Educational Media Reviews Online

In the introduction to the film A Life Outside Convention, Jeanne Safer discusses the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s that has enabled women to do many things that they were previously unable to do. However, although many gender roles have changed, motherhood is still seen as a necessary role for women. Safer claims that if a woman chooses not to be a mother, she “steps outside the mainstream forever.”

This film relies on the findings of Safer, who interviewed childless women for her 1996 book, Beyond Motherhood. The director Renee McCormick alternates between Safer’s discussions of her findings, illustrative interviews with three of Safer’s women who have made the choice not to have children, and short “person on the street” interviews of New Yorkers. Although these last set of interviews show just how much ambivalence there is about women and motherhood, and reinforce Safer’s findings, sometimes they make the film slightly more disjointed than it could have been, stuck between the more academic discussions in awkward places, and coming predominantly towards the end of the film.

Safer found that these women who had chosen to not have children had lives that were “built on passionate pursuits.” Molly Peacock is a poet who writes, teaches and mentors, and holds positions in national organizations. Carol Bronte is a midwife who makes doctors take midwives seriously. Jane Welzel is a champion runner, track coach, and a counselor. They all wanted to pursue their careers rather than spend their passionate energy in raising children. Part of the reason that these women were enabled to make this choice is that they were the first generation of women to have such a choice. Beyond such a generational effect, Safer found through her interviews that these women had childhoods in which they were free to do many different things, and were not held to traditional “girlhood” standards. In addition, some had female role models who were also living passionate, childless lives. Others learned from their mothers and other female relatives how much energy it took to be a mother, and decided against motherhood for that reason.

However, not being a mother does not mean that these women did not mother. Safer saw mothering in aspects of Molly, Carol and Jane’s work. For example, Jane’s coaching and counseling, and Molly’s mentoring of young poets - several of them for years - are certainly mothering relationships. But like nieces and nephews, these mothering relationships are not true motherhood. For Molly, there is still the home to come back to without anyone to mother, which contains the “inviolate sense of solitude out of which I can create.”

Although Molly, Carol and Jane had absolutely no regrets about having chosen not to be mothers, the interviews with people on the street clearly expressed the ambivalence that our culture still has with women as mothers. Some people thought it was unnatural for women not to want to be mothers. Others were uneasy but allowed that some women might not have to be mothers. Still others thought it quite natural that a woman could and would make a choice to become a mother or not.

There are some questions that arise from A Life Outside Convention. It seems to reinforce the social fact that women cannot have passionate careers and be mothers as well. It is very interesting in showing why certain may choose not to be mothers, but in places it seems to assume a choice of one or the other. However, as a person on the street and Safer point out, one large factor is the father’s role; until fathers became more involved in raising children, women may be more likely to choose not to be mothers now that they have this choice. In addition, Safer claims that couples without children last longer, are more egalitarian, and are “tremendously close” in comparison to couples with children. Is this anecdotal information, or based on more in-depth research? Despite these deeper questions, this film is recommended for the very fact that it does show that women can have fulfilling lives without having children. It is especially recommended for libraries that hold Safer’s book, Beyond Motherhood.

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1. Safer, Jeanne. Beyond Motherhood: Choosing a Life Without Children. New York: Pocket Books, 1996.