Orna Donath, sociologist and author of the book “Regretting motherhood,” translated into sixteen languages and countries, meets Lunàdigas in 2023 and talks about the origins of her research, her personal positioning with respect to parental choice, and the projects she is carrying out in Israel to foster women’s processes of self-determination. Today, she is investigating the condition in old age of women who have made the choice not to be mothers.

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ORNA DONATH: «My name is Orna Donath,I’m 47 years old, I’m a doctor of sociology and for the last 20 years I’ve been studying and like turning every stone and everything that I can in this field of motherhood and non-motherhood.
I started in 2003, I’m a sociologist and I needed to find a topic to write my thesis, my MA thesis, when I wanted to graduate from the studies. And I remember a certain place when I walked in Tel Aviv University, I walked there and I thought: “I must write my thesis about not wanting to be parents”.
In 2003, I thought that I was the only one in Israel who didn’t want to be a parent, because the Internet just began, there was no Facebook, there was nothing online. And when I grew up, I like turned left, I turned right and everybody were parents, I didn’t see someone like me and I thought I was the only one in Israel. So, I told myself I need to write about this. At this point, I didn’t realize yet that nothing was written yet about it in Israel. Only when I began going to the library and trying to find something in Hebrew, I learned that many things were written in different other countries, already in the 70s and also now I know from the beginning of the century.
I’m writing now my third book and now I have better resources because everything is online and I find things from the beginning of the 20th century about people who don’t want to be parents. But then in 2003, I thought it began in the 70s, their writings about it. And I wrote my thesis, I started interviewing people here in Israel, men and women who don’t want to be parents. It was very hard at the beginning to find people because I approached, I heard… and people told me that they didn’t want to talk about it. But finally, I did talk, and there was only, I think 8 months after I started my study, the first online forum was instituted here in Israel for people who don’t want to be parents. So, this was another research method for me. I was there all the time like refresh, refresh and seeing everything that was written there. They also created face to face meetings for people. And then in 2008, the study ended and it was also published as the first book about it here in Israel. I was 34 years old when it was published.
And then… For me, I was still very curious about everything. I heard a lot of times when I conducted the study, this certain promise to people who don’t want to be parents and especially to women who don’t want to be mothers: “You will surely regret it”. So, when I needed to find another topic for my PhD studies, I wanted to learn more about this, what I saw as a political usage of emotion, in order to align us into the right path. And my PhD was about… well, it started really wide and then it got narrowed. I wanted to study about the triangle of regret: parenthood and non-parenthood and society. What is the relationship between them? And I interviewed 23 mothers who regret having children and also 10 fathers who regret having children, but this did not go into the study because it was too wide. Even though I narrowed it, it was too wide. Only later on, I learned that it was the first study I think in the world about mothers who are saying: “For me it was a mistake”. It was published in 16 languages and countries and when I ended my PHD I thought: What else? What more are we missing here? What more are we not talking about in this field, in this area?
My postdoctoral studies were about the uncertainty of women, whether to become mothers or not. And I have started moderating groups for women. I’m still doing it each year since 2015, already eight groups each year. We are meeting for 10 weeks and we are talking about their uncertainty, whether to become mothers or not. They are saying, these women, that they don’t have places that they can really talk about not knowing. And also, their saying, I don’t know, we are not used to it in our capitalist society, we all the time need to have like a goal and to run for it and conquer it and then move to the next one. And I’m in favour of this, like, stopping deliberately, and saying also. I don’t know. But society really wants us to not think about it and just jump into it. And here we are giving respect in these groups, giving respect to the uncertainty. And… Each time 12 women are participating in these groups and we are just sitting and talking. And even though for me I know my decision, I don’t have a propaganda there, I don’t have an agenda there. It’s not for me to decide for other people, otherwise I will be exactly like pro-natal societies and patriarchy. And, my agenda is just to create a circle of women who are talking. This is my agenda. And from there on, they are doing whatever they want: becoming mothers, some of them did become mothers, some of them understood that they don’t want and others are still uncertain.
And that’s, yeah, for me, it’s really logic not to know. And what else?
Now I’m writing my next book, as I said, about elderly women here in Israel who did not become mothers. I interviewed 25 women from the age of 60 to 86, these are women… This is how I like it, when I published a call for this study, I just said I want to talk to elderly women who could have become mothers and they didn’t. And I didn’t specify anything,
I didn’t want to give the reason. Just that they could, biologically, health-wise, they could,
but they didn’t. And now I’m writing this book. For me, it’s a life project, it’s the continuation of this life project and it’s a kind of like the second part of my first book, because so many younger women are afraid, or are being frightened by society about the future and old age. And, as usual, I wanted to go to flesh and blood women, and to listen to them and see what they have to say about it. And it’s not everything… I’m not idealizing it, but it’s not like the stigma.
My studies are qualitative, not quantitative. I don’t even have a sample. I just like… I publish a call, and women approach me and then I’m heading to talk to them. I just, I didn’t want to interview women under the age of 60, because it’s about getting old. And I just have like few questions that I know I want to ask and from there on it’s like a conversation. And one of the things I want to write about in this book, and it was one of the questions that were important to me, it’s about wills. To whom are you living things? And to think about this kind of continuation, when you don’t have a biological continuation. I wanted to see if they plan to leave it to their flesh and blood connections, or to organizations.
It says it’s also political thing to who do you leave your things, things that you are going to leave behind. So yeah, I’m still writing it, I’m just at the beginning of writing. I’m in front of a mountain of things to read and to think about, and I hope that in the next two years it will be published.
I teach at several universities and colleges here in Israel. Different kind of courses, like sociology and anthropology of the body and politics of silence and speech and also a course about my studies, about like social perceptions of motherhood and non-motherhood. I teach it many times and in many places here in Israel. And an additional thing is the group, which I moderate it only once a year because I don’t have enough time. I teach 15 courses along the year, so I don’t have enough time. And I’m renting a really nice studio here and once a week for 10 weeks for two hours each week we are meeting and we are sitting on very colourful pillows and we sit and we talk. And I have like certain stations that I think we should go through. For example, two of the meetings I’m dedicating to talking about regret, because I think we need to like… deconstruct it, because there is a lot of fear about regret. If you want to really deliberate your way, I think we should really look into this… also, this political usage of regret. So, we are going through several stations in this group, but it’s very open, they can speak. The groups of women, not only women, but in this case women, the groups have a lot of power. They’re really a source of strength for many people who feel alone with their emotions and thoughts. They can sit, and so many times they are coming and they’re saying, “Wow, it’s really special for me to see that you are normal”. And the thing is that the one who is saying it, she is uncertain and she’s not a mother, and she still thinks that maybe all the others will be kind of monsters, or strange, or I don’t know. And to sit there and to see so many bright and clever, and you know, funny women who are just talking. It’s… it gives them a lot. It’s very special for me to witness it and to be there and to create this kind of space each year.
In a way like it is as if I’m writing now my next chapter in life. I’m 47, and it’s considered to be… not too… it’s like somewhere in the middle, and I’m starting to think about the future.
Until now, and it’s already like 31 years that I know that I’m not going to be a mother, nothing was…yeah… I was never worried about the future. I’m not worried now as well, but I do think about the future. And… I’m really looking forward to it, because I think that these are the best years now. The best years are yet to come, as I see it, because I’m getting closer and closer and closer to myself, like I’m more accurate to myself on how to live my life. And I’m less afraid of… of certain things. And this closeness to myself helps me to be in the world. So, for me, I’m really looking forward. It’s getting in this manner, in this sense, it’s getting better. And being at peace with myself, with the body, with relationships, with the family, with my friends. Friendship is so important here in this story. So… Yeah, now I’m crying as well. Yeah. And… For me, and it’s not… it’s for a reason I asked the women about what they’re going to leave behind, because for me, I know that I am going to leave things to organizations that are important to me. I’m a political woman, I’m a feminist and a political woman. and I would like that my death, or the things after my death will be in connection to my life. So, I will leave things to my nieces, but I will also leave things to… For these past 20 years, I’ve been volunteering in one of the Rape Crisis centers here in Israel, in different roles there. So, for me, it’s obvious that I’m going to leave money for them, in order for them to be able to continue. And to another organization that here in Israel is really important and they are making a really good important job for women who are poor and don’t have… like safety in their residence where they live, and they are doing a really important work and I would like them to have. And to one of my friends that I think that maybe she will need it.
So… I’m starting to think about it and I guess that in a few… like quite soon, I will write my will. Yeah. You can never know what will happen and I want this to be documented and organized.
So, first I will say that religion has no role in my family, we are secular and… No, for us, no.
My parents… I said it in my family that I would not be a mother and I would not get married already when I was 16. I think I was kind of naive, I didn’t understand the social meaning of it. For me, it was not a problem, it didn’t seem as a problem, I just said it. I put it up front from a very young age and quite soon and quite fast I understood that it’s considered to be a problem that should be solved. For me, I never saw it as a problem. It was logic that we are different, some of us want to be mother, I have a sister, an older sister, she’s a mother of three. I don’t want to be. And what is the problem? What is the fuss about? So, I said it, but I think my family thought that it is a phase, that when I will get older, everything will be all right. I will get married; I will have children. So, they didn’t really take it seriously. But when my book was published and I was 34, and at the introduction I wrote several words about myself, personal, I think there they realized that I was…serious about it.

They are a bit sad because they liked and still like to being parents and also grandparents and they love me and they want me to experience something that was really good for them. So, they are sad that I will not experience it. They are sad that they will not have a more a larger family, because of my decision. But they never ever pressured me. Never. I really appreciate their way of holding it because I think it’s logic for me that they are sad. I don’t blame them for being sad. When parents bring children into the world, they have dreams for them. And I can understand they had dreams for me, but they are treating me in a very respectful way by understanding I am a separated human being. So, if I want people to respect my decisions and my feelings, of course I have to respect theirs. So, it’s sad for me that they’re sad but I can understand it and till the rest of my life I will really appreciate that they never pressured me and never made me feel bad or as if I’m less than my sister. So, and this is not a thing that we are talking on a daily basis or not even in family gatherings. It’s already a matter of fact.
Here in Israel, the average birth rate is 3.1, it’s the highest in the OECD countries. And also in secular families now three is like the old two. Now it’s really normative to have three children. It’s like… you’re being judged and blamed of… making damage to the child if you have only one, like psychologically, socially, mentally. And it’s absurd because there are cultures within which one child is the norm. But here it’s not good enough. Also the history, certain history of Israel with the Holocaust and the wars and the terror and everything here. Giving birth is really meaningful here in Israel and we are also a very familial society.
But having said that, I met and heard so many women from different countries, also in Germany, in the United States, who are experiencing quite the same. It’s quite the same.
I think the difference here, yes, we have the history and the religion and everything, but the main thing is that here in Israel, we tend to say things up front, like in your face. People can ask you, even when they don’t know you, they ask you and maybe to put pressure on you on having children. So, I think this is one of the characteristics of this society that tend to be different because I met young women from Germany and Norway and Italy and Spain who are saying things that are quite the same as we are saying here in Israel.
I went to a conference in Oslo in Norway, it was I think 5 or 6 years ago, and the researcher who invited me to come, when she invited me, she wrote me, “Here in Norway we have pressures quite the same as you have in Israel. Here we are being blamed for a different thing. People are saying we gave you everything: equal rights… like the birth vacation and everything, so you don’t have any excuse not to become a mother. So, if it’s not from here, it’s from there. If it’s not from here, it’s from there. Just it’s quite the same.
I think there is no country that is not speaking in this language of national reason, from national reasons, because higher birth rates are considered to be really the strength of the nation, like politically, economically, the military, geographically, everything. So, this connection of power and higher birth rates is all around the globe.
It’s interesting, when I wrote my first book, I wanted to find a word in Hebrew. There was not a word in Hebrew like child free or like childless. And I wanted to find a word because language is political and when you find a word, you create space and you help the imagination. So, I turned to the “community”, the online community, and asked their help to find a word, the translation of childfree. And I wanted something that the children are not in the middle that it’s not against. Like you have vegan, vegetarian and carnivore, you have different words that are not… in relation to something else, they are standing on their own.
And it was a very vivid discussion, it went on for two or three days, hundreds of suggestions.
And it was funny and it was really a live discussion. And then I created another discussion
to vote for the best word that they can think about. Of course, not everybody agreed with everybody. And the word that was chosen it was alhori, that’s for men and alhorit for a woman. It’s like non mother or no, non-parent, but in Hebrew it’s gendered, so it’s alhori for men and alhorit for a woman. And I included in my book this whole discussion about terminology and language. I thought it was really important. So, the first word in Hebrew was created for my book, not by me, but in favour of my book. And these days there are groups on Facebook that are including this term. I wrote it in my book, but since then for me I’m not using it to describe myself, I still I prefer to say, “I’m willingly non-mother”. Yeah, and in Hebrew it is… I don’t want to be a mother.»

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