AIBU to be surprised that Katy Carr (well, Worthington I suppose) never had children?

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

I suppose Ned kept disappearing off, but still... She'd been married for about eight years by the end of In the High Valley and Clover and Elsie both had children. They keep saying how much she loves children so I'm surprised she didn't have any, or wasn't unhappy because of it.

Actually there are far fewer children than I'd expect - Rose Red only had the one, so did Mrs Ashe and Clover and Elsie do too (although they might have more later). I'm just contrasting that to Anne of Green Gables who had about seven in eight years!

I'm having a re-read and really enjoying it

Maybe she found sex difficult after her back injury!

I don't think Susan Coolidge had children, did she? She apparently based Katy on herself, so she didn't want to give Katy children when she didn't have any herself. Like Jilly Cooper making Taggie unable to have children and decide to adopt, as she herself did.

School of Pain poem does make me weep a little.

I always assumed it was because she couldn't or maybe his shore leave was just never long enough to make sure things happened...

Ah you're right Irene, and that makes sense. From a quick google she never married, so it's slightly different.

It just seemed odd that it just wasn't mentioned in any way (even a "due to her accident she couldn't" or "even though nothing had happened she hoped"). I don't really remember noticing before, but it stuck out on this read.

It would probably have been considered indelicate to mention it in a children's book though!

I always thought it unusual (as an adult reading) as practically, you'd expect large families (and they came from a large one themselves)

Some mention of "not blessed yet" may have done (as really I don't think there was a concept of "don't want kids so won't have sex" in those days, they just would have remaining a maiden aunt!

I thought i’d reanimate this zombie as i’ve only just discovered the fourth and fifth “Katy” books exist and read them - and I thought exactly the same.

At the very end there’s a teaser where clover asks Katy if she’s got better looking or just fatter - but no, she’s just gotten a bit fatter!

I was also a bit disturbed by Phil saying he’d had his eye on Amy Ashe since she was a little girl. Somehow that romantic hint comes across as being a great deal creepier than it would have been intended to be!

I didn't know there were more, I just read the original three. I'm going to track them down now, although some of the original were a bit syrupy at times! I'm not surprised about Katy, all those years of running the household and being confined, wouldn't it make sense that she would want a degree of freedom? I don't know much about Coolidge, but there is a slight feminist tinge to the work, so maybe that's part of it. The idea that women could be more independent? Although I can't really comment as haven't read them yet.

You can download them for free now as more than 100 years old.
I don't imagine that feminism played a big part, was there effective contraception in those days? Basically if she was Sleeping with ned she'd have got pregnant unless there were issues. But it wouldn't have been a conscious choice not to have kids.

I love Clover and In the High valley much more than the original three. I’m fascinated by the lifestyle out west! Too much poetry in the first ones for me

I’m half planning a visit to the area...

I thought this. In 'What Katy Did Next' there's a long piece about Katy having a special gift with children. I wondered if she was unable to, and that's why she was so loving to other children she met. I'm not sure why her childhood injuries would have stopped her, though. She seems to be fully mobile and recovered by the time she is an adult.

The other possibility is that her life with Ned was too unsettled at the point in her life the books were set - she seemed to be moving about a lot!

Burnout It seems that women's reproductive choices had improved by late 19th century so restricting children or, for some childlessness, was possible without that automatically assuming infertility. Apparently women at the beginning of the 19th century averaged 8 children, by the end 3 children because of a growth in understanding how fertility worked and how to curb it.

However with Coolidge's work if the character Katy is based on her, and she was childless, then it makes sense the character would be too? It does sound as if, given that fiction can fulfil fantasies, that children weren't a major fantasy to be fulfilled by giving Coolidge's fictional alter-ego children. Since Katy's a character not a real person I don't personally think speculating on her being infertile is worth it, as if Coolidge had wanted the character to have children she could easily have chosen to write them in.