I’ve got a large family and a religious predisposition. So, how do I feel about those who are childfree? If you’re one of those childfree folks, then this post is for you.
Quick note: “Childfree” refers to those who do not have children by choice. “Childless” describes those who want children but don’t for any reason. These two are not in the same camp at all.
Hi.
I don’t judge you for being childfree.
……..there’s no “but” to follow there. That’s it.
Here’s the longer version if you want to read it. Maybe it’ll offer some validation. Maybe it’ll be something that you needed or wanted to hear.
Not everyone feels the need or desire to have kids
When it comes to having kids, some people feel the desire or urge early-on (hi, hello, it’s me). Some people do later. Everyone’s “ideal” number of kids is different, and life often does not go how you expect. For some people, having kids isn’t a big deal. Some people never have the desire to have kids.
One of my dear friends can’t have them. She suffers from a painful condition that requires her to have her uterus scraped out about twice a year. When she told me about the procedure that took her out of work for the day, I said “Ouch. That sounds painful. And no doctors will take the stupid thing out already?!”
She immediately thanked me for not saying “Oh, I’m so sorry that you can’t have kids” because she’s never wanted them anyway. Even if or when she gets married, she doesn’t want them. She’d been told by people “Oh, you’ll meet a boy one day that you’ll want to have babies with!” or “Trust me. You’ll want them when you’re older.” Such bold statements to make.
She gets to undergo these procedures because she’s “not old enough” for a hysterectomy. She’s in her early thirties. I get that that’s not exactly middle-aged, but it definitely sounds old enough to know that you don’t want to carry a pregnancy. People shouldn’t have to justify their family planning decisions to people with whom reproduction wouldn’t take place. Insane, I know.
I’ve had a hard time understanding people who ask fully-grown adults why they don’t want kids. No one has ever asked me why I don’t own a house, which is also a very normal thing for adults to do. No one asks why I don’t have pets or why my vehicle is more than ten years old. These questions would be a lot less weird and invasive than asking someone why they don’t want kids, if they want more, etc.
Sometimes it comes from a place of “Tell me why you don’t want them so that I can tell you all of the reasons why you should want them!”
It screams “Please give me ammo to justify my own life choices! Defend your preferences against mine!” Like…why would you do that to someone?
I’ll sometimes jokingly ask my nine-year-old if she wants kids one day because she has so many siblings. Her answer ranges from vigorous head shaking to “I dunno….maybe. Maybe like three at most if I have them?”
I ask the question more to gauge if I’m making this shin-dig look miserable or how much alone time she probably needs. My response, regardless of what she says, is always “It’s your life. However many you want or don’t want is enough. It could change or not change as you get older.” I’m not going to sit there and extol the virtues of motherhood to her when she can clearly see with her eyeballs that her mom is a bit nuts. When she’s said “Being a mom sounds hard”, I respond with “It is. But I chose to have you all here, so I’m okay with it being hard.”
I love that we live in a time when people can choose not to have kids if they don’t want to.
That hasn’t always been the case. If you didn’t want to risk getting pregnant, you had to abstain from having sex. You could always pull a Cleopatra and “wait till the cargo was full before accepting new passengers.” Oh, you also had to pray that they didn’t die of disease or tragedy before adulthood or age five. The topic of who should or shouldn’t have kids is pretty controversial. I’ll be brazen and say that there is a pretty definitive group of people who shouldn’t have kids: people who don’t want to have kids.
Huh…for some reason that didn’t feel crazy to type out. Let me clarify something; I’m definitely also not in the camp of “everyone who wants kids should have kids.” Some people make terrible decisions. Some can’t handle the responsibility that comes with having children. Some people are incredibly selfish. Some people would look at me and maybe throw me into one of those categories. I’m the one who ultimately gets to decide what I want and can handle.
Just like everyone else.
“Parents know what’s best”
“Survival of the fittest” never meant predisposing your kids to a happy, fulfilling life by being a superior parent. It literally just means “How many offspring did you live long enough to see produce their own offspring?” Full stop. The sad truth is that short of an accident, disease, abuse, or neglect that leads to death, kids keep growing older and one day become adults. That’s how time and human development works; not a reflection of our quality of parenting.
Having a kid doesn’t mean that you suddenly understand child development, nutrition, emotional regulation, or how to make someone employable and liked as an adult. Are these prerequisite to be a good parent? Not necessarily. But should we kid ourselves into thinking that parenting makes us experts in all areas pertaining to children? Absolutely not. Parents have a tendency to adapt their idea of normal to wherever their child is at. This can be helpful sometimes in not losing their sanity if their kid is neurodivergent, is differently abled, or has different needs from other children. Having multiple kids can sometimes help by exposing you to a variety of personalities and needs. It still does not make the parent a “parenting expert”. No one is a parenting expert.
Like many people, I’ve met parents whose best will not be enough to equip their kids to function as adults in society; the poor kids will need to figure that out for themselves. I’ve seen some parents grossly misunderstand their child’s developmental needs and then brush off any commentary from childfree onlookers as “they just don’t get it.” There’s an expression that goes “You don’t have to be a chef to know that the soup tastes like crap.” They may not get what it’s like to be in your head, but they can still see that there’s a problem.
The “it takes a village” isn’t just referring to grandmothers (who often give outdated advice however well-intended). By the way, I’m not referring to my mother or mother-in-law, who are pretty baller at minding their own business. The expression is referring to having a community of people around who can say “Uh…need some help there? Cuz you look like you need some help/input.” Is it always correct or helpful? No. But laboring under the delusion that childfree people are not useful with kids is just…wrong.
There are the obvious contradictions to this assumption everywhere: teachers, nurses, therapists, daycare workers, counselors, etc. Yes, you can argue that there are certain things that childfree people “just don’t get.” This can be argued the other way around too; in the case of professions involving higher education, you didn’t go to school to learn what they learn, train, do internships and practicums under supervision, or abide by a professional level of conduct. You just had a baby.
Again, because someone is going to get defensive or polarize my statement; you do not have to be a professional in a child-related profession to be a good parent. We don’t need for society to be swimming in teachers, nurses, and child psychologists. Just have the humility to recognize that a fifteen-year-old can have a baby too.
Parents who want to foster or adopt kids actually have to do a lot of training and have every element of their personal life scrutinized. I once filled out a form as a reference for a friend who wanted to foster a child. The questions on the form were extremely personal and asked me what I thought of her mental health, etc. They were nothing compared to the interviews that she and her husband had to undergo to determine if they were fit to foster. Their home had to be up to a certain standard. They have to take classes. Yes, there are some foster parents who are exploitative and terrible; most people are just normal people who want to take care of someone. Do we tell adoptive parents that “they just don’t get it” because they’re not raising who came from their own bodies? No…at least you really, really shouldn’t be doing that. As someone with an adopted sibling, I can personally attest to how bogus that statement is.
The world needs good aunts and uncles
Having a big extended family can be really fun because we’re all at different stages in life and bring different strengths (and weirdness) to gatherings. I love my childless and childfree siblings and sibling-in-laws. They play with the kids, help dish up food, chat with them, and are generally pretty darned helpful. Also they’re just cool people…I love handing my babies to one of my sisters, who is terrific at getting little kids to fall asleep on her. I love when my brother-in-law tells my kids to quit being crazy, or they’re going to be booted outside. My oldest daughter will message her aunts, and I’m so glad that she has other people who care about her because kids cannot have too many people who care about them.
While they may be tired from their own jobs, hobbies, and lives, they somehow find energy to spare hugs and love for my kids. They’re usually not on-call 24/7 doing parenting-related tasks already. Although, I’ve seen some of them even take care of nieces and nephews with greater interest than the child’s parents do. Some of them would make for better parents than many parents, but they don’t want their own. Selfishly, I think it’s a great deal. We get to enjoy them, and they get to enjoy being aunts and uncles.
Adding a caveat here. I also love when aunts and uncles say “no” to the kids’ requests for attention. My brother, Dan, was a pro at swatting kids away as he attempted to pass out on my parents couch after a big meal. One of my middle kids will try climbing on my sisters to get their attention, and I love when they say “Nope. You’re in my personal space. Scram!” I obviously tell her not to do it too, but the extra reinforcement helps. The value of more people helping to reinforce good behavior in kids can’t be overstated.
“Childfree people are selfish”
Bruh, I haven’t paid federal income tax in like six years. Tax evasion? No, I just have that many dependents. I’ll take that “selfish” trophy now and put it on my shelf, thankyouverymuch. But in all seriousness…I do not expect for other people to accommodate or validate my lifestyle by living in kind against their wishes. Most adults are gainfully employed, pay their bills, and add some form of value to society.
People used to have lots of kids because sex makes babies and birth control was not available. Also the whole kids not being domestic parasites and actually having responsibility for food production and keeping the family alive that came about in agrarian societies. They also died in much greater numbers than they do today. Children are now a far greater monetary expense to their parents than they’ll probably ever repay to their parents.
Yes, my kids will be funding people’s retirements one day, but isn’t caring for an aged population part of what we do as a civilized society whether or not they’ve “earned it” by contributing kids to the system? Do you know how sticky that would get if we only cared for the elderly who had children? For the record, I’m personally not expecting for my children to care for me one day. I don’t want to be a burden on them, however much I may have personally sacrificed in raising them. It wouldn’t sit well with me to impose on them in my later years. Many parents may have differing expectations, but that’s mine.
Millennials and Gen Xers are currently shouldering the burden of funding social security for the Baby Boomers. It’s still not enough for many of them to get by. Instead of blaming the childfree or parents, can we appreciate that there is a massive inequality in resources for which average people are not to blame?
I digress as that could be an entire blog post.
You know what’s selfish? Blaming other people for not owning up to what you want. Expecting validation from other people by expecting that they hold the same values that you hold. If someone doesn’t want children, you are under no obligation to persuade or convince them to want them. Doing so will likely produce the opposite effect.
“But kids/babies are so great!”
BRUH. Parents will do this song and dance about how hard having kids is then immediately try to backpedal when someone says “You know? You’re right. That does sound hard. Pass.”
“But it’s totally worth it!”
Really? Worth it if they achieve a certain status one day? Worth it if they still talk to you as adults or care for you in your old age? Worth it if they make you look good to other parents? Or….worth it because you personally chose sacrifice for their well-being? Worth it because you feel that moment of watching your nine-year-old jump on her grandma’s trampoline brought you more private, quiet joy than all of the moments of holding her as a fussy, teething baby?
Wouldn’t you agree that’s a pretty personal moment and measure of fulfillment?
Does that mean that you shouldn’t share how hard parenting is? Dude, you can’t hide the struggle of parenting from other people because kids have their own brains and agendas. Other people get to decide what and where they want to derive fulfillment in their lives. And like I mentioned earlier, some people never want kids.
“What if you regret it when you’re older?”
Oh no…what if they do? Thank goodness they’ll have you there to say “I told you so!” Because that’s what you do when you care about someone. They’ll need to live with the decision that they made either way.
“What about your parents? I’m sure they’d love to have grandbabies!”
Children are not obligated to sacrifice their lives or values for the values of their parents. Pretty bold, probably Westernized statement there, huh? I dare someone to publicly state “My kids exist to make me happy one day.” Now, would-be grandparents are allowed to have their feelings. Should they express all of these feelings to their children who don’t want children? Well, it just depends on the kind of relationship that they want to have with them.
Finally…Yes, I think your dogs/cats are adorable
Sometimes when childfree folks complain about house-training a puppy, they’ll backtrack with “But I bet it’s nothing compared to having kids.”
First of all, I love seeing pictures of your doggos and cats. One of my sisters can attest that I message her about twice a week demanding pictures of my furry nephews. I love them.
I don’t look at them and think “Too bad it’s not a baby/toddler!” It’s so much easier to not offend a pet-owner than a parent when reacting to a photo because it’s not their flesh-and-blood or person who they chose to raise. Humans come into this world looking kinda funky to everyone but their parents and maybe grandparents. Give ‘em a few months to get chubby, and it might improve their appearance to a level that invites you to hold them for a few minutes…or at least “aww” from no less than six feet away. Maybe this is how you feel too; unless I have a special connection to a kid’s parents, they nearly all look the same to me.
Second of all, you know what’s convenient about raising people? When you’re toilet-training a toddler, there are people-oriented facilities everywhere. I can throw a diaper on them if I’m going out in public, on a car ride, or grocery shopping. There is also a very handy contraption in my house called a “toilet” that rids me of all of their troubles. Usually. Unless they decide to use an entire roll of toilet paper…but cats will sit there and spin that thing like a slot machine too.
I don’t have to open the backdoor for them to go outside. I don’t have to pick up dog poop in my backyard in the cold. I don’t worry about leaving them at home alone and having them peeing on my furniture because, well, I’d get arrested for leaving them at home unattended at that age. But also, they’re allowed to come with me everywhere that doesn’t exclude those under 21.
There are people who treat their pets as though they were actual children or babies. The vast majority of pet owners don’t though, so I’m not even going to generalize this behavior. You don’t have a child of your own, but you love and care for something else. Why would I judge you for that?
Yes, some people make for terrible pet owners. Some pet owners are irresponsible and don’t properly train or discipline their pets. The difference is that if your dog turns out to be aggressive and violent, they can be put down without years of litigation, jail-time, and waiting for lethal injection (if applicable to your state). Or them terrorizing society for decades after being on parole. They won’t rack up DUIs or impregnate another human whose life carries weighty consequences and responsibilities.
Your cat won’t need to find gainful employment one day. Your dog won’t need to start their formal education or procure a driver’s license. They’ll probably be spayed or neutered (without you even needing their consent). If you’re a responsible pet-owner, you probably stress about your dogs jumping up on guests, barking when they shouldn’t, and pooping on people’s lawns.
There seems to be a trend here. You want to love something without the immense weight that should accompany raising a human being? That same weight that parents talk about shouldering with kids, and you’re choosing to care for and love something that doesn’t require that?
Huh. It’s almost like that’s the point.
No, I don’t judge you. I’m glad that you exist. You help to balance us parents out.
None Given. None Taken. 