Either way, today I can honestly say I am doing work that I have always dreamt of doing, work that gives me a real sense of purpose, that challenges me and makes me happy every day (almost!).
And I have people without children to thank for that.
Forgotten gifts
Nurturing isn’t just restricted to children though.
Research shows there are many ways non-parents contribute to society.
Like the fact that people without children are more likely to donate to good causes than parents. Or that in one study, 42% of charitable foundations were found to have been started by people without children.
For example,Maurice Pate, an important founding member of Unicef, was childless. So wasCecil Jackson-Colewho helped establish Oxfam, Help the Aged and ActionAid andEglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children.
In fact, Jebb was actually thearchitectof what became theUN Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international convention that protects children’s rights to life, protects them from abuse and neglect, and gives them the right to an education, amongst other things.
How many people realise that the woman who fought for — and won — vital protections for children around the world had no children of her own?
Or considering activism, half of the main civil rights leaders in the United States — Roy Wilkins, A. Phillips Randolph and Bayard Ruskin — had no biological children.
Some of the most iconic and impactful feminists also had no children, either by choice or circumstance, including Germaine Greer, Rosa Parks, Gloria Steinem, bell hooks and Simone de Beauvoir to name a few.
So much gritty, exhausting but important work has been done by people without children to fight for equal freedoms in an unjust world.
As a mixed race woman who is free to work, vote and move freely about society, I am particularly in their debt.
Then there are all the things people without children do for society’s parents but which aren’t always acknowledged.
For example, people without kids are up to 40% more likely to care for elderly family members, often taking responsibility on behalf of a sibling caught up with family life.
They also often put extra time into their workplaces to cover for colleagues with family commitments, provide free childcare and mould their lives around parenting schedules to help keep friendships ticking over until time allows a connection to deepen once more.
But these positive actions are so rarely shown in a society desperate to elevate biological families as the epitome of good citizenry.
Personally, I never gave a second thought to all the kindnesses I had been gifted by people without children until I became newly single at 37 and started wondering what kind of legacy I could leave instead of having a child.
Now, I’ve joined a local women’s branch of a political party so I can campaign on behalf of the issues I care about. And I’m trying to take more videos of special events with family and friends so I can create video compilations for them (and me!) to remember, as I know life with young children can disappear in a blur.
The question remains, though: Why do we find it so hard to see all the ways non-parents touch our lives?
A boundless kind of love
We talk a lot about parental love and about how special and meaningful it is.
But what happens when that loving impulse doesn’t have a child to nurture?
It goes out into the world.
It goes into parents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, godchildren, stepchildren, siblings, cousins, colleagues, mentees, clients, friends, neighbours, pupils, patients, animals, plants.
It is a beautiful thing.
It is the reason why the treatment of people without children is so strange, so cruel and so shortsighted.
We have an army of beings full of love walking around our societies, pouring it into thirsty vessels. How incredibly fortunate we are!
After my dad passed away I always felt like I was looking for another guiding presence in my life. But society just doesn’t value close, familial-like non-biological love. It wants us to love and care for one another in bloodlines when actually so many of us just want love in whatever shape or format it appears.
To my mind, non-parental love is just as powerful as the love parents feel for their children. It is simply a different kind of love. It is a love of humanity rather than of kin, a love that looks outwards rather than inwards. It is a love our world needs now more than ever.
I want to pay tribute to every single person who is feeling, or has felt, any pain or loss that they won’t get to parent someone.
I know nothing can replace that. But I also know your love is an incredible gift and if you choose to shine it elsewhere, it will light up other people’s lives in ways you can’t imagine.
The love of people without children is so vital, so special, so important, so needed and so welcome. It changes lives. It has changed my life.
My teacher died several years ago. I never got the chance to tell him what he meant to me. But I do get the chance to tell you, the reader, what you likely mean to someone else.
So however you’re feeling around not having children, I hope you can take a moment to reflect on your unique and precious role in our society. The role of friend, confidante, mentor, teacher, guru, guide and healer to the many of us in need of you.
I see you and I honour you. Thank you.
Thanks for reading this piece by Nadia Huq. It was originally published on Medium. If you enjoyed it, I’d love to hear your thoughts; please leave a comment or share it with a friend.
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I love this. So many childfree people make contributions to lives in various ways, and that should be recognized.