A Tribute to the Childless Women Who Feel Invisible on Mother's Day

Your feelings and experiences matter, too

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I wrote this piece in 2023, during an incredibly tumultuous time in my life when my father’s health was rapidly failing and my darling 4-year-old nephew was about to have open-heart surgery. The feelings I share here still apply today and are very much alive for me as Mother’s Day approaches. I hope this will bring peace to other women who have mothered the people in their lives but never got to be a mother to a child of their own.

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Well, here we go again. It’s my least favorite time of year. I absolutely hate May and all its fanfare around motherhood.

I recently received an interesting weekly newsletter from a certain publication that shall remain nameless — though if you are reading this, then you might have gotten it, too. It started out by sharing thoughts about being offered an opt-out for Mother’s Day marketing emails. The woman writing the newsletter — who noted she was a very happy mother and had a very happy relationship with her own mother — was compassionate about the opt-out, acknowledging that this day can be difficult for people, depending upon their perspectives. She even quoted a few other women, describing their complicated feelings about the holiday.

But the strange thing was that all of the women included were mothers of living children. One of them had lost one child, but all of them had children they were still raising.

I can’t figure out why it is so hard to remember the other people for whom this holiday might be difficult. There are a lot of different reasons why this day might be hard, and I won’t get into all of them. But right now, I want to highlight one of the biggest demographics that has a hard time with this day: the childless.

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My mother is so sweet and thoughtful — she always sends me a Mother’s Day card every year. She doesn’t know that I had a miscarriage at 19, but she does know I always wanted kids. She does know how much I struggled in a relationship with the man I thought I was going to marry, trying to be so patient for him to feel ready for parenthood only for him to leave me in order to start a family with a much younger woman he’d met at work.

But my nieces are often perplexed by this. “Why do you get a card on Mother’s Day? You aren’t a mom,” they say.

And when I’ve shared my feelings about how much I would appreciate feeling connected to this holiday, I’ve gotten feedback from others — mostly women — who express their discomfort with that. Women who don’t have children, they subtly remind me, aren’t mothers…and therefore…well, you get the gist.

I understand, to some extent. Mothers are wildly underappreciated in our culture. We give them more social clout than any other demographic of women, but it’s all just lip service. We don’t actually respect them. We don’t actually help them. We don’t actually appreciate them.

So damn straight they deserve a day to put their feet up and have everyone literally worship them. I’m all for it.

But if we want to honor motherhood so badly, why wouldn’t we embrace everyone who is…and was…and wanted to be…a mother?

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There are a lot of reasons a woman might find herself childless. She might have struggled with infertility. She might not have found the right partner. She might not have been able to afford to an alternative route to motherhood, or perhaps didn’t want to become a single mother. She might have had a string of miscarriages and decided not to continue trying. She might have had a child who passed away.

When I see childless women — women who deeply wanted to have children, but did not end up as mothers of living children for one reason or another — I see mothers.

Strangely, the rest of the world sees us very differently.

As a childless woman, I know how the world sees me, because I hear people’s comments and opinions on my parenthood status regularly. I’m selfish, I’m a failure, I’m not a “real” woman (whatever that means).

For a long time, I took these judgments to heart. I worried I was selfish but too narcissistic to notice. I felt like a failure. And yes, I felt like I wasn’t a “real” woman.

And despite my deep desire to have a child, despite the fact that I almost had one, despite the fact that I have been a mother to hundreds of other people’s children through my mentor volunteering, teaching, and program directing for a job skills training program for teenagers, I have never been considered a mother in this culture. I’ve never been considered a mother by many of the women I’ve encountered during my life, many of whom were the ones who were quick to make sure I knew that I had failed at my life’s mission by not having children.

But as I’ve gotten older, I don’t care about these judgments anymore. I know who I am. I consider myself a mother.

And I’m tired of other people hijacking such an important part of my identity and experience just because they want to gatekeep what it means to be a mother.

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Motherhood is a complex landscape. It’s a radically unique journey. It’s an infinite iteration of identity.

And yet our culture pretends it is an entirely homogeneous role and lifestyle.

Listen to the way we talk to women who are adoptive mothers or stepmothers. I’ve literally heard others tell them they aren’t “real mothers.” I’ve heard people say a woman isn’t a mother unless she has pushed a baby out of her vagina. (I guess that means all the women who had C-sections aren’t “real” mothers, either?)

Why are we so determined to define motherhood only by one specific standard? Why is it so hard for us to embrace all the different types of mothers — and to celebrate them, too?

What about the mothers who didn’t get to be mothers? What about the mothers who opted out of motherhood in order to protect their offspring from inheriting genetic health problems and who subsequently mourn the decision they had to make? What about the mothers who chose not to have children because they fear climate change or political volatility has created a world in which their children would not be safe? What about the mothers who simply didn’t want children but who are teachers, aunts, nannies, and nurses?

I know a lot of mothers will say, “Why can’t we have a celebration only for women who are raising living children? Why can’t we have this one special day and the rest of you celebrate yourselves on your own days?”

I’ll be generous enough to skip right over the inherent flaws in this type of exclusivism and ask you a question. Did you send Happy Teacher’s Day, Happy Nurse’s Day, and Happy Auntie’s Day cards and gifts to the teachers, nurses, and aunts in your life? Did you join them for brunch? Did you get a flood of emails from big companies who were pushing marketing campaigns to celebrate these holidays?

How about this: Do you know what day these holidays fall on? Do you even know what month they’re in?

I can guess most people’s answer. And that answer is very telling, isn’t it?

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This Mother’s Day is different for me. The three weeks leading up to it have been some of the hardest of my life. And the past seven days have been overwhelmingly stressful and emotional.

My 4-year-old nephew, Alex, who is the closest thing I’ve known to a child, is scheduled for open-heart surgery on Tuesday.

Last week, I drove across my state to be with him and his five brothers and sisters for the week before the surgery. I spent most of that time serving meals, cleaning up after the kids, playing outside with them, helping them with their garden, taking them on walks, and cuddling with my Alex.

Yesterday, other family members arrived to help me transport the five older kids back to my hometown, where my mother lives, so we adults can care for them for the next two weeks during Alex’s hospital stay.

And I dreaded the passing of every minute, knowing I would have to eventually leave Alex’s side because only parents are allowed in the children’s hospital.

Just before we left, the women in my family — all of whom are mothers — passed presents back and forth to one another in an impromptu, early Mother’s Day celebration. None of them know about the miscarriage I had two decades ago. And I couldn’t be a part of this bonding moment before such a traumatic family event because I don’t have a living child.

These are the moments when a childless woman feels invisible.

Just two days before, Alex had asked me for the first time if I had children. I told him no, I did not. In years prior, his brothers had responded to my answer by saying, “Okay.” His sisters responded by saying, “Why not? Every woman is supposed to be a mother.”

Alex, unlike all of them, said, “But I’m your child, aren’t I?”

I smiled and said, “Yes. You are definitely my little one.”

And he is.

And after everything I’ve been through in this life, after everything I’ve given to the children in my life, after the love and care I have devoted to my nieces and nephews, I don’t want to feel left out of Mother’s Day anymore. I’m tired of people forgetting to think about how Mother’s Day affects childless women (or some childfree women, for that matter). I’m tired of always being on the outside.

Motherhood is complicated. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mother’s Day reflected that?

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Join me and

Ali Hall

on May 22nd to talk about Chappell Roan’s recent statements about motherhood!