I find it fascinating that people who choose not to have children are generally assumed to feel really strongly about not having children (or even to feel really strongly against children, anyone’s children, in general). I am probably not going to have children, not because I REALLY REALLY HATE the idea of having children, but because I don’t really really love it. Out of all the major decisions I will make in my life, this one is the only irreversible one. I can sell a house, quit a job, divorce a spouse, whatever. I cannot unhave a child. I cannot opt out of being a parent once I become a parent. I can’t even take a step back for the sake of self-care or whatever, or else my child will suffer.
So for me, having children is fuck yes or not at all. The default will be to remain childfree. Having children should be an opt-in decision, not an opt-out one. Until/unless I develop really strong feelings about wanting to have children, I won’t have them, even if that means I never end up having them at all.
As a mother, I really wish more people gave having children this kind of clear contemplation and thought. It’s an irreversible decision. Too many people don’t understand that.
Someone once said I couldn’t create and write about as many childfree characters as I wanted because it was unrealistic.
1) I have no obligation to be realistic in fiction. It’s fiction. Sometimes it’s fantasy fiction. If there can be dragons there can be childfree characters.
2)
(gif: Tom Hiddleston as Loki, arms outstretched as he leans from a car window, text reads: I do what I want)
That said, you want realism?
More than one in five women do not have children. It’s not as rare as fictional media would have you believe. (Also around one in three women have abortions, I mention this for a reason.)
And even if that were not the case, why can’t I write all my characters as childfree if I want to? (Or asexual? Or both?)
I could own a publishing house and a film and/ or television company and pump out books and films and multiple high profile TV shows, every single one with a childfree female protagonist. And it would be nothing compared to the constant stream of media centred on the woman as mother, the media that tells us motherhood is inevitable unless there are tragic circumstances.
Look at the thousands of books with “baby epilogues” (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a good example, are most romance novels), books about women who changed their minds, shows with childfree women who change their mind and have a child/multiple children (Bones, The Big Bang Theory), shows that start out centred on a woman but then it becomes not about her skills about her motherhood (Fringe and its treatment of Olivia Dunham; to a lesser extent, Teyla in Stargate: Atlantis), or a woman who’s got a world to save but if her birth control fails she won’t get an abortion despite her seeming utterly uninterested in motherhood (Wynonna Earp) .
In fact Grey’s Anatomy‘s Cristina Yang is a rare example of a childfree woman, one who did get an abortion to remain so. Remember, abortions do take place, and it is mostly women who have already had children who request them, but there are women without children who have abortions because they don’t want children yet or indeed they never want children. How I Met Your Mother‘s Robin Scherbatsky also remained childfree but had to grieve over being found to be sterile.
I’m talking here about female characters because I’m a woman writing female, as well as male, childfree characters. There are probably more male characters who are childfree overall or those who just never mention wanting children, but they don’t come under the same scrutiny. Captain Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Cormoran Strike (Strike novels; it’s said twice in the first 2 books that he has never wanted children and adds that he isn’t sentimental about them) are just two examples but I’m betting people can come up with many more, far more examples than those of females who don’t want and more importantly never do have children.
I cannot change the world or the media landscape but I can write what I want to. And many of my female characters are childfree. There are no baby epilogues. And I will not apologise for that. Sometimes you have to write the story you most want to read.
before you ever even consider having a child you should be ready to handle a disabled child, you should be ready to handle twins, you should be ready to handle a gay child or a trans child
because if you’re not ready for your child to be anything other than one straight, cis, able bodied and able minded child, you’re going to end up neglecting and abusing somebody for years to come
and even if your child is all that, you might have a feminine boy or a masculine girl on your hands. so be fucking ready for your child to be a human being and not YOUR PRODUCT or PROPERTY or CREATION
fucking sort your shit out, i am so tired of shitty parental sob stories about how “hard” it is to “raise” (read: beat the divergency out of) an autistic child or whatever. do you know what’s harder? being the divergent child of parents who you’ve already let down by virtue of existing in a way they didn’t ask for. putting up with years of neglect and abuse because you’re just not good enough for them, you weren’t what they were planning for or expecting.
I found this parenting book for people whose kids have adhd that my mom bought when I was a kid and the whole first chapter was about “coping with the fact you didn’t get your dream child” and I felt devastated
Like it really messed me up
This is quite honestly a massive percentage of why I’m never having children. Raising a “normal” child would be bad enough, given my own mental illness and personality, which amounts to extreme introvert, and I know I’d be emotionally neglectful.
I can’t even imagine properly coping with a child whom shares any of my issues. It wouldn’t be fair to either them or me.
I’m sharing this line from a very wise, very badass friend and infertility warrior. I’m sharing it because it is an important message to hear. I’m sharing it in hopes that this message gets shared more often because it doesn’t seem to be an option that we’re offered very often—at least, not with sincerity or compassion.
I’ve had dozens of drafts written over the past few months, but found that the thoughts and feelings I poured into them were constantly changing. After miscarriage No.4, the one that we threw everything at—all the best doctors, all the expensive cutting-edge medication, all the tests—I had had enough. Physically, I had enough. Financially, I definitely had enough. Emotionally, I was beyond done. Yet, strangely, I still ordered meds for another cycle that we will never go through.
It’s so hard to get off this roller coaster. It really is. Especially when you go through so much and invest a huge part of your life only walk away without a baby. But I have been in the infertility community a very long time. I’ve put myself through a nauseating amount of horrible treatments. I’ve done God-knows how much irreparable damage to my body and health with all these treatments—while ignoring the fact that they’re still not studied for long term side effects. And I started to notice the depressing amount of women around me who are *literally* killing themselves slowly by going through these treatments over and over again. Health and happiness set aside, plowing forward and taking hit after hit after hit.
Even of the ones I watched “graduate”, many have had horrific pregnancies that were filled with terror each and every day. They have gone through serious complications (yes, plural ‘complications’). They worry each day if the baby they carry is still healthy—or alive. They worry about their own health with each new complication that gets dropped in their lap. The flurry of tests, the team of doctors, the growing tower of medical bills—that didn’t go away with a BFP. They count down the days until birth not out of excited anticipation but out of panicked fear, just wanting the end to be here before disaster hits. And the lucky ones who do have a healthy, happy baby are still left with the devastation infertility has done to their marriage, finances, mental health and bodies—only now they have a child that takes priority above the cleanup of any of those things.
I decided that this is not what I want. I decided that the well-being and physical/mental/financial health of me and my husband are more important than than continuing the hard, expensive journey to have a child through any means—ART or adoption. That, if we should succeed in becoming parents (biologically or through adoption), we should be the best people we can be in order to provide the life we want for that child. And right now, that’s not it. Right now, a child would come in to a shit storm of anxiety and trauma and medical debt. And that’s not fair to any of us.
After a lot of discussion, soul searching and careful reflection, my husband and I have chosen a Child-free life. And that word is a terrifying word after 7 years of treatments. It’s not one that’s easy to digest when you’ve spent tens of thousands to get pregnant. But the taking care of ourselves and get reacquainted with our new mindset after nearly a decade of trauma is what is right for us.
I went through all the stages of grief and then went through them again. But, to my surprise, I didn’t grieve as long as I thought I would. I quickly found relief—SO MUCH relief—that this chapter is over and I could move on with my life free of injections and bloodwork and IV infusions and constant worry and terror.
I found great resources and stories from other women who battled infertility and decided to take their eggs and go home—there are many more of us than you think. And, I found comfort from exploring the views and outlooks from women who CHOOSE not to have children. Those ladies have shown me that living a life without children can be just as beautiful, meaningful and impactful as the lives of women who choose to be mothers. That motherhood is one choice in many that a woman can choose.
There is a lot of collateral damage in my life that will need repair. And I can’t say that everything is bright and shiny and I live a trigger-free life. But I CAN say that I have been better than I have been for years. And a lot of things that used to cause me stabbing pain now only pack a sting.
But what hurts the most now, is seeing women who don’t have kids—by choice or by chance—get told that they aren’t valid. That their lives are less than the lives of women who are mothers. That their needs and struggles aren’t important. That their voices don’t need to be heard.
And I think ‘acceptance’ is what is lacking. Acceptance when a woman doesn’t have kids. Acceptance when she doesn’t want them. And maybe, just maybe, that would make it easier for some of us to accept when we can’t have them. To accept that we are infertile, and it’s not what we originally wanted, but it’s OK.
Our lives aren’t over. Our purpose is only yet to be discovered. Our possibilities are endless. And we don’t have to use our uteruses to be important.
So, once more, for those in the back:
It’s OK to get off this rollercoaster. There are many many other rides out there to experience. And YOU get to choose which ones you ride next.
not wanting to have kids is so liberating. the trajectory of life that’s spoonfed to you from childhood really only applies if you’re planning on reproducing. otherwise there’s a slew of options that open up, so many nontraditional paths to take that ultimately seem significantly more fulfilling. no need to stay in one place, no need to secure a high paying job in order to Put The Kid(s) Through School. I’m gonna do whatever the f I want til the day I die
If you were a girl who loved above all to read and write and who could not imagine an adulthood in which these activities did not hold a central place, you probably knew even before puberty that you were headed for conflict. For is it not a truth universally acknowledged that, for a woman, the central place is reserved for her kids?
Sigrid Nunez in “Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids”
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