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a sleepy newborn baby in a white singlet and nappy with their arms up by their head against a green and yellow background
Being cute is very expensive. (Image: Getty Images, design Tina Tiller).

SocietyAugust 15, 2023

The baby mania remains

a sleepy newborn baby in a white singlet and nappy with their arms up by their head against a green and yellow background
Being cute is very expensive. (Image: Getty Images, design Tina Tiller).

Some people strongly identify as parents long before they have children. Catherine Hart returns to discuss the intense longing of a ‘childless mother’.

I am not a mother. I’m not pregnant or close to being at the top of the sperm donor waiting list, but I desperately want to be a parent. It’s a craving that induces dreams of adorable cuddles with my toddler. It forces me to consider finding work around inflexible school hours. It’s persistent, and if I’m being totally honest, exhausting.

I’m not the only one who feels like this. I speak about it often. Years ago, I published an article about baby mania, and my social media was flooded with comments, mostly from friends who felt the same. More recently, a close friend confided she felt alone in her longing to be a mum, despite hearing me discuss it for years. Somehow it’s expected that all cisgender women possess some maternal instinct, but many of us don’t talk about it: what happens when it isn’t there, or what it feels like when what you wish for is out of reach.

During the pandemic, when my career in performing arts was reaching new levels of stress and heartache, I responded to a Facebook community post looking for childcare with a simple message: I’m not a nanny, but I love kids. The job was mine, and I gained the privilege of watching a baby grow into a toddler. I saw him fumble on his feet as he learned to walk. I giggled with him as he learned to talk. For a year he was one of my best friends, and now I miss hanging out with the little dude.

The second family I worked for saw me move into after-school care. One day, after I’d looked after her two young girls, their mother asked me if working with kids has put me off the idea of parenting. I told her it changed nothing. Nannying had become a way for me to learn how I want to parent and how I instinctively react to the struggles of helping tiny humans grow into autonomous beings.

I work with children between the ages of zero and 10, and I love all of them for different reasons. But they ask questions. They want to know if I’m married. If I have a boyfriend. A nine-year-old once asked me how you know when someone wants to kiss you. Sometimes, kids assume that I’m childless because I don’t have a husband.

I don’t need a man, or anyone else for that matter, to have a family. These young minds deserve to know that being happy can look a million different ways, so I tell them the truth: I don’t want to get married. Ever. If I’m in the mood, I explain that having a husband or partner is amazing if that’s what you want, but it’s just not for me. Slowly, they nod and pride fills me from the knowledge that I’ve added to their understanding of the world. 

I don’t like deep, intense relationships. In fact, emotions are pretty difficult to navigate at the best of times. It’s been 10 years since my last long-term “serious” relationship. Not long after that, through the queer community, I found polyamory; the ability to love and care for multiple people simultaneously. To me, polyamory is a celebration of honesty. It’s the best way I know to experience romance and intimate connections. 

There are so many different ways to be a mum (Photo: Witthaya Prasongsin/Getty Images)

It’s often assumed that dating multiple people belonging to various gender identities would make it easier to find someone interested in co-parenting. But those stereotypes don’t acknowledge that finding your person, or your people, is hard no matter your lifestyle. 

Part of being polyamorous is getting used to the question, “Won’t this all change when you meet the one?”, and if we’re being honest, maybe. I wouldn’t know. Recently, a stranger on a public forum told me I was a “relationship anarchist”, where someone rejects the idea of a traditional relationship, and that felt wrong too. I’m not opposed to relationships where they become your world, whether that’s monogamous, non-monogamous, or somewhere in between. It just hasn’t happened.

And part of being bisexual is understanding that many believe you have unlimited choices when it comes to dating. If only that wasn’t just a destructive stereotype. Sexuality doesn’t change your prospects or your personality. It is part of who you are. If I am a person who prefers to sit at home reading, that’s probably got more to do with my relationship status than the number of people I find attractive. 

I haven’t found that “one”, and like many cis women, I’ve been told my biological clock is ticking. At the end of 2020 I had an anti-müllerian hormone (AMH) test to see what my body was up to. The results were good, but not great. I have less than five years before my egg count gets much, much lower. No surprises.

It’s hard to reject ideas of gender expectations around parenthood, specifically the one where cisgendered women are told they need to get pregnant before the age of 35, when your body and science tell you it’s true. I never truly thought I would be any different from any other aspiring parent, but it still hurts.

A Single Parent by Choice (often referred to as Single Mother by Choice or SMC), is someone who has chosen to parent on their own. I wanted to do this before I knew the acronym. If I don’t have a partner, why can’t I have a baby? Films and TV suggest that a single parent is often someone hit by tragedy, but this isn’t the case for so many of us. 

As of this year, I am on the waitlist for donor sperm. In New Zealand, it depends on the clinic you’re with – it’s currently between two-and-a-half and three years through Fertility Associates, 21 and 24 months through Repromed, and 14 months with Fertility Plus. All of these times are based on certain criteria centred around reproductive health, meaning the next step is to have further testing done to make sure everything is in working order. But at $300 (through Fertility Associates) for an initial appointment, another few hundred for the tests, and an additional cost for a compulsory psychologist appointment, I haven’t been able to afford to continue down that path. 

Overall, the cost of going down the sperm donor route is between $5,000 and $15,000, depending on whether IVF is necessary and how many attempts are needed. For a future single parent, that is a huge amount of money that could otherwise be used on necessities once a child is born, like nappies or a toddler’s childcare (currently the New Zealand government pays for 20 hours a week of childcare only for those between the ages of three and five – in March next year it will extend to two-year-olds). 

The sperm donation route can be expensive and time-consuming. (Photo: Andrii Atanov/Getty Images)

In New Zealand, it is illegal to pay for sperm, and the number of donors is small (though the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill is looking to address this). This means that on top of the long waitlist and the expense, there’s little choice over the DNA used. There are also limitations that any donor can put on the recipient of their donation, and it is my honest fear that it could take longer because I’m not in a traditional partnership.

If someone has been trying for over a year to get pregnant (counted as 12 unsuccessful cycles), they can get publicly funded. But I’m pretty certain it doesn’t count as trying if the queer sex I’m having can’t result in pregnancy. Another option is to prove you have a medical complication that prevents you from becoming pregnant, such as severe endometriosis or blocked tubes, and I refuse to be the able-bodied person hoping for a physical obstacle just so I can receive funding.

I keep being asked, “Why don’t you do it the old-fashioned way?”, and the answer’s simple: I don’t want to co-parent with someone I don’t know. And I have to assume that any sperm provided the “old fashioned way” means someone wants to be involved. Of course, I know that’s not always true, but there’s no certainty either way. And if one of my friends was willing to donate sperm without wanting to co-parent, I hope I’ve given them the opportunity to bring that up. 

There is the option of going through social media. Facebook hosts a number of groups of New Zealanders looking for donors or to donate, but like with anything over the internet, there’s the added fear of scams or dodgy individuals. With something as sensitive as impregnation, the screening and security offered by the organisations mentioned above is certainly preferable, even with a wait time. 

Some have asked whether adoption is an option for me, but while living in Auckland this is unachievable. The cost of living is so high, there’s no way I can afford to live alone with a young child on my salary. Until I move away from the city, I can’t go too far down that road.

A few people have suggested I get a dog, and while that is a lovely idea, it isn’t the same. My dream is to raise a well-rounded individual, someone who is accepting and loving and makes the world a better place. Someone who defies expectations in their own way, and supports others doing the same. Dogs don’t need a parent to teach them how to do any of those things.

People ask questions of my journey because there are so many ways to do this, and while the default for so long has been with a cis man and woman, it is understood now, perhaps more than ever before, that a family doesn’t resemble a stock image. I can’t speak to the parenting journeys of others – that’s their story to tell – but a family can look however we want it to.

Would I still be going down the sperm donor route if I was in a relationship with a future co-parent? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t need to rely on another human to make my dreams happen. I can do this on my own, in my own way.

I am a childless mother. It’s an instinctual and primal urge that needs healthy channels to keep me going. If the future doesn’t include me giving birth, I accept that, genuinely and wholeheartedly. It doesn’t mean I can’t be involved in helping children learn and grow. It doesn’t mean I can’t talk about milestones or parenting philosophies. It just means my path looks different.

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Alice Neville
— Deputy editor
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(Image: Getty, additional design: Tina Tiller)
(Image: Getty, additional design: Tina Tiller)

SocietyAugust 15, 2023

‘There’s no rehab’: Two tales of rural drug use, and the barriers to help

(Image: Getty, additional design: Tina Tiller)
(Image: Getty, additional design: Tina Tiller)

Rural people who use drugs are a diverse group, but they face a lot of similar problems. Don Rowe investigates the barriers to seeking help experienced by users in isolated communities.

Small rural communities in New Zealand can sometimes feel like worlds of their own. The attitudes of the big cities don’t always track with opinions out in the regions. Day-to-day concerns in Murupara are very different to those in Mt Eden. And complex behaviours like drug use can create unique problems with difficult solutions. 

Isolation, poverty and a lack of care services mean users who run into trouble often struggle to find help, and lower numbers of police have implications for enforcement and community support. The drug of choice is different too: small rural towns like Ōpōtiki and Wairoa have the highest rate of methamphetamine use per person in the country, up to double the national average. 

Molly* grew up in West Auckland before moving to the Bay of Plenty, where she partied mainly in sheds and the occasional paddock. Sometimes a friend would have a “cool parent” who would let them drink inside. 

“At first it was just weed and bourbon, but the pills started coming in when I was 15 or 16,” she says. “It started with party pills that older siblings would buy but it moved into ecstasy pretty quickly after that. 

Let’s talk about drugs (Image: Tina Tiller)

“For a couple of years the quality of the pills seemed quite good, but then busts happened and the pills got quite nasty, smelling like chlorine and bleach. People turned against pills and you saw a lot more powder and various things masquerading as MDMA or just being sold as 2C-B. Powders were more trustworthy, supposedly.”

There was poor literacy around drugs, she says. In the city, there was a higher chance someone’s parents had used drugs and knew what to look out for. But in smaller rural towns, the drug of choice was a crate of beer, and there was no generational knowledge about harm potential.

“When meth came on the scene there wasn’t an older generation to give advice, just teenagers talking to each other. Nobody used Facebook or Snapchat. Young people in rural communities often aren’t reading the news either and their information mostly comes from each other. So there was no understanding of drug testing at all. 

“Because they weren’t touched in the same way by overdoses, these smaller communities have a false sense of security and basically they think they’re fine. A drug is a drug; if it gets me high, what’s the problem? If I’m laughing and giggling, it must be acid.”

Rural isolation meant that drug-driving was rife, she says. When there are no buses, taxis or parents to pick you up, users get behind the wheel, encouraged by the low chance of driving through a police checkpoint and fewer other drivers on the road. 

“You start to think, ‘The worst thing I can hit is a cow’, which obviously isn’t true.” 

Small rural communities also provide unique challenges when things go wrong. Word travels fast, and reputational problems quickly create big problems, Molly says.

“When meth became more prevalent, the stigma grew. If someone was using meth in a small town and everyone was talking about it, you didn’t want to be associated with them even if they’re your friends. Because then everyone in town thinks that you’re using meth too, and they’re not going to hire you on their farm, and you very quickly can become isolated. I associated with people who used meth and to some people there is still a black mark on my name in that town. And there’s not a lot of sympathy or help. What help could you even get to them? There’s no rehab.” 

(Image: Getty/Archi Banal)

A lack of comprehensive care in rural communities has long been recognised by academics. Geographic isolation, economies of scale, a lack of GPs and comparatively high levels of deprivation mean accessing rehabilitation and mental health support is difficult, particularly for Māori. Leslynn Jackson, project manager at Manaaki Tairāwhiti, says whānau face a wide range of obstacles in finding help when dealing with addiction.

“Accessing treatment out of the region comes with a huge cost, and I don’t mean financially. The cost of leaving your children behind if you don’t have a safe place for them to be cared for, the cost of moving out of your rental, the cost of not being available for shifts at work. There are a whole lot of reasons that people who want treatment can’t access it.”

Adding to these barriers is a lack of information about the availability of services, she says. Whānau living rurally don’t necessarily know what help is out there and struggle with their addictions in private. In other cases, services are siloed or culturally inappropriate.

Stigma towards drug use also affects Māori more than Pākehā, Molly says. Rural communities across New Zealand were decimated following the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 90s, and many whānau found their economic situation suddenly dire. Predominantly Pākehā farmers and landowners suffered less, and retained a level of wealth that insulated them from the harsher consequences of poverty like addiction. Whānau who deal with addiction can be ostracised and struggle to find employment.

“A Pākehā farmer in Galatea doesn’t want to employ a young Māori guy from Murupara because there are those horrible stereotypes around methamphetamine and getting ripped off. The farming world is so small and if you’re known as a drug user, everyone knows, and you can’t get employed. Now you’re on the dole, and all you have left to do is meth. People start doing whatever they have to do in order to get it. They steal loads of firewood and sell it in town, get a bag, and everyone knows who did it and why. Once you’re shunned, you’re shunned.” 

Image: Getty Images/Tina Tiller/The Spinoff

Rural addicts, Molly says, become increasingly isolated. There’s not a lot to do besides hunting and fishing, and boredom itself can create an aggravating factor in usage. 

“The boredom can get quite extreme. It contributes a lot to the mental health crisis that these communities experience. It also means that when you’re just trying to get a buzz, it doesn’t matter so much what the drug is, which is a dangerous place to be.”

Divides around race and class are common factors in attitudes to drug use in the rest of the country. Where a business analyst who snorts cocaine in the Viaduct just likes to party, the same behaviour in Kawerau is seen as delinquency. Sarah* grew up in Nelson and went to university in the North Island before living rurally to take up vineyard work. There were the usual party drugs at uni, and weed, booze and MDMA.

“I was never concerned,” she says. “It wasn’t until people started to bring meth to parties later on that I really got spooked. I knew we had a problem in New Zealand but I’d never known anybody who had ever taken it. But the way people think about drugs here is different.

“There are a lot of rich vineyard owners with kids in their 20s where I am, and there is a certain level of privilege. A large part of my job is driving tractors and operating machinery and using drugs is not something you’d like your boss to know about, but it’s an open secret and you know that if the company tested workers you’d lose half of your operators. It’s pushed under the rug.”

Now living and working near Blenheim, Sarah says people would be shocked at the amount of drugs moving through the “gateway between North and South”. Drugs like cocaine and MDMA flow outwards from the port, as well as methamphetamine and LSD. They’re all popular, but being known as a user has vastly different consequences.

“Drugs like cocaine don’t have the same stigma as methamphetamine. If your boss finds out you’re smoking weed or using cocaine it’s not going to be such a big deal as if you are smoking meth, even though there are a lot of real estate agents and other professionals who use methamphetamine. 

“Then if you don’t have a job, you’re more likely to get hooked. And if you can’t afford rehab or you don’t have access to rehab, it’s much more difficult to escape the lifestyle.”

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