There is something I have never felt comfortable saying out loud.

I never wanted to be a mother.

I knew that long before I ever became one. When I was younger and told friends as much, they thought I was joking. They told me I would change my mind. I didn’t. In university, I started getting serious with my first boyfriend. He told me he couldn’t have children, delivering the news as though he were disappointing me. I remember letting him believe that. Not because it was true, but because admitting I didn’t want children at all felt like something that would make him think less of me. So I stayed quiet.

And eventually, I followed the path most people follow without particularly questioning it. You meet someone. You marry. You have children. My husband and I did the same. Years later, when I brought it up, he looked at me and said, “Then why did we?” Neither of us had a satisfying answer. We did what we thought we were supposed to do, and we did not stop to ask whether we actually wanted to.

When I became pregnant, I wasn’t excited. There was no overwhelming sense of anticipation, no emotional moment when everything shifted. I knew then what I had always known.

After she was born, I loved her. That was never in question. But the role itself never felt natural. I took care of her. I kept her fed and safe and attended to. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I did it willingly, because she was mine and I loved her. But I am not a hugger. I was the one who, when she came to me with some minor injury, would ask, “Are you bleeding?” She would say no. I would say, “Then you’re fine.” I avoided field trips when I could. I didn’t photograph every occasion. I didn’t get emotional when she started school or left for university. Those moments never felt like losses. They felt like things moving forward, as they ought to.

When she has been ill or needed looking after, I have done it. But I will not pretend it doesn’t exhaust me in a way that other things don’t. Being needed in that particular way has always felt like work. I don’t think that makes me monstrous. I think it makes me honest.

I have never been one of those people who goes soft at the sight of a baby. I don’t feel the pull to hold them or coo over them. I can acknowledge that a baby exists, offer my congratulations, and move along quite contentedly. It is not that I wish them any ill. I simply don’t feel the need to perform an enthusiasm I don’t have. When we were attending church, I quietly asked not to be put in the nursery. It seemed the honest thing to do for everyone involved.

What I have come to understand, over time, is that loving your child and wanting motherhood are not the same thing. They are quite separate. I love my daughter. That has never been in question. But I did not want the role, and no amount of time or tenderness has changed that fundamental truth.

What I do want, and what I find I am beginning to have, is something that feels less like motherhood and more like friendship. She came home recently to vote. We drove across town together, talking about the candidates, what we liked, what we didn’t. No drama, no weight. Just easy conversation between two people who happen to know each other rather well. That is the relationship I was always hoping we would find our way to. One where she knows she can bring me her troubles if she truly needs to, but where most of the time we simply enjoy each other’s company without the machinery of mother and child getting in the way.

I never wanted to be a mum. That has always been true, and it remains true now.

But I find I quite like the person my daughter has become. And I think she might feel the same about me.

— Kate