By Paula Coston
 
I have five nephews and two nieces. But maybe I'm a bit slow: it's only in the last few years that I've realised in how many different ways we women can play the part of “aunt!” Even if, like me, we're also single, older and childless.
 
Today, 1-in-5 women in North America, Australasia, and the UK have had no biological children by the end of her fertile years. Yet society lags behind, parent-and-child-centric, obsessed with Motherhood and Apple Pie. Shame on us if we fail to deliver on that ideal – so a widespread mythology goes.
 
My novel, On the Far Side, There's a Boy, has just come out. Researching and writing it helped me to explore the role of aunt to the full. If a woman is childless, it had me asking, what other functions can she have?
 
In it, I tell the story of two women from different cultures. Martine, a feisty London woman, navigates her life from the 1980s to now uncertain about wanting motherhood, and about what kind of mother she'd choose to be. She juggles family relationships (sometimes troublesome), a fulfilling job, and a frantic social and dating life. This was typical of many young women in the 1970s and '80s, offered far more opportunities than the generations before us. No one should blame us for trying to embrace all those chances, even if at the expense of parenthood.
 
Anupama lives on the exotic Asian island of Sri Lanka. Also an aspirational woman, from a younger generation, she's uncertain about having a family for different reasons from Martine. Martine loves her mother but is distant from her in some ways; Anupama lives in a remote mountain village with her extended family, and her mother is sick. For these reasons, women's roles other than motherhood become important to them both.
 
In parts of Africa, families regard a father's sister as a kind of female father: she can discipline her brother's children, arrange her nephew's marriage and bar him from choosing an unacceptable mate. In Sri Lanka, aunts are termed “mothers.” “Senior mother” is the name for a father's older sister, again implying more status for aunts than in the west. Actually, any mature woman tends to be dubbed “auntie.” But then, most Asians value older generations, and close community groupings that spread beyond the nuclear family, more than our societies.
 
My story tells how Martine becomes penpal to Anupama's little brother through charitable giving: Martine's money from London goes to local community projects. I was a charity penpal to a child abroad myself. It can be a wonderful, aunt-like relationship, educational on both sides. I've kept “my” boy's letters, photos and drawings to this day. There are several international charities that operate this way.
 
My teenage Anupama is oppressed by her mother's sickness, the narrow outlook of her “senior and junior mother,” and a burden of family responsibility beyond her years. She longs for an empathetic, mentorly figure. She adores but envies her brother, wishing Martine was “hers.”  She begins confiding in the moon instead, having conversations with it and calling it “Auntie-Uncle,” her tribute to the special value of aunthood.
 
Luckily real women can be more active than the moon! Over the years I've become a godmother four times; as an alternative, while several women I know, friends of families of another religion or none, have been designated “special aunts”. (Some cultures seriously venerate godmotherhood. In Brazil, PANKs® – Professional Aunts No Kids – the term Savvy Auntie founder, Melanie Notkin dubbed in 2008 for childless women who are aunts or godmothers by relation, or by choice, to a child in their life, spend more on their godchildren than conventional aunts: 
 
My Martine doesn't become a godmother, but as her window onto motherhood recedes she gains two nieces and, like me, takes on the “standard” role of aunt, amazed by her sense of involvement:
 
“She'd dreaded … the holy family ... in a halo of happiness. She hadn't anticipated the baby handed to her, to herself painted into the picture.'
 
I soon realised how much I enjoyed my nieces' and nephews' company. I took them on outings, laughed with them, helped them with homework and exams. Now most are in their twenties, and that relationship has evolved into something new, but as special. One nephew and I have started letter-writing, spurning emails and Facebook (his suggestion!); the results are sometimes comic, sometimes moving and profound.
 
As Martine's fictional nieces grow up, she finds herself a useful confidante on delicate matters. I've become a kind of mentor too: to one niece, and a daughter, in her thirties, of an ex-business partner and friend. We meet for drinks, meals and trips out. We ask each other's advice across the generations: on work, family, relationships – and now in Charlotte's case, a wedding!
 
I'm blessed. Although single and without children of my own, I live in an extended family of a sort. Our “cohousing community” is a large group of neighbours who have designed the architecture of “home” to include our own private living spaces – flats and houses – but also gardens; a communal building with a dining room for us to share meals weekly if we want; a large party and meeting room; a games room; a DIY workshop, and more. Singles, families, couples, and less traditional households, we have fun together or apart. I love having so many children close at hand.
 
Martine and I have one other auntly experience in common. Occasionally I'm a “guardian” to an international student, here to study at a UK school for a semester or two, needing somewhere local to stay in her vacation. Some like to go out, to be active; but most prefer to stay in, to enjoy home cooking and hunker down with their tablets and TV in a cosier, more private space than their boarding dorm.
 
Martine considers doing the same. For all kinds of difficult reasons, though, she's uncertain about it. But you'll have to read On the Far Side, There's a Boy to discover if she follows through!
 
Paula Coston is a single, childless writer, blogger, and aunt, living in the beautiful English Cotswolds. She blogs about singledom, childlessness, aunthood, the older woman, and more at http://boywoman.wordpress.com, and also for The Huffington Post, TheNotMom and Life Without Baby. Her novel, On the Far Side, There's a Boy, which has been much acclaimed by other writers, including the Whitbread award-winning Jamila Gavin, whose book was staged on Broadway. Paula's novel is available in paperback and e-book from http://www.amazon.com/author/paulacoston.

Photo courtesy of Paula Coston
Published: July 21, 2014