The Baby Decision

by Merle Bombardieri

  If you’re planning to remain childfree, you may hear a lot of negative comments from pronatalists. If you’ve discussed the decision-making process publicly, this news won’t come as a surprise. But if you haven’t told a soul that you’re even thinking about the baby question, it’s wise to be prepared for criticism and even wiser to be selective about making the announcement.

  At this point you may feel a sense of accomplishment and relief. People sometimes say, “I feel as if a burden has lifted off my shoulders.” Others are happy to discover more energy, better concentration, and a creative flow of ideas about the next stage of your life. Even if you have chosen to be childfree, actively ruling out parenthood will probably give you a sense of energy and renewal for enjoying life.

  For review of the manuscript in its early stages, I thank Mara Altman, Phyllis Fitzpatrick, MSW, LICSW, Stephanie Morgan, MSW, Psy.D., Katie O’Reilly, Deborah Rozelle, Psy.D., Jenna Russell, Kayla Sheets, LCGC, Carol Sheingold, MSW, LICSW, Janet Surrey, Ph.D., and Bina Venkataraman.

  Thanks to my colleagues at RESOLVE, the national infertility organization: Barbara Eck Menning, R.N., founder, Carol Frost Vercollone, Assistant Director, Diane Clapp, B.S., R.N., Medical Information Counselor. I thank Diane Clapp for the work we did together on the topics of grief and of helping members stop fertility treatments. I thank national RESOLVE board members Dr. Susan Cooper (in memoriam), Dr. Isaac Schiff, Dr. Veronica Ravnikar, Dr. Holly Simons, and Dr. Aline Zoldbrod. Other RESOLVE colleagues were Alma Berson, LICSW, my clinical consultant, and Ellen Glazer, LICSW.

  A special thanks to Dr. Selwyn Oskowitz of Boston IVF, recently retired, with whom I shared many talks at the podium, and many cases in our practices. Our collaboration has been an honor and an education.

  Other colleagues I wish to acknowledge are RESOLVE of New England, Ali Domar, Ph.D, Dale Eldridge, LICSW; Jane Feinberg-Cohen, LICSW; Davina Fankhauser; Ellen Feldman, LICSW; Annie Geogehan, LICSW; Leigh Gray, LICSW; Dr. Martha Griffin; Adele Kaufman, Ph.D.; Sue Levin, LICSW; Rebecca Lubens, LICSW; Abigail MacDonald, LICSW; Barbara B. McCauley, LICSW; Lisa Rothstein; and Ava Sarafan, LICSW. To Cambridge Center for Adult Education, for hosting The Baby Decision workshops since 1984.

  To all of my psychotherapy clients, coaching clients, and workshop attendees whose intelligent questions, lively dialogues with classmates, along with their creativity, courage and humor have informed this book. May you all enjoy the lives you have chosen!

  For urging me to write a second edition of The Baby Decision, deep thanks to author Colin Beavan, Dr. Janet Surrey, Barbara McCauley, LICSW, and Marilyn Yohe, Lic.Ac. For recent media attention to the book and my work, I thank Mara Altman, Ann Friedman and Corrie Pikul. Thanks also to Colin Beavan for featuring my work in his latest book, How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happiness That Helps the World.

  For sharpening my writing skills, I thank Grub Street teachers and consultants Becky Tuch and Jacqueline Sheehan, and my Grub classmates and community, especially Alyssa Haywoode, who helped with concepts, editing, and social media.

  For insights that brightened the book, I thank Marcella, Vanessa, and Rocco Bombardieri, Dr. Paul Fulton and the Institute of Meditation and Psychotherapy, Dawn Davenport of Creating a Family, James Leahy, Dr. Stephanie Morgan, Dr. Judy Osher, Dr. Deborah Rozelle, Dr. Rebecca Shrum, Dr. Janet Surrey, Dr. Karen Tripitto, Dr. Liz Wolheim, Rabbi Susan Harris, and Katie Wilson. For enthusiastic support and contributions to my wellbeing, I thank Loocie Brown, M.A.; Malissa Wood, M.D.; Mary Ellen Rodman, M.D.; Lori Berkowitz, M.D.; Jose Donovan, P.T.; Kristin Eckler, M.D.; Susan Hopper, P.T. and Sue Guertin, P.T. assistant, both at Theraspring. For ongoing support, I thank Maxine Olson, Joyce and John Dwyer, Janet Buchwald and Joel Moskowitz, Rabbi David Thomas, Cantor Lorel Zar-Kessler, the members of Congregation Beth El, Louise Brown, Dee Dee Pike, Marcia Lewin-Berlin, and Suzanne Salter. Amber Garcia, Jean Ferro, Susan Milberg, Gail Sillman, Sally Plone, and Sherry Kauderer, James Maguaran, M.D., Luanna Devenis, Ph.D, and Dr. Tanya Korkosz, and Kathie McInnis and Trish Pratt. Thanks to family members Alan and Ann Malkoff, David Malkoff and Lesley-Anne Stone, Christine and Mark Malkoff, Alison, Tom, Beth and Aaron Drucker-Holzman, Louise Bombardieri, Rosemary Dykeman, Gina Girouard, Rosemarie and Chris Dykeman-Bermingham, Marietta Bombardieri, and Vincent Nobile. Other close family members who have played important roles are Cyndy Marion, and Loretta Hunt Marion, and Karim Naguib. I thank my daughters, Marcella and Vanessa Bombardieri, my daughter-in-law Cyndy Marion, and my nephews David and Mark Malkoff not only for support but also for being extraordinary role models of creative chutzpah. In particular, Vanessa and Cyndy’s round-the-clock dedication to White Horse Theater (off-off Broadway, New York City) is a great inspiration.

  To my grandson, Sofyan, for the love, charm and humor that sustained me though this long project. Thanks also to his parents, my daughter Marcella Bombardieri and son-in-law Karim Naguib for demonstrating the joys and challenges of family life.

  For encouragement and superb library services, thank you to Robin Demas, Cynthia DiRenzo, Patricia Diotte, and Maliha Quddus, and Gay Weiss of the Concord Free Public Library. Thanks also to the wonderful staff at the Acton and Stow libraries.

  For an ad hoc writer’s room in a café, I thank Andrew and Stacey Bluestein of Emma’s Café in Stow, MA, for espresso, good food, and their warm welcome.

  Thanks to all the talented midwives of the book itself, Jane Friedman, publishing consultant, Hillary Rettig, productivity consultant, Andi Cumbo-Floyd, editor, Barbara Aronica-Buck, cover and interior designer, Sharona Jacobs, photographer, Claire McKinney and her associate Larissa Ackerman, publicists, Jeremy Townsend, proofreader, and Cheryl Lenser, indexer.

  For ongoing support through all difficulties, a special thank you to Phyllis Fitzpatrick, Rachel Sagan, Stephanie Morgan and Deborah Rozelle.

  And to my husband Rocco, who has made this book possible with his constant encouragement, tireless work, and most of all, his love.

  So many people have contributed to this book that it is impossible to thank everyone personally. I especially want to express my appreciation to the individuals and couples who shared so much of themselves during workshops or interviews.

  Thanks to all the people whose enthusiasm and expertise added so much to the book:

  To the psychotherapists who trained me: Elsie Herman, Nancy Leffert, Teresa Boles Reinhardt, and Ron Reneau.

  To Elizabeth Bunce-Nichols and the Nashville YWCA for helping the project get started.

  To the following people for sharing their professional knowledge: psychoanalysts Jean Baker Miller and Carol Nadelson; psychologist Glenn Larson; COPE workshop facilitators Ginny DeLuca and Randy Wolfson; gynecologist Kenneth Blotner; Miriam Ruben of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization; and Preterm staff members Pat Lurie, Mag Miller, Maxine Ravech, and Billie Rosoff.

  To Nina Finkelstein, Sherrye Henry, Erica Jong, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin for their insights on feminism and motherhood.

  A special thank you to author and television commentator Betty Rollin, whose explanation of her decision was both inspired and inspiring. This book is also easier to read thanks to Ms. Rollin’s no-nonsense approach to writing. Imagining her reading over my shoulder and circling every bit of jargon guided my revisions.

  To the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood (NAOP), especially Gail McKirdy of the National Resource Center, for helping me track down all kinds of information.

  To the staffs of the Boston Public Library—Copley Reference Library and Roslindale Branch; of the Divinity, Psychology, Social Relations and Widener Libraries of Harvard University; and to Irene Laursen and Debbie Smith of the Wellesley College Science Library.

  To the following people for reading all or part of the manuscript: Rocco Bombardieri, Steve Cohn, Carol Conner, Judy Eron, William Farago, David Holzman, Glenn Larson, Sadie and Sol Malkoff, Marianne Perrone, Teresa Boles Reinhardt, and Martha and Steven Richmond.

  To Judith Appelbaum and Nancy Eva
ns for their skills and support, first in How to Get Happily Published and later through correspondence.

  To Ginger Downing, who typed the manuscript, for her speed, patience, flexibility, and sense of humor.

  To the women who provided loving care to my daughters while I wrote: Kathy King and Catherine Zirpollo in the early stages and high school students Dorothy Staffier, Jeannie and Joanne Varano on occasional weekends. A very special thank you to Alice Staffier, who took care of my children during most of my working hours. Without her intense dedication, this book would have taken twice as long to write.

  To the following people for their enthusiastic support, which included resisting the temptation to say, “You’ve got to be crazy to write your first book the same year you have your second baby!” It was crazy, but it was also possible, thanks to Sandy and Tom Anderson, the members of the Arlington Street Church, John Baeder, Barbara Berger, Steve and Edie Cohn, Carol Conner, Emily Dunn, Zelda Fischer, Mimi Goss, Kathy Hearne, Susan Jordan, Marianne and Fred Perrone, Arthur and Betsy Purcell, Caryl Rivers, Beth Rotondo, Susan Schein, Barbara Sheedy, Barbara Sher, and Claire Willis.

  To Judy Eron, for serving as a model of a woman who balances beautifully her two vocations: writing and psychotherapy,

  To Glenn Larson, who helped me understand the meaning of self-actualization. The growth orientation of this book owes much to him.

  To Marianne Perrone for her loving encouragement and for her artistic and conceptual fireworks which never failed to make my own imagination skyrocket.

  To Rawson, Wade editors Eleanor Rawson and Sharon Morgan:

  To Eleanor for her expertise and interest.

  To Sharon for her dedication and skill. Thanks to Sharon, this is a stronger book.

  To my agent Anita Diamant, for her support and commitment.

  To my parents, Sadie and Sol Malkoff for their enthusiasm, and to Sadie for her editorial suggestions.

  To my daughters, Marcella and Vanessa, for giving me firsthand knowledge of motherhood, contributing to the realism of the book, and also providing comic relief when the going got rough.

  To my husband, Rocco, for believing in this book from start to finish and for making the enormous sacrifices it required. Without his loving support, The Baby Decision could not have been written.

  The Decision

  Altman, Mara. Baby Steps. Kindle Single, 2014.

  Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010.

  Bardwick, Judith. In Transition: How Feminism, Sexual Liberation and the Search for Self-Fulfillment Have Altered America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.

  Bombardieri, Merle. “Considering Parenthood.” Our Bodies, Ourselves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

  Daniels, Pamela, and Weingarten, Kathy. Sooner or Later: The Timing of Parenthood in Adult Lives. New York: Norton, 1992.

  Davitz, Lois Lederman. Baby Hunger. Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1984.

  Dell, Diana L. and Suzan Erem. Do I Want to Be a Mom? A Woman’s Guide to the Decision of a Lifetime. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.

  Fabe, Marilyn, and Wikler, Norma. Up Against the Clock: Career Women Speak on the Choice to Have Children. New York: Random House, 1979.

  Friedman, Ann. “What if You Just Don’t Know If You Want Kids? New York Magazine, September 18, 2014, http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/what-if-you-just-don’t-know-if-you-want-kids.html.

  Gerson, Kathleen. Hard Choices: How Women Decided About Work, Career, and Motherhood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.

  Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011.

  Lehrer, Jonah. How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

  Leibovich, Lori. Maybe Baby: Twenty-Eight Writers Tell the Truth about Skepticism, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives. New York: Harper, 2007.

  McKaughan, Molly. The Biological Clock. New York: Penguin, 1989.

  Ostrander, Madeline. “How Do You Decide to Have a Baby When Climate Change Is Remaking Life on Earth?” thenation.com, April 11, 18th issue, http://thenation.com/article/how-do-you-decide-to-have-a-baby-when-climate-change-is-remaking-life-on-earth/.

  Pikul, Corrie. “The Clock-Watcher: How Do You Know When—or if—You Should Have a Baby? Elle, February, 2011.

  Rivers, Caryl. “The New Anxiety of Motherhood.” Women in a Changing World. Uta West, ed. pp. 141–152. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.

  Rubin, Theodore Isaac. Overcoming Indecisiveness: The Eight Stages of Effective Decision Making. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

  Whelan, Elizabeth. A Baby? Maybe. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975.

  Wills, Garry. “What? What? Are Young Americans Afraid to Have Kids?” Esquire, March 1974.

  Wade, Donna. I Want a Baby, He Doesn’t: How Both Partners Can Make the Right Decision at the Right Time. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2005.

  Yalom, Irvin. Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books, 1980. This book has an excellent chapter on decision-making.

  Social Commentary

  Badinter, Elizabeth. The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women. New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2011.

  Beavan, Colin. How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happiness That Helps the World. New York: Dey Street, 2016. With environmental concerns, discusses ways of nurturing children other than biological parenthood. Includes a chapter on this author’s decision guidelines.

  Carroll, Laura. The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Mind from Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood and Reproduction Will Create a Better World. Live True Books, 2012.

  Chatterjee, Keya. The Zero Footprint Baby: How to Save the Planet While Raising a Healthy Baby. Brooklyn, NY: Ig Publishing, 2013.

  Crittenden, Ann. The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001.

  Douglas, Susan and Meredith Michaels. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women.

  Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, Grace Change, and Linda Rennie Forcey. Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency. New York: Routledge, 1994,

  Golombok, Susan. Modern Families: Parents and Children in New Family Forms. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

  Hanauer, Cathi, ed. The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and Marriage. New York: William Morrow, 2002.

  Haningsberg, Julie E. and Sara Rudnick, eds. Mother Troubles: Rethinking Contemporary Maternal Dilemmas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

  Hartas, Dimitra. The Right to Childhood: Critical Perspectives on Rights, Difference and Knowledge in a Transient World. London: Continuum Books, 2008.

  Holmes, Melanie. The Female Assumption: A Mother’s Story: Freeing Women From the View That Motherhood is a Mandate. Create Space, 2014.

  Hoschild, Arlie. The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. New York: Penguin, 2012.

  Hewett, Sylvia Ann. Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children. New York: Talk Miramax, 2002.

  Ireland, Mardy S. Reconceiving Women: Separating Motherhood from Female Identity. New York: Guilford Press, 1993.

  Jung, Courtney. Lactivism: How Feminists and Fundamentalists, Hippies and Yuppies and Physicians and Politicians Made Breastfeeding Big Business and Bad Policy. New York: Basic Books, 2015.

  Kramer, Wendy and Naomi Cahn. Finding Our Families: A First-of-Its-Kind Book for Donor Conceived People and Their Families. New York: Avery/Penguin, 2013.

  Morrow, Lance. “Wondering if Children Are Necessary.” Time Magazine, March 5, 1979.

  Ramsey, Patricia. Teaching and Learning in a Diverse World: Multicultural Education for Young Children. New York: Teachers College Press, 2011.

  Reddy, M.T. Crossing the Color Line: Race, Parenting and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.

  Richards, Sarah El
izabeth. Motherhood Rescheduled: The New Frontier of Egg Freezing and The Women Who Tried It. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013.

  Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

  Schulte, Brigid. Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2014.

  Senior, Jennifer. All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. New York: Ecco, 2014.

  Selvaratnam, Tanya. The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism, and the Reality of the Biolgoical Clock. Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2014.

  Spar, Debora L. The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2006.

  Tsigdinos, Pamela Mahoney. Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found. BookSurge Publishing, 2009.

  Valenti, Jessica. Why Have Kids? A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness. Boston: New Harvest, 2012.

  Van Ausdale, D. and J.R. Feagin. The First R.: How Children Learn Race and Racism. Landham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001.

  Zoll, Miriam. Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies: A Memoir. Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2013.

  Personal Growth

  Berne, Eric. Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. New York: Ballantine, 1973.

  Bowen, Murray. Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. New York: Jason Aronson, 1978.

  Brach, Tara. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of the Buddha. New York: Bantam, 2003.

  Bridges, William. Transitions: Making the Most of Life’s Changes. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2009.