The reward for parenthood is grandchildren, it’s alleged. The chance to love and spoil your children’s children, but without having to take on the same level of responsibility or sleep deprivation.
For many parents, becoming a grandparent, one day, is presumed. But what about when it isn’t likely to happen?
Whether by choice or circumstance, recognising that you may never know the joy of having grandchildren can be a difficult thing for some people to accept. And an even harder thing for others to admit.
Sorcha is deeply saddened by the knowledge she will never be a grandmother. “I always assumed I’d have kids, and by extension grandkids. You always assume it’s going to happen to you.
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“I have only one child and she is severely physically and intellectually disabled. She wouldn’t understand pregnancy. I don’t know how her body would cope with a pregnancy. And also she could never consent to sex.”
Her husband was married before and has other children from his previous marriage, and she admits to finding it difficult that he now has grandchildren and she doesn’t. “It was really hard. The worst day was when his eldest [child] rang him to say, ‘You’re going to be a grandad.’
While she and her husband always knew they would never have grandchildren together, it was an “abstract” thing, she explains, until the day of that call.
“I was delighted for them, and I was thrilled for my husband. But at the same time I was absolutely heartbroken for myself ... In that minute I just thought, I’m never going to get that call telling me, ‘You’re going to be a granny.’ I remember being very, very tearful and I know it took a while for my husband to twig.”
Sorcha has a big interest in history, and family history, and knowing that her “chain” stops with her daughter makes her feel sad. “Quite a number of my friends now have grandchildren of varying ages. This is something my husband doesn’t experience and can’t really share with me. While he listens to me, ad nauseam at times, he doesn’t have that experience because they are his grandbabies.”
Sorcha says she’s very conscious that her husband’s grandchildren already have a grandmother: “What am I, a step-grandmother? That’s not really something that rolls off the tongue. Every time a friend announces, ‘Well there’s now a grandbaby coming,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s fabulous, that’s wonderful’ – but I have to take those few minutes to just go, ‘That’s not going to be my reality. That’s never going to happen to me.’”
Sorcha remembers seeing a plaque for sale in a shop that really upset her. It read, “‘Only the best mums get promoted to grannies,’ and I actually burst into tears,” she says.
“One of the things that hit me was, do they think that being a mum wasn’t fun, or being a parent isn’t nice?” Lisa says sadly of one adult child who has already stated that she doesn’t want any children. Her other adult child, she explains, is likely to encounter fertility problems due to a health condition.
“A lot of my friends are becoming grandparents for the first time. My cousins are already grandparents. And I’m the oldest,” she says.
Knowing she is unlikely to become a grandmother has left her feeling stunned. It’s a feeling “I never thought I’d be feeling”, she continues. Motherhood “is the best thing I ever did. So I couldn’t imagine someone skipping it”.
Lisa fears she’ll miss out on “the family and togetherness” that she believes having grandchildren would bring. “My kids’ relationships with their grandparents has been good,” she says, explaining how, even though they’re adults now, they continue to stay in regular contact.
She worries too about impending loneliness as her friends become busy and more involved with their grandchildren. A loneliness that she says is reminiscent of when children finish at school and many of the “mum friends” friendships fall away.
Emily says she is certain her daughter will never have children as she lives with the trauma of a sexual assault. “She doesn’t go into crowds. She doesn’t go out at night on her own. You will never see her wear a skirt above her knee,” she says, explaining some of the lingering effects the assault has had on her daughter. “She’s had a few relationships ... they don’t normally last.”
Although her daughter has a partner at the moment, Emily reiterates that she doesn’t see her ever having kids. “She wouldn’t even go for a smear test. She won’t have anybody touch her that she doesn’t know and trust.”
Some years have passed since the assault, Emily says, explaining the passing of time makes her more certain she won’t become a grandmother. It makes her sad because her daughter “absolutely loves kids. And I know she’d love having small kids”.
Emily says she would have loved to be a grandmother. She has another child who is unlikely to become a parent, either, because of additional needs. Emily has become acutely aware recently of the role she probably won’t ever experience. “I’ve noticed me spotting lovely cute [little] clothes in Dunnes or Penneys and thinking, ‘I’ve nobody to buy them for.’”
She struggles with the fact that the person who assaulted her daughter has “forgotten he ever did it, and she’s left with it. That’s the hard thing and I’m quite bitter about the fact that [the person] got away with it”.
Being a grandparent allows for a different source of connection and bond than we have with our own children
— Cara Byrne, psychotherapist
Kathleen is a bereaved mother. Her living child recently told her that he didn’t want to have any children. He’s still young, but the announcement floored Kathleen, who is very distressed at the thought she may never become a grandmother.
“I’ve been crying all day and all night,” she says, since she heard, and feels “devastated”. “He’s it,” she says, describing how her son is her only chance to have a grandchild. “I lay in bed last night thinking, ‘When I die ... nobody is going to come to see our grave, to tell our story, to pass it down to the generations, like I have done when my mum died.’”
She’s sad at the idea of having no further family to pass heirlooms and family photos to. “The connectedness of family and ancestors and ... the importance of the generations” matters hugely to her, she explains. She worries her son may not change his mind about having children, as his girlfriend is equally adamant that she doesn’t want children either.
Kathleen says she was looking forward to “everything” about having grandchildren. “The sense of ... him experiencing the love of being a father, being a parent, that I was blessed to experience.”
Kathleen explains she had multiple miscarriages and had to have “fertility treatments” to have her two children.
“Then I lost one. And one doesn’t want to supposedly at this stage have kids. I want to be able to tell my grandkids stories about my parents, my great grandparents, where they came from, their heritage. Teach them things. Show them things. Nurture them.
“Love them,” she adds, sadly.
“Being a grandparent allows for a different source of connection and bond than we have with our own children, because when our kids are young we’re so busy, especially if both parents are working, that we miss out on a huge amount of quality time,” says psychotherapist Cara Byrne.
Byrne says it’s normal for people to feel disappointed in the knowledge that they won’t become grandparents. “For the majority of people, when you have children you expect them to do the same. It’s a life stage that if you don’t get to experience you may feel a sense of loss.
“It’s also very difficult if all your peers are grandparents because it’s such a distinct identity and you may feel very disconnected in that, especially when it’s the time of year that everyone’s going to Communions or Confirmations and you’re not going to these things because you don’t have grandchildren to celebrate.”
Continuing your “genetic legacy” and wanting your name to be carried forward can be a “huge factor”, she says. “So you would expect a sense of disappointment or loss associated with that also.
“Some people may take it as an indication that their children don’t wish to repeat the life they experienced,” or, “that them not having kids of their own represents their discontentment with their own childhood”.
In trying to deal with the upset that people may experience, Byrne recommends trying to “understand where that deep disappointment is coming from” and “what your unmet expectations are from this decision that your child has made, or has been forced to make”.
Understanding the sense of loss means “we can give ourselves the compassion to get over it”, she says.
It’s important to recognise that “you raise your children to make decisions for themselves, and that this is their decision and it isn’t about you. It’s about what’s right for them in their life and that their ability to make those hard choices is because of the lessons you taught them. And that if you want them to be happy, it’s important to respect their decisions even when you don’t agree with them.
“If you’re really struggling with it, then talk to a therapist about it. However you feel is absolutely fine and valid, but if you’re going to get stuck on this idea of disappointment or it’s going to change into a bitterness towards your child for feeling robbed of this experience, then it’s really important to work through that.”
