We Are Childfree: The Movement

“There is something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children. There is something at-loose-ends feeling about such a woman. What is she going to do instead? What sort of trouble will she make?" ~ Sheila Heti, Motherhood

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I am childfree by choice. I knew in my early twenties, even before I became ill that I didn’t want children. I didn’t have any maternal instinct. Even when I babysat as a teenager at the bungalow colony in upstate in NY, I did it because I had to, because all the other teenage girls were doing it on Saturday nights.

In 2010, there was a call for submissions for essays on being childfree, but the publishers wanted a positive spin. The essay I wrote turned out angry, although it was well-written. You can read it here.

I believe I was a lot like my mother in that respect, but the era in which she came of age didn’t leave her much choice. She got married in 1957 and it was expected she have kids and raise them. Prior to my birth, she was working as a computer programmer on the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer). I think computers were her first love.

If my mother had the choices women have today, I firmly believe she would have chosen not to have children and to continue working in the computer field. I don’t think she consciously resented my brother and me, but after my brother was born, she had two abortions and this was prior to Roe vs. Wade becoming law.

She was happiest after she and my father divorced in 1982. She returned to school to get a certificate in programming from New York University and after a six month stint at a research firm, she started a custom software development firm. I got my work ethic and perfectionistic tendencies from her. She worked seven days a week and I can only recall her taking one week-long vacation to London with her friend Edie.

I’m post-menopausal now, too late to have children and I have no regrets. I have no one to “take care” of me when I’m elderly, and sometimes I think about that. Then again, my brother and I took care of my father as he was declining physically and cognitively, but we did it out of obligation and guilt, not out of love. I just hope I’ll be able to remain independent.

Source: © Karen Santiago Photography

I rescued my dog Shelby and she’s enough responsibility for me right now. Hopefully, she’ll be with me for at least another ten years. She’s so appreciative that she is loved and taken care of and that she has found her first and final forever home. Animals know.

There’s a relatively new international organization, whose newsletter I receive, We are Childfree. Their mission states “We are Childfree empowers, supports and advocates for everyone embracing a life without children.”

It’s nice to connect with like-minded people. Some of them, like me, knew early on in their lives they didn’t want children. On the website, Maren says “It’s a very strong emotion that motherhood is just not for me.”

Yes, so nice to feel connected in this way of life.