I Feel Broken for Not Wanting Kids
The world didn’t teach me what a happy childfree existence looks like — so I will have to teach myself
All my life, I have known I didn’t want to have children. And I have always been made to feel freakish about that fact.
When I was young, the adults in my life would talk idly about what it would be like for me someday when I had kids — how I would raise them, what the children might look like. It was presented as an inevitable stage of life I would someday reach, not a choice I’d get to make. Even back then, I would always push back, challenging the assumption that I had to become a parent, declaring categorically that I never wanted to get pregnant.
Most of the time, teachers, career counselors, Girl Scout troop leaders, debate team coaches, and other adults laughed off my protests. With the chilling kind of dismissiveness that masquerades as warmth, they would assure me that someday I’d change my mind. This was another way of saying that being a parent was inevitable. A person could turn their nose up at it and complain all they wanted, but eventually, they’d cave to the pressure. I had no say in the matter. Like death or puberty, having kids was a thing that just happened to you, like it or not.
