So What If I Don't Want Kids? — Musings of a Modern Mermaid

I was 16 years old the first time I was asked about having kids. I was at Disneyland with my dad and sister, and my aunt and uncle and their two-year-old daughter. It was the end of the night and my little cousin had been throwing a tantrum since we ate dinner thirty minutes ago and hadn’t stopped crying the whole walk/tram ride back to the car. Now since she was only 2 it wasn’t a big deal. Kids throw tantrums all the time especially when they have been up all day without napping. By the time we reached the car, she was in such a fit that they couldn’t get her out of the stroller. My uncle was in charge of wrangling/catching her while my aunt dumped her out of the stroller to fold it up. While this was going on, I was staring a bit at the mess unfolding. My uncle looked at me and said, “Making you re-think having kids?”. We both laughed and I said something along the lines of “Maybe. Looks a little insane”. He smiled and said, “Well don’t wait too long as I did. This would have been easier in my twenties or thirties”. With that, he forced the little tantrum haver into the car and she cried the whole way home.

My uncle didn’t mean anything by what he said. My family has luckily never pressured me into having kids or getting married or looking too far into the future like that. But his question was the first of many I would get after it. He was joking because his kid was throwing a tantrum and I looked terrified. Other people would ask in earnest or throw out blanket statements like “one day when you have kids” or “kids are hard work, make sure to have them with the right person”. Up until recently, it was never a plausible option that someone may just not want kids. I didn’t even realize that until the last couple of years. When I was in middle school, a friend of mine and I had planned our whole lives out: we would graduate college by age 21 (missed that one by a couple of years), have met our future husbands while in college (I mean maybe we did?), get married a year out of college (married at 22???? HELL NO), and start having kids at 24 ( I will be 24 this year and am in no way prepared for children). Luckily this didn’t seem to work out for either of us, even though we are both in very happy relationships that we wouldn’t change, getting married or having kids on any kind of crazy time table like that is insane. We were little and thought we knew what being an adult was, so that part wasn’t too bad. But as I got older, I realized that we probably got that idea from other people wanting the same thing from us.

After my uncle asked me that, it seemed like he had triggered a universal notification that now anyone could ask me this question, or assume my answer, from there on out. That was when I first contemplated, do I really WANT kids? Or did I just feel like I was expected to have kids? After an unfortunate viewing in my biology class of a woman giving birth, I definitively decided I would never get pregnant. I had always been a little iffy on that whole idea since I was 4 years old and my mom took me to a class at the hospital to basically scare me out of being in the room when my sister was born. It worked, and honestly made it so I don’t want to be in the room should I ever have to give birth. But in my junior year of school, watching a woman have a baby, I decided then and there I would not ever get pregnant. I would never have to give birth. When I announced this thought to my mom, she said there were plenty of kids who needed adopting anyway so that was totally fine, but just know I might change my mind one day. She was right, but it went the opposite way she thought.

By the time I was 19 years old, I was pretty sure I never wanted to have kids. I had been a nanny for my whole senior year of high school, and then also nannied right after high school before I went to college. As much as I love those kids, and love kids in general, I realized first hand how extremely hard it is to have children. I was never under the impression that it was easy, but especially after I was a live-in nanny, and a full-time nanny even at night, I saw just how completely exhausting it is to have children. When I was 19, I bled out so much from being on my period that I passed out while I was at work. This leads down a rabbit hole of testing and medicine trials and surgery which ultimately leads to the diagnosis of endometriosis. And the prognosis that I would most likely never be able to conceive. This didn’t bother me since I had already decided being a mom wasn’t for me, and honestly made it easier for me because I can adopt at any age and never need to worry about being too old (at 35 you become a geriatric pregnancy) to conceive. But the thing is, we all need to hop off the train that says we have to do things by a certain time or that we have to do them at all.

This mainly applies to women so I will be using us as the main example, but this happens to men too a little bit, just not as much. And men are often not expected to do these certain things, in general. I asked some guys I know when they were first asked about when they would have kids or get married, and none gave an age below 19. Most said it was when they had their first serious college girlfriend and it was more questions of “is she the one?” than questions of marriage and children. But women are conditioned to want these things and to want them on a certain timeline or else they are spinsters. Can we talk about that real quick? Men are “bachelors” and “lone wolves” if they never marry or have kids. But women get “spinster”, “hag” and whispers over how she must be barren or is too wrapped up in her career to making a family work. Anyone else finds this incredibly rude? Women can live totally fulfilled lives without children (or spouses but we are focusing on kids) and there is so much beyond having kids that it is ok for a woman to say it is not for her. Plus, if someone doesn’t want kids, and is forced into having them in some way, the odds of that person being a good parent are slim to none. Now all of this is not to say that women who want to be moms are somehow bad or less than the women who have chosen not to have kids. The main point of all of this is to say that things can go however you want them too. And everyone needs to be respectful of that.

A few reasons I personally do not want kids are as follows: I want to be able to build a massive career for myself and not have to worry about being a mother on top of that. Kids are extremely expensive and maybe this will sound selfish, but I want to have money to travel and to live my life without that added expense. Kids can take a toll on your mental health and your relationships. I want to be able to leave whatever I am doing at a moment’s notice and travel. That’s another reason I am trying to create a work-from-home style job for myself is so that I am never tethered to what someone else wants me to do. Again, may sound selfish but I want to be able to go and do whatever I please. Whenever I please (within reason obviously). None of this is to say that women who choose to have kids did something wrong or somehow can’t do these things. It is just not what I want in my life.

The other piece of this puzzle I want to talk about before I end this (sorry, I know it’s a long one today) is the fact that if a young woman says she doesn’t want to have kids, it is always “are you sure?” or “you’ll change your mind”. But let me tell ya, no one says the same thing to the women having babies young. I am pretty honest when it comes to my desires for my future, and how kids are not in it, but it is still amazing how many people tell me I will surely change my mind. And ya know what? Maybe I will! But that is the beauty of life. We are all changing our minds constantly about things, and they are often big mind shifts. We change our diets, our exercise routines and goals, where we want to live, who we want to date, what color to paint the living room, and so much more. Some people even change their minds on their marriages and we allow that to happen, so why not allow women to have the space they need to decide on kids?

For me personally, getting pregnant one day will most likely never happen. I have big plans for my life and they have never included having kids. I love kids, and one day when my friends all have babies it will be so exciting and so much fun to get to be their auntie. I can’t wait for that day. This post is also not for the women out there struggling desperately for pregnancy and not being able to. That is a horrible, painful struggle, and I am so sorry you are going through that. None of this is to discount those struggles. The main takeaway here is to never expect women to have kids simply because we are the ones who carry the pregnancy. A woman’s life and body are her own and there needs to be a lot less judgment passed on us and what we choose to do with them.

Madey

Cover art found here