This was me when I was about 4 years old. I sometimes wonder if I had been able to have my own genetic child if he or she would have looked like me when I was little....
Ever since I learnt that I would probably never have my own genetic child, I have closely observed relatives, friends and even strangers in the supermarket to detect which physical characteristics or traits people have inherited from their parents. I am altogether fascinated by it these days. We all take for granted the little clues and symbols of belonging that we are born with - those things that connect us with our parents, the people we love most in the world. It is part of a person's unconscious expectation that their children, being born from them, will look, sound and act like them. I have my father's eyes and legs and knobbly knees and sneeze the same way as him and my nose, chin, face, voice and general body shape is very like my mothers'. As an adult I look very like my mother. My personal circumstances made the yearning for a genetic connection with my parents especially intense. My parents separated when I was 11, after which I had a disjointed relationship with my father for many years (prior to that I was a bit of a 'Daddy's girl') and then in my 20s my mother died at a relatively young age from cancer. Hence the longing to have a child that connected me with both of them.
As a child, I was fascinated by stories of my dead grandfather; small details such as hearing of his love of listening to opera singer Joseph Schmidt on old LPs. And stories of my great- grandmother, his mother, who was a nurse and mid-wife and delivered all the babies in the local district (and saved the life of a woman haemorrhaging during childbirth). On my mother's side, I learnt about a great grandfather who emigrated from Paisley in Scotland to Queensland, only to die back in Europe in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. I threw myself into school projects on ancestry and was eager to seize upon any scrap of information that added to my family tree. I pondered particular family characteristics, speculating that some of them were passed down to subsequent generations, such as a stubborn streak or a pioneering feminist spirit. I poured over photographs of my parents from their working holiday to London in the Swinging 1960s. This is the mythology of my life and I had formed a narrative in my head; added my own set of individual stories (and took numerous photographs) in anticipation of passing it all on to my own children (completely overlooking the fact that a biological child might not have the slightest bit of interest in all this sentimental schloss). But if I could not have my own genetic child, what was the point in learning any of this, of carefully assembling photo albums and keeping careful notes of family trees and interesting anecdotes?
I desperately wanted a child that was part of my family, part of both my mother and my father and part of me. I think I have mostly, and with no small degree of pain and grief, worked through these strong emotions many years later and concluded that the desire to have a genetic child, more than wanting a connection with my past and my family, is actually rather narcissistic. It is a form of self-fixation, a quest for immortality (because by producing genetic offspring there is a sense of defeating death and having a little part of yourself live on).... It is egomania in many respects.... I ask myself, what is more important to you? Cloning a little version of yourself to show off to the world or being a mother and parenting a child? Motherhood is bigger than genetics...... and it is motherhood that matters to me most. And finally, I suspect (I hope) that my child will be just as interested in hearing my family stories recounted to them as I was as a child, because those stories are part of me and by being part of me, they too will become part of my child, shape its personality and outlook and form part of their inheritance from me, their mother.
As a child, I was fascinated by stories of my dead grandfather; small details such as hearing of his love of listening to opera singer Joseph Schmidt on old LPs. And stories of my great- grandmother, his mother, who was a nurse and mid-wife and delivered all the babies in the local district (and saved the life of a woman haemorrhaging during childbirth). On my mother's side, I learnt about a great grandfather who emigrated from Paisley in Scotland to Queensland, only to die back in Europe in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. I threw myself into school projects on ancestry and was eager to seize upon any scrap of information that added to my family tree. I pondered particular family characteristics, speculating that some of them were passed down to subsequent generations, such as a stubborn streak or a pioneering feminist spirit. I poured over photographs of my parents from their working holiday to London in the Swinging 1960s. This is the mythology of my life and I had formed a narrative in my head; added my own set of individual stories (and took numerous photographs) in anticipation of passing it all on to my own children (completely overlooking the fact that a biological child might not have the slightest bit of interest in all this sentimental schloss). But if I could not have my own genetic child, what was the point in learning any of this, of carefully assembling photo albums and keeping careful notes of family trees and interesting anecdotes?
I desperately wanted a child that was part of my family, part of both my mother and my father and part of me. I think I have mostly, and with no small degree of pain and grief, worked through these strong emotions many years later and concluded that the desire to have a genetic child, more than wanting a connection with my past and my family, is actually rather narcissistic. It is a form of self-fixation, a quest for immortality (because by producing genetic offspring there is a sense of defeating death and having a little part of yourself live on).... It is egomania in many respects.... I ask myself, what is more important to you? Cloning a little version of yourself to show off to the world or being a mother and parenting a child? Motherhood is bigger than genetics...... and it is motherhood that matters to me most. And finally, I suspect (I hope) that my child will be just as interested in hearing my family stories recounted to them as I was as a child, because those stories are part of me and by being part of me, they too will become part of my child, shape its personality and outlook and form part of their inheritance from me, their mother.
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