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.
even though i love children (especially my amazing nieces & nephews), i have never once in my life experienced the natural desire to have my own
but as a cis woman, i’ve been trained not to expect support with this. i’ve been told so often that it’s selfish of me to feel this way and/or that I’ll change my mind as i get older and/or that i’ll eventually regret my decision
i’m now almost 33 and still have no desire for a child and do not anticipate that changing anytime soon
i’m so damn tired of being patronized for this life choice that hurts NO ONE rather than being respected.
has anyone else experienced this too? either in full or in part??
It’s the worst! I’m infertile which actually doesn’t bug me at all. But people lose their shit when they find out I’m not a ‘real’ woman.
Yeah. One day, a friend said at a party that he didn’t want kids. I said I totally related because me neither.
Sooooooo… Another person I barely even know took it upon himself to try to convince me that kids were the greatest thing you could aspire to in life and that his children were his pride and joy and that I’d change my mind someday and yadda yadda…
I told him that what I did with my reproductive organs wasn’t up for debate and I asked him why he was trying to convince only ME despite my friend stating THE EXACT SAME SENTIMENT. I mean, they were both straight cis men so wouldn’t my friend relate to his experience with parenthood more that me?
Did that stop him? Did he also try to convince my friend?
Nope. He kept lecturing me for a whole hour (I know because I kept looking at my cellphone) until my partner got my texts and came to rescue me from that uncomfortable situation.
Six years later, I still don’t want kids and randos will try to convince me anyway.
All the time. I really don’t want kids – I certainly don’t want to be pregnant, I’d rather adopt – and most people either tell me I’ll change my mind on my own (not likely), my theoretical future husband will change my mind (also not likely and frankly insulting), or act like there’s something wrong with me and/or it’s a huge moral failing on my part.
It’s really infuriating. This is one of those topics where I think I’m going to just start walking away when people assume they know me and my preferences better than I know myself.
People are always surprised when I tell them I don’t like kids. Especially since I have one child but I had her when I was 18. She was not planned. I love her and she is now my best friend in the whole world. But I still don’t want kids and really don’t like being around them.
Ughhhhhh i hate this patronizing shit so much….. >______>.
Ftr, if I ever do choose to have children I’d do the same as @ladytemeraire. There is no way in hell I would go through pregnancy. There are enough children in the world that need a loving & safe home, and it would be wonderful if I could provide that to someone in need. You know, IF it came to that.
BUT, of course, when you tell ppl this they often freak out too, asking if you would really give up the chance to have one with your own genes (or those of your [assumed] MAN, which is, i think, where the whole “selfishness” discourse comes into play, but i could be wrong).
Meanwhile, here I am suffering with fibromyalgia and a bunch of other nasty chronic health disorders, my lil sis also has fibro and may have a bunch others, and my older sis… i don’t even wanna get into it. Oh and my grandma on my mom’s side had MS and every single woman (which were MANY) on my dad’s side got at LEAST breast cancer or more. My genes can end here afaic.
But to be clear, I’d be very very happy to give a loving home to someone that’s disabled/chronically ill like me, that would be so great! I just already don’t wanna be pregnant and have my own kid so this is just more fuel for my fire I guess? I am not even remotely suggesting it’s bad to have kids if they could be chronically ill or disabled, that’s horrible and wrong.
Bonus points:
YES!!!!!!! UGHHHHHHHHHH lol
How about when as a kid you wanted to have kids but as you entered into adulthood you learned not only about how much of a struggle parenthood is financially, but also the god awful horrific things it can do to the pregnant person’s body and the various medical malpractices that can occur from doctors not respecting their pregnant patient’s wishes and you decide “You know what? Maybe no on the whole kid thing.”
Then you wind up with your mother guilt tripping you about how heartbroken she is that you’re giving up your childhood dream of motherhood and implying that your mind changed because your fiancé doesn’t want kids and you just want to make him happy so you’re burying your maternal feelings for his sake and hurting yourself.
Like no, I just didn’t understand the physical, mental, emotional, and financial struggles of shoving another human out of my body when I was eight and now I’m better educated and don’t wanna deal with that shit unless I have to.
yeah youre soo fucking oppressed because your mom wants you to have kids 😂 😂 😂 when will yall stop
pretty sure no one said a peep about oppression or even asexuality, sweaty 😂 😂 😂 when will all u exclusionists stop 😂 😂 😂
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.
If a woman should say she doesn’t want to have children at all, the world is apt to go decidedly peculiar: ‘Ooooh, don’t speak too soon,’ it will say – as if knowing whether or not you’re the kind of person who desires to make a whole other human being in your guts out of sex and food, then base the rest of your life around its welfare, is a breezy, ‘Hey – whatever’ decision. Like electing to have a picnic on an unexpectedly sunny day, or changing the background picture on your desktop. Women, it is presumed, will always end up having babies. They might go through silly, adolescent phases of pretending that it’s something that they have no interest in – but when push comes to shove, womanhood is a cul-de-sac that ends in Babies ‘R’ Us, and that’s the end of that. All women love babies – just like all women love Manolo Blahnik shoes and George Clooney. Even the ones who wear nothing but sneakers, or are lesbians, and really hate shoes, and George Clooney.
It’s not really children, per se. Granted, I’m not fond of them being around, I don’t want one in my house or very often in my immediate presence, and I especially don’t like it if I have to watch one that can’t even talk coherently let alone understand what I’m saying, but all this is because I have no patience and no strong maternal instincts to speak of.
If I’m out in public somewhere and a child looks at me, I will smile at it. If I see a video or gif of a child doing something adorable, I might coo and share it. I don’t actively go out of my way to upset children or even discuss them with most people.
But I hate with all my being the culture that surrounds the concept of children.
There’s an overwhelming societal expectation of a beuterused person that they must not only have children (usually multiple), but that they must desperately want children, often to the exclusion of all else. It’s tied very much into the notion that everyone is supposed to get married and promptly produce offspring and put themselves neatly into heteronormative traditional gender roles so as to be a good adult and a “productive member of society.” Indeed, the mere presents of breasts and a presumed uterus is indicative that a person’s worth is whether or not they reproduce.
And it’s this idea that infests every conversation about health or future or family. It’s this concept that makes those of us who do not want children (especially biologically) have to constantly brace ourselves for potential arguments when we talk about any of these things.
It’s the reason I had to switch doctors when my first one kept insisting that “the ideal” was for me to “remain a virgin until marriage and then marry a virgin before having children.” It’s the reason people with vaginas require checkups for “reproductive health” to make sure everything is “functioning correctly for reproduction” instead of just to make sure things don’t hurt/aren’t infected/need attention. It’s the reason we see language used like “baby-making” for het sex with no stated reproductive intent, why the term “biological clock” is still exclusively used in regards to reproduction, and why there is an over-emphasis on pregnancy and reproduction language in sex (“baby goo,” “baby batter,” “gonna make a baby in you,” etc.). It’s why there’s still so much debate over who gets a say in pregnancy, why pregnancy is still terrifyingly often referred to as a punishment or as a means to control the beuterused. It’s the reason why family, friends, and even strangers feel completely within their rights to ask you about your reproductive plans, to make you justify all of your life choices to them at a moment’s notice, to question your thoughts and beliefs as if they know you better than you do yourself.
It’s the reason why the questions are so intensive when someone asks for lasting birth control. It’s the reasons why we are told over and over the rate of regret, the success stories of people who changed their minds, the horror stories of those who didn’t. It’s the reason why, when you state that you have a “phobia of pregnancy” in the hope that it will make people stop asking you without making you explain yourself or justify your feelings for the umpteenth time, the only advice you get is, “Well, that needs to be fixed before anything else.”
It’s the reason why “because I don’t want children” isn’t enough. It’s the reason why adoption is never seen as an option because “you’ll want some of your own someday.” It’s the reason why people put such value on “extending the family line” and “continuing the family name.”
It’s the reason I have to say I hate children for people to stop questioning me. It’s the reason I have to monitor my conversations with certain people because they’ll say, “Ah, see, you DO like kids!!” It’s the reason parts of my dysphoria kicks in hard when I see the sort of things mentioned above. Because, unless something happens to remove or damage a uterus, it is not only expected, but demanded of you to know why you’re refusing “the most precious gift on Earth,” “your womanly duty,” “the greatest love you’ll ever know,” and so forth.
It’s the reason why “I hate children” is rolled off my tongue more and more until finally people just stop talking.
But I don’t hate children.
I hate the culture of children.
I hate the misogyny that surrounds pregnancy.
Most of all, I hate the people who perpetuate this culture, who deny someone else the right to say they don’t want to be part of it, who threaten to make them part of it.
But, you know, it’s so much easier to just say I hate children.
THIS THIS THIS I’ve been trying for YEARS to articulate to people around me why I so often go “ew, kids, GOD no!”
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