Childfree vs Parents: A Fake Fight
Image from The Childfree Life
Everywhere I turn anymore it seems I see a post about why being childfree is the best. Or why being a mother is the best. And I’m tired of it. It’s a fake battle that continues to pit women against each other. I’m approaching this whole topic as someone who is childfree, because that’s the experience I have. The typical “childfree and proud” argument follows this typical script.
- I’ve always known! Which isn’t true for me. I didn’t really think about it most of my life really. I couldn’t even get a date for most of high school so it’s not like I was planning my future children. When my relationship with my now husband got serious, I started realizing kids were something I didn’t want. He felt the same.
- Don’t assume I’m going to have kids. There seems to be a trend to get offended when someone asks “when are you having kids?” I just smile and say “We’re not planning on having children.” Most of the time people will move on to a new conversation topic. Unless they’re a mom, in which case they’ll voice their understanding. I do think you shouldn’t ask people when they’re going to have kids, but for a completely different reason. And that is because infertility is a real struggle and bringing up a sore spot for these couples is not cool. (This is portrayed in This Is Where I Leave You brilliantly.)
And now is when, once again according to the typical script, I’m supposed to say how much it sucks that my doctor wouldn’t let me get sterilized. But honestly, I haven’t tried. I decided long ago to make myself wait until 30. To wait until my friends had their kids and see if it changed my mind. Because people do sometimes change. (The couple featured on the Time Magazine child free issue did.) I went with a copper IUD instead. 10 years of protection without having to do anything other than the initial visit on my part. No hormones. One of the most effective birth control methods. But still reversible. And as for it being easier for young men to get vasectomies? Men don’t have as many birth control options they can control as we do. Also, vasectomies are often reversible.
And lastly, I’m supposed to go on and on about how much more valuable my work is, and how much time I spend volunteering. Well, I love what I do for a living but my work is not my life. And I don’t volunteer (outside helping out my local men’s roller derby league) because I fill my time with other things. I’m supposed to say how my friends with kids never call and hangout. But that’s not true either. I realize my time is more flexible than my friends who are parents and I work around their schedule.
I’m tired of this battle of childfree vs parents. It’s ridiculous. We need to stop this passive aggressive “life is better when” contest. It’s just pitting us against each other. In the end, everyone wants something different out of life. The choices someone else makes do not invalidate my own.
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Nicole is a Software Quality Engineer, music collector, and chronic project starter. In her free time she enjoys reading trashy romance novels, catching up on her game backlog, and bourbon.
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But…life IS better with whisky.
Anyway. I liked this piece. And read it right after this one, which was kind of fascinating: http://qz.com/273255/how-american-parenting-is-killing-the-american-marriage/?utm_content=buffer75dc1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I’m pretty sure I saw you tweet something along the lines of “TR is lucky he’s cute” shortly after he was born.
I completely agree and I’m thankful for the existence of this article. With one caveat. In my experience, they usually *don’t* let it go when I say I don’t want to have any children. They keep insisting. Pressuring. Badgering. For several minutes. Even the unabashedly-feminist husband of one of my activist friends, which completely floored me.
I once had to be aggro as hell to my brother in law to get him to just shut up and leave me alone. After like ten minutes, AT CHRISTMAS, when I just wanted to chill with my family and he would not quit with the “oh, you’ll change your mind” baloney – he said “well, accidents happen” and I finally just snapped “THAT’S WHAT ABORTIONS ARE FOR, NOW LET IT GO.”
It’s common, and just thinking about it raises my blood pressure. We have the right to be left alone and live with our own choices.
I must be lucky then. I will say, in the rare times I’ve been pestered it’s typically been a man who has done the pestering. I believe this to be because in our culture women still do most of the childcare. Even if a man wants to be involved, it’s harder because of the stigma around paternity leave (if his company even has a policy. Once again, sexism hurts everyone.). Which is contrary to the “judgy mother” stereotype I see in a lot of childfree articles/communities. Moms totally get it. They know how much work kids are.
Leah, you basically said everything I was thinking too! I get pretty vocal about not having kids, and it’s not necessarily that I hate moms. It’s that I ALWAYS knew I didn’t want them, and have been ridiculed my whole life because of it. My mom and my sister are the most maternal people in the world, and I grew up in a very conservative town where pretty much everyone grows up and has babies. End of story.
And like Nicole said…getting your tubes tied without getting pregnant first? Bullshit. Not happening. Even getting an IUD took a hour long conversation with my doctor to “weigh my options.”
I have a fantastic life. A husband who loves me FOR ME, without children. And I am an aunt–so I do have children in my life who I love with all my heart, and I do consider them mine. Just in a completely different way. I don’t have to be a mother to love them.
My family is coming around. They see how happy I am now and realize I’m not going to change.
Sometimes it’s hard to not get fired up about it. It’s something I’m passionate about, because I have been persecuted for it. It’s not a fake fight to me.
Thanks to both you and Leah for adding your experiences. It’s not OK for your family to pressure you to have children. But I feel that the tone of most posts I read are more of the childfree going on about how awesome their life is, or parents going on about how awesome their live is. In itself, a great thing. But it often comes at the expense of the other. And most often it’s women putting down other women. I feel the societal pressure to “have it all” (and all being defined as being a mother and a career woman) has us fighting each other to try to justify our choices. Choices that should not need to be justified.
I understand what you’re saying about feeling persecuted, I just don’t understand how it’s any different than anything which most people disagree with.
I’m a smoker and I get harassed by everyone, including complete strangers, about it. Should I start running around yelling how persecuted I am? I know people who are harassed because they choose not to get married, or because they don’t buy in to the culture of working to keep up with the Jones’.
Life is full of people who will tell you how much they disagree with any of your choices but ultimately they mean nothing. Let it slide and walk away.
THANK YOU! I get so sick of this debate. Honestly, I’m so sick of being pestered for not having kids, and I’m so sick of watching my buds with kids get pestered for having them. Everyone has to make their own choice, and it is totally fine if our choices done line up with one another’s. Kids or no kids doesn’t make your life “better” or “worse” necessarily. Geez.