Jennifer Aniston: Having No Kids Doesn’t Mean I’m A Failure – This Writer Agrees

Jennifer Aniston has this week opened up about the pressure to have kids, saying 'I don't like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women, that you've failed yourself as a female because you haven't procreated.' No one is more aware of the pain of struggling to have a baby than Rosalind Bubb. She has suffered 12 miscarriages and has finally come to terms with the fact that she will never be a mother. But that doesn’t stop complete strangers still judging her for being childless.

‘It may have seemed like an innocuous enough enquiry, but the plumber tinkering with my broken washing machine had no idea of the torrent of emotion he would unleash. He had already asked whether my husband and I had children, but now, when I replied that we didn’t, he was posing the hardest question of all. ‘Why not?’, he asked. I had to leave the room so he wouldn’t see me cry.

Because the truth was I didn’t know - only that, after 12 miscarriages, my body seemed unable to allow me to fulfill my dream of becoming a mother.

Moreover, it is the one thing that society all too often judges you by. Which is why I could totally relate to Maxine Peake when she recently talked about her unsuccessful battle to have a baby, saying if you can't you can all too easily feel that you have somehow ‘failed’ as a woman. She's not the only one to talk about the pressure women face to become mothers.

The issue will be in the headlines again thanks to National Fertility Awareness Week, taking place from 27 October. Around 3.5million people in the UK have fertility issues.. so why is there still such a stigma attached to being childless when so many of us <can't> have children?

Like most women I had taken it for granted I would be fertile. I met my husband Phil when I was 28. We started trying for a family when I was 32 and within three months I was pregnant. But just a few weeks later I started bleeding. A scan showed what I dreaded: I'd had a miscarriage.

Phil and I clung to each other as we took in the news. But it never occurred to me that we wouldn’t have a baby in the end. Yet more and more miscarriages followed while all around me friends were starting their own families.

It was hard not to feel like I was failing. And there were times I felt very judged for not being able to do the most simple thing – have a baby. There were countless occasions when acquaintances would talk about motherhood as the most important job in the world, that the "mummy club" was the best one to be in. I felt constantly excluded.

As a childless woman it’s impossible to escape the constant presence of mothers all around you. On one occasion, Phil and I went to what we thought was a low-key barbecue, only to find ourselves surrounded by a babble of young children and a newborn. I went straight up to the bathroom, shut myself in and cried.

After 12 miscarriages – my last after a round of IVF in 2007 – I realised I couldn’t do this to myself any more, that I had a chance to embrace a new kind of life. I started to actively seek out the company of women who didn’t have children and who weren’t defined by whether or not they were mothers.

Coming to terms with my decision to draw a line under motherhood was a gradual process, one often filled with tears, but on my fortieth birthday I threw a party and for the first time started to feel hope for the future.

Yet real acceptance took longer. I learned a lot of simple self-help techniques which helped me get rid of the trauma of losing so many babies. I use these with the women I now help in my work as a miscarriage support therapist.

Of course, while Phil and I are at peace with our lives, not everyone understands. Every time we meet someone new the question of why I’m not a mum inevitably still arises. I explain that we couldn’t, because somehow it feels important to acknowledge that we have tried. If only not to feel so judged.

Now, despite everything I’ve been through, I consider myself lucky. I may not be a mum, but I am many other things – a wife, a daughter, a friend and someone whose work helps others. As Jennifer Aniston knows, motherhood is just one way – not the only way – to define yourself.