Category Archives: Childfree

r/childfreeis one of the fastest growing communities on Reddit and it's for people who do NOT want children. They don't want to be told why they should have them, how much they'll regret it if they don't, and how "selfish" they are for not "contributing to society." This choice is becoming more common, yet it's still questioned ferociously. We hear from some of these people and explore how this Reddit community offers support when friends and family don't.Thanks to u/cabbagesandkings14 for this week's artwork. It's called "Willow & Roxas."

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This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.Lavina Howard: I am a 34 year old Caucasian female. I grew up in a rural town in the Pacific Northwest. At a very young age, I did decide that I did not want to have children.

Summer: Hi, my name is Summer. Im from Kenya. And I'm childfree, which is very odd for this society that Ive grown up in.

Lavina: Since I was 18, I've been trying to have my tubes tied to no avail.

Summer: Society will always judge you anyway. Just do whatever you want. That's what I say anyway.

Lavina: And watching all of my friends have children, now I can see how exhausted they are financially, emotionally, how depleted their relationships are, because it's so difficult for them to be able to be a part of a partnership as well as try to raise these tiny humans.

Airon: My name is Airon. I'm from Austin. I'm 33, single and I work in tech. My favorite never-have-I-ever answer is I've never changed a diaper and I plan on keeping it that way.

(music plays)

Ben Brock Johnson: My name is Ben, I live in Massachusetts, Im pretty old but I look amazing. I am married and I have twins who are two and a half years old. My favorite never-have-I-ever answer is that I never have calculated the number of diapers I have changed. And I planned on keeping it that way up until this episode but I couldnt resist. I have changed, Amory, I believe, in the ballpark of 3 to 4 thousand diapeys.

Amory Sivertson: Okay, my name is Amory, Im not as old as Ben, I also live in Massachusetts. I have changed some diapers, like anyone else who grew up babysitting. But I honestly dont know if there are more in my future, because I dont know for sure if kids are in my future. I might end up childfree.

(music plays)

Ben: Amory, do you remember when we first started talking about making an episode that involved the childfree community on Reddit?

Amory: Yeah and I specifically remember seeing that community for the first time. Because it felt like I had entered another dimension. Or like, I was walking into a speakeasy where people were doing things and talking about things that I didnt think you could talk about.

Ben: But you know I showed it to you, right? You remember that part of it?

Amory: Yes I remember.

Ben: And Im the dad!

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: So you know, I just want to say that.

Amory: Well, if you are a Redditor, whether you have kids now or not, you may have stumbled upon the childfree community yourself. Because it has been exploding on Reddit. In just the last year or so, the group has doubled in size, from 300-thousand members to more than 700-thousand.

Ben: There are a few reasons for this. People who might have considered having kids in the past are looking at climate change and thinking they dont want to subject their kids to environmental destruction or take part in environmental destruction by having kids.

News reporter: The UN warns we only have until 2030 to keep global warming below a point where entire ecosystems will be lost.

Amory: Also money. Some estimates put the cost of having and raising a kid in middle class America at a quarter of a million dollars, without money for college.

News reporter: When adjusted for inflation, the cost of raising a child born in 2012 is 23% higher than for a child born in 1960.

Ben: But theres also this kind of long arc of history thing happening, too where women in particular have more and more freedom, and interest, in pursuing things other than bearing and raising children.

Amory: And theres an awakening happening about the culture of pressure around having kids in our society. And childfree is a part of that awakening.

Ben: I want to say that I think were a good duo to tackle this one, Amory. Because Im sympathetic to people who dont want kids, and I respect their point of view. But Im also a dad who is maybe a little skeptical of some parts of the childfree thing. And you are a fence sitter.

Amory: Another piece of lingo around childfree. A person who is on the fence about having kids. But yeah, I think we got this.

Ben: We got this!

Amory: Todays episode

Ben and Amory: Free to be childfree!

Ben: I'm Ben Brock Johnson

Amory: I'm Amory Sivertson and your'e listening to Endless Thread.

Ben: The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit.

Amory: We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. We tapped into our own childlike energy when we greeted Amy.

Ben: Amy!

Amy Blackstone: Yes.

Ben: It's Benny!

Amy: Hello.

Ben: Its Ben Johnson and Amory.

Amory: And Amory. Hi!

Ben: How are you?

Amy: Im well, how are you guys?

Ben: We're good.

Ben: Amy was well, but hungry.

Amory: Im sorry you haven't had lunch yet. That sounds rough.

Amy: Oh, no, that's okay.

Ben: Maybe if you had progeny, they would have served you some lunch by now.

Amy: Right? I know, one of many reasons I made such a huge mistake.

Ben: For the record, part of why we appreciated talking with Amy is precisely because she can have a sense of humor and balance when it comes to this decision.

Amory: Amy Blackstone is a sociology professor at the University of Maine. And, shes childfree. But thats not how she thought things would turn out.

Amy: If you asked me, I had a plan. When I was 10 or 11, I knew that I was going to start having children when I was 20. I would have two kids, a boy and a girl, and I would be the cool mom who picked my kids up at school and, you know, showed up with Capri Suns and in my leg warmers and mini skirt, this was the 80 so. I had this real vision.

Ben: Fast-forward a decade and a half, from the kids drink era of Capri Sun to the 1990s, aka the brief but glorious rule of the drink Sunny Delight. Amy had married her high school sweetheart, she had a PhD, a fulfilling career, and no children. Yet?

Amy: By the time I hit my mid 30s and was still answering with the, I'm too young, I'm not interested yet. Maybe later, I realized maybe something else is going on. Maybe I don't want to have kids! And that was the point at which I really started thinking more deeply about parenthood as a choice.

Ben: So Amy did what you might expect a doctor of sociology to do, she started looking into the topic.

Amy: I went to find research to sort of answer that question? Of whats wrong with me? Why am I not feeling that maternal instinct? And I discovered there was less sociological work on the experience of being childfree and on the process by which people make this decision than I expected to find.

Amory: Amy started doing her own research. And she and her husband Lance started a blog called Were {not} having a baby! They share research, rants, memes, and stories including the one about how they came out as childfree to Amys family.

Ben: A lot of childfree people use that expression, by the way. Amy says its not intended to take away from the LGBTQ experience of coming out, its meant to draw parallels between the ways in which people push back against what mainstream society sees as normal and natural and appropriate. For Amy, her coming out, took even her by surprise.

Amy: Lance and I were, happened to be hosting my nephew's first year birthday. And at his birthday party, my sister asked, "So when are you and Lance going to give Josh a cousin?" And like I just had this very visceral reaction to that question. And, you know, had been thinking for a while at this point that I didn't want to be a mother and felt uncomfortable in that place. And so when my sister asked this question, I just blurted out Never! And the whole room just sort of went silent.

Ben: Amy says this was a really uncomfortable moment, and it felt like an outsized reaction. But it felt right. So it was freeing to declare loudly that she really was not going to have kids.

Amory: Amy declared her decision even louder this year when she published a book on the topic. Its called Childfree by Choice. And probably the first step in understanding what it means to be childfree, is understanding what the term childfree means.

Amy: I chose to use that term. And, you know, the other term that people talk about is childless or voluntarily childless. And for many childfree people, the term childless doesn't accurately or adequately represent their experience. It's putting the emphasis on a thing that we don't have because we've chosen not to have it.

Ben: Yeah it suggests incomplete.

Amy: Right! Right.

Ben: Opting out of having kids isn't new. But the concept of it being a movement or a political choice childfree, voluntarily childless, whatever you call it seems to be growing. And the conversation about it in more recent years can probably be traced back to a couple of movements in the 1960s and 70s. First up, the second-wave feminist movement, which is connected to the FDA approving the birth control pill in 1960. Also, Roe v. Wade which came 13 years later, legalizing abortion. These two landmark events that gave people more control than ever before in the decisions about parenthood.

Amy: We're all better off when women have equal access to health care, to the workplace, to education, when they're able to control and make their own decisions about their reproductive lives and their bodies.

Amory: Next up, something called the zero-population-growth movement, focusing on you guessed it our expanding population post baby boom.

Amy: And then the zero population growth movement really raised our awareness about humans impact on the environment, particularly in Western nations with, with you know, different consumption patterns than other nations around the world.

Amory: According to Pew Research data from 2015, about 15% of women in the U.S. reach their 40th birthday without having given birth. But Amy is quick to point out that the data is far from perfect.

Amy: A woman who doesn't have a child is not necessarily a childfree woman. I mean, we know what proportion of women end their lives without ever having children. But we don't have good data on

Ben: Why.

Amy: Right. Exactly. Among those women, which of them is childless? Which of them wanted to become parents but didn't or couldn't for any number of reasons? And which of them is childfree?

(music plays)

Amory: What demographers do know is that were in an extended era of declining fertility rates in this country. Which is strange because there are more women of child-bearing age these days than there were a decade ago. But we dont know how many of the people opting out or delaying parenthood are doing so because theyre choosing to be part of this childfree movement. And so we dont know how big the movement is.

Ben: While you cant currently measure the growth of the entire childfree movement, you can measure it, on Reddit, where theres a childfree community that recently has been going gangbusters.

Chris: Currently we're growing at more than 1,200 subscribers per day.

Amory: Ya heard that right. And you heard it, from Chris.

Chris: I'm a 35 year old German guy and I'm currently in Suzhou, China and I'm actually one of the moderators of the childfree forum.

Ben: These days, Chris lives in China, but before that he lived in Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania, Liberia, Norway, Luxembourg

Amory: Alright, we get it! Hes well-traveled. Guy makes Jason Bourne look like a homebody. Chris has worked in banking, tourism, transportation, medical device technology

Ben: Alright, we get it! Hes also a swiss-army man. And Chris says his career-hopping, globe-trotting lifestyle has become a bit of a joke between him and the friends of his who have kids.

Chris: When they see me posting on Facebook, on Instagram, I'm now in Thailand. I'm in Vietnam, I'm doing a coffee roasting workshop in Bali and stuff like that. And they're like, yeah, and I'm just taking the little one to the park and here I am with the little one going to the doctor, to the dentist and whatsoever.

Amory: Chris says theres always a boom in growth of the subreddit this time of year. Probably because the holidays mean family gatherings

Ben: And family gatherings mean an onslaught of unsolicited comments, questions, and opinions about your life choices.

Amory: Things like...

A waterfall of different voices ask the following questions:

What, you dont like kids? Well its different when its your own, you know.

Dont you want to give your parents grandchildren?

But who will take care of you when youre old?

Youre young youll change your mind

But you two would make such cute kids together!

Ben: And how about this one, straight from the Pope

Pope Francis: Non avere figli una scelta egoistica.

Amory: Translation: Not having children is a selfish choice.

Ben: The childfree have a term for these kinds of statements: Bingos.

(music plays)

Chris: Yeah. Well, a bingo is basically coming from the old bingo game where basically you have a square piece of paper and you have a couple of common expressions that that you're going to see or that you're going to hear over your lifetime. Simply meaning, you hear it so many times that you're bound to have five in a row someday and then you're going to win a prize.

(A bunch of different voices say "Bingo!")

Read more:

No Kidding: The Childfree Movement Hits Close To Home ...

What a year. Like in years past, I have closely watched childfree trends in 2020. To start off my latest end-of-year childfree trending piece, how can we not start with the pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic has spurred talk that relates to the childfree choice in a couple of ways. The first has to do with whether the pandemic will result in less judgment of the childfree choice. Weve seen a good deal of post, forum and article discussion this past year on this reason not to choose to bring a child into the world. One of my top picks that captures the themes of discussion is Samhita Mukhopadhyays piece in The Atlantic.

My take the jury is out on the answer to this question. In our pronatalist world, it may very well be more that the pandemic reinforces reasons to delay having children, or wait to have another. We will get more of a sense of whether the pandemic might have had a positive impact on how society views the childfree choice once were not in the midst of it.

The second has to do with an issue that has been with us in the workplace for a long time. Even more than in normal times, during this pandemic, weve seen a good deal of discussion out there regarding how those without children end up picking up more slack for employees who are parents. While many people weigh in that, as labor and employment lawyer Domenique Camacho Moran, states, Employers need to be consistent the best plan is to know what your business can tolerate, so youre not treating any group better than the other, the situation during the pandemic continues to put a special type of strain on people juggling their parenting and professional lives under one roof that those without children dont have. That is not to say those without children dont have stresses of their own. The pronatalist default, however, all too often still reinforces priorities of parents in this difficult time.

I have loved seeing even more talk about the childfree choice in different countries this year, especially in India, Asia, and Africa. Here are just a few highlights:

Woe Is Me! How Do I Live in India Peacefully While Choosing Not to Have Children?

I Wont Have Children: The Trials of Choosing a Childfree Life

Were Married And Chose To Have No Kids Heres Why

When a woman doesnt want to have children

Meet Nigerian couples who wish to have no kids

Motherhood? No, thanks! Womens right to choose

Ive also seen even more of an increase in global tweeting with the childfree hashtag than ever before this year! My latest follow: @ChildfreeMalawi.

Speaking of global, like last year, more people continue to chew on how the climate crisis is influencing the childfree choice. Two years ago I put this topic in the worthy of mention area in my trending piece. In 2019, it made the trending category. And it does this year as well.

One piece in The New York Times, How Climate Anxiety Is Shaping Family Planning, takes on the idea that forgoing children as a means of fighting global warming is entering the mainstream.

I have pondered whether I think this is the case. In 2020, a good number of articles have addressed angles to answer this question. Here are just three:

No Children By Choice, Where Feminism Meets Ecology

Parenthood or the planet? Choosing the fight against global warming over having children

Why a generation is choosing to be child-free

More and more people have talked about this topic each year, and increasing numbers in younger generations are considering the childfree choice in relation to it, but entering the mainstream would connote its starting to be seen as a widely accepted choice. My take a little more time will tell.

In years past in my childfree trending pieces, I have bemoaned the various ways the word childfree is used. In 2020, in the twitter world, I have seen more of a trend of parents using #childfree to mean they are free of their kids at the moment, and in more general narrative usage of child free and child-free to mean the same.

However, childfree and child-free continue to be used to reflect people who dont want children as well. At least in my online reading travels, I tend to see these two terms used most this last year, and less of childless and childfree by choice. For parents and not, the odds are these patterns have their roots in algorithms that have higher search strength for given audiences. We also still often see many of the possible terms used in one piece for what I surmise is the same reason.

This year I have observed a bit of a downtick in what I will call more general childfree articles, e.g., how to respond to why you dont have kids, 10 Best Things about the Childfree Lifestyle, and the like. Ive seen a bit of an uptick in more in-depth and specific examinations. Of note is The Guardians childfree series, which included inviting childfree women to write in and share their stories and experiences.

Weve seen continued features on the childfree choice in major publications, but of note are more stories of the problems childfree women experience when they want to become sterilized as a permanent form of birth control. This past year I have seen more discussion threads, posts and articles lamenting a variety of ways medical paternalism manifests and prevents women from exercising this reproductive right. The pronatalist notion that doctors know better than women themselves do about their motherhood decision still has way too much of a hold on controlling this facet of womens reproductive lives.

While social and cultural challenges surely remain, when I look in the 2020 childfree rear view mirror, my biggest takeaway brims with gratitude. Thanks to the ever growing global childfree community of voices, in 2020 even more of the world has been talking about the childfree choice, which continues to foster its path to societal acceptance. Having been on this mission for over a couple of decades now, this makes me happy.

Heres to more global expansion in 2021!

More:

Looking Back: 2020 Childfree Trending - Childfree Expert ...

When I was eight years old, I sat down to watch the evening news with my parents and learned that a little boy of the same age had died of an infection which spread to his blood. The infection began with a dental cavity. His mom had tearfully explained to the media how she couldnt afford the $80 it would have cost her at that time the late eighties to have a dentist treat her son. The child died thanks to what, with proper care, should have been nothing more than a brief medical inconvenience requiring a shot of Novocain followed by a smiley-face sticker and orders to lay off the candy.

Ive long wondered how those parents endured that trauma. If I had to guess, Id say my reservations about one day becoming a parent began the moment I learned that, in America, it is possible to die of something as brutally mundane, common and reversible as tooth decay.

At forty years old, I now have a million and one reasons for remaining staunchly childfree. Frankly, the recent handwringing around our declining birthrate down to a 42-year low, according to the CDC is pointless when you fail to consider the truth about what it is to be American. Because no, it isnt just the pandemic which caused this.

I grew up in a working-class family who lived hand-to-mouth. My parents were teenagers when they had me and my sister; they worked for New York City as manual laborers until their backs, discs, and muscles literally gave out from underneath them. Like many American families, we were never more than a small emergency away from financial ruin.

Living in a society that cares little to nothing about its average person showed me from an early age that having children was risky business too risky for me to ever consider having my own (even though I could now very much afford to). I wouldnt know how to prepare a child for a life of outsized risk and pain brought about by cruel politics, inhumane policies, and an ethos of toxic individualism that allows a child to die for $80.

Conversations about the declining birthrate have been pegged to a lack of parental support, the high cost of medical care, and the inequitable division of labor in the home, as well as the ever-present specter of Covid. But such arguments feel incomplete. Because in a country still contending with and healing from Trump, with a dangerously conservative Supreme Court, and in a time whenherd immunity may as well be considered a pipe dreamdue mostly to willful ignorance, the pearl-clutching around fewer babies suggests that people are deciding against parenthood for practical purposes, and not for reasons stemming from profound trauma.

I vividly remember the state of my mental health during the last presidential election, and how it took nearly one week to learn that America was going to be given the gift of Trumps departure. This news was followed by two full months of live-streamed litigation, topped with a violent insurrection. I looked at my spouse and asked, Is this a new precedent? Are we supposed to endure this every four years? I dont think I can handle that. I spoke with a (childfree) friend whod said shed lost weight, unable to eat while the nation waited to learn of its fate.

Right before this, we watched as a religious zealot the second in as many years was gifted one of the highest seats in the country, mere days after Ruther Bader Ginsburgs death. I was nearly sick with fear for the women and girls with decades of reproductive decision-making ahead of them.

And now we remain at war with a deadly disease and those unwilling to do their part to eradicate it. For more than a year, people have listened as bad actors at all levels of society promulgated discourse and propaganda that loudly encouraged Americans all of us to care as little for each other as humanly possible. We are told that refusing masks and vaccines is a personal choice, when the reality is that, of course, it is a choice which impacts everyone.

Perhaps our historically low birthrates might be owed not to practicalities, but to the fact that people are finally paying attention. If ever I were at risk of reconsidering the status of my womb, the last four years and all they wrought would have snuffed out any thought of parenthood like a flame to water.

In truth, I think Id be a great mom. But Im ill-equipped to raise a child in a country far more unforgiving than even the cruel one I grew up in.I could not, in good conscience, pass that legacy on to a child who deserves so much better than America is prepared to give.

ChristinaWymanis a teacher and writer.Her work appears inMarie Claire,ELLEMagazine,Ms. Magazine, theWashington Post, and other outlets. Herfirst book isunder contract with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and she can be found onTwitter @cheeniewrites

Continued here:

Im childfree even though Id make a great mother, because America is no place to raise a kid - The Independent

Zo Noble was 32 when her doctor told her the clock is ticking.

The hysterectomy Ms. Noble needed to remove a fibroid was not up for discussion so far as her doctor was concerned, despite the fact that she didnt want children. It took years of pain and an emergency room visit before she was finally granted the surgery at 37.

The practice of a physician denying a patient surgery on the assumption that a woman will change her mind about wanting children is common.

Its as though a womans purpose in life is to have children, Ms. Noble, a British photographer who lives in Berlin, said, recounting a 2016 encounter with a taxi driver in Berlin a haven for alternative family structures when the driver nearly drove off the road after he discovered that she was married without children. Have one and by the second or third, youll like it, he told her.

Not long after that experience and others, Ms. Noble began photographing women who opt out of parenthood in her studio, and in January, she began a new portrait series, We Are Childfree an ongoing collection of photographs, stories and podcasts, documenting the lives of women who eschew motherhood. Between lockdowns, Ms. Noble has interviewed over 40 women from around the world, aged 21 to 78, and she has 200 applicants in the wings.

Until very recently, it was assumed that if you didnt have children it was a tragedy, because you were unable to, Meghan Daum, editor of Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed, a book that reframes the idea of mandatory motherhood, said. Or there was something wrong with you psychologically you were selfish.

Rhetoric about motherhood as an essential part of womens lives can be found across the political spectrum. Some examples: The most important job any woman can have is being a mother, Ivanka Trump said in a 2016 campaign video, echoing Michelle Obamas 2015 Tuskegee University commencement address. Being mom in chief is, and always will be, Job No. 1, the first lady said.

This political framing is certainly not new. In 1817, Napoleon Bonaparte told the French soldier Gaspard Gourgaud that women are mere machines to make children.

Around the world, women who dont procreate are often stigmatized, labeled unusual, unfulfilled and unhappy. A 2016 study on the stigmatization of child-free women and men in the journal Sex Roles found that some people even feel moral outrage at people who decide not to have children. The Catholic Church seems to agree: The choice not to have children, Pope Francis told an audience in St Peters Square in 2015, is selfish.

Ms. Daum looks at it differently. Whats selfish is having children that you dont want or cant properly care for, she said. Theres such a taboo in saying, The reason I dont have kids is because I dont want them. She argues that its more socially acceptable to quip that a fancy boat or expensive holidays are your child. And those jokes perpetuate the selfish misperception.

Perhaps part of this social unacceptability is that with an admission to never having children comes an underlying acknowledgment that women have sex for pleasure. When many are still threatened by womens sexual agency, some experts have argued that having sex for fun, rather than reproduction, is an affront to the long political and religious history of policing female sexuality and reproductive rights.

About four in 10 U.S. adults under 50 without children said they didnt expect to become parents, according to a 2018 Pew Research survey. And plenty of research suggests that nonparents tend to be happier than parents especially in the United States. A 2018 study from the Institute for Family Studies, which looked at 40 years of data on children and happiness in America, found that married mothers were less happy than married women without kids.

Others have noted the environmental benefit of not having children. Even having just one fewer child per family can save an average of 65tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year (to put that into perspective, going car-free, the second biggest carbon saving, conserves a total of 2.5 tons), according to a study published in Environmental Research Letters.

Ms. Noble says she believes that received ideas about how motherhood should be a desire of all women are largely influenced by patriarchal and religious ideology adhering to rigid gender roles. This surfaces everywhere from the doctors office to ads, media and entertainment.

And then there is the question of maternal regret.

When the question, Do you regret not having children? is posed to Claire Underwood on House of Cards in Season 4 by a houseguest, Claire responds: Do you ever regret having them? Its a rare television moment, but as apt as the line may be, Claires icy, opportunistic and in no way cuddly portrayal reflects the cultural narrative of women who dont reproduce as cold, morally dubious kid-haters.

Its Ms. Nobles hope that her project will help upend these ideas, by telling the stories of women who are happily not moms. Here are three womens stories; their comments are condensed and lightly edited.

I always knew I didnt want kids. At 32, after a breakup and a move abroad, I re-examined my decision and nothing had changed. The pro and con thing didnt come into the equation I just dont want children. When my partner and I realized that we wanted to be together, I was clear that children wont happen with me, and he felt the same.

In my 20s, I wanted a tubal ligation. I was in Canada at the time and heard: No. Youll change your mind. That condescension is baffling. To be told, You cant make that choice for yourself, though you would have all the responsibility to make many choices by having a child theres a disconnect there. People wonder why women are still raging. We dont have autonomy over our own bodies, thats why.

Theres this expectation that we must justify our choice. People ask, Why not? Why dont we ask the other question: Why are you choosing to have a child? Thats the bigger question. Do you have the resources and emotional ability? Or is it just a shot in the dark because you feel youre supposed to? With our friends, we see that a lot of women have children because its next on their checklist. The world is overpopulated. We have a climate crisis. If someone says they dont want kids, it should be like, Cool move on.

There are so many ways to make an impact on the next generation, without actually having kids. Im writing a childrens book with a kindergarten teacher (who also doesnt have kids), and my partner has a friendship with the downstairs neighbors kid. To say that one experience has a greater value over another undermines the experiences of people who dont live a linear life, like queer and trans people. Are our lives less valuable? Thats where religion comes in. Theres homophobia in that thinking.

We still have this 1950s ideal of what a household should look like. As everything gets broken down, instead of just putting things back into the same order, its important to rebuild the way we want.

I was recently diagnosed with endometriosis and the fibroid was huge. Doctors questioned my decision to have a hysterectomy straight away. I said: Ive known for over 10 years that I dont want kids. I work with them, when I want to see babies I do. They said, Think about it for a month. I thought, Ive got this thing growing in me and I want it out. Luckily, my gynecologist understood and she helped me to get the surgery.

Its surprising how many women are offended by my decision. They think, What must you think of me if Ive got kids? I dont think about you at all. I just dont want kids.

When I became a nanny I saw how hard it was and realized, children are great for a few hours, but no way am I having them. My mom said, What about this hole in your heart? I said, Ill buy a puppy or a really expensive piece of jewelry. Its egoist to want to procreate I dont need there to be another version of me. Or, because I love someone, why would I need to see what we can make together?

I ask people if they regret having them, and Ive heard a lot of yeses. You cant ever publicly say that, though. If a mom at the playground said that, no one would play with her kids. Of course, people regret being parents its tough. People that employ me are businesswomen at the top of their game, and they need me. In todays economic crisis, you also need to be able to afford a child.

People find my job flabbergasting. If you dont want kids, they think you must hate them. It all boils down to education, cultural differences and religion. Women who dont have kids are threatening because its a sure decision. People wonder, What else is she going to want?

My parents gave me a dollhouse when I was 5 and I filled it with dogs. I obviously didnt want kids, but kept waiting to want them. I saw friends who became single mothers and thought, I feel ambivalent; it wouldnt be fair to a child. People said, Have a child, it will all click in. Thats a really big gamble.

As a photojournalist, Ive shot for The Times of London and National Geographic; photographed a warrior initiation ceremony in northern Kenya; trekked 17 miles through harsh desert to find a collared cheetah I could never have had those experiences if I had a kid waiting for me at home. I wouldnt have been free enough in my mind to make the work that I was producing; I wouldve felt guilty being away for months. And childbirth sounds scary as hell to be torn asunder!

To be able to change your mind at a moments notice. To be free to develop yourself as a person, and not as a mother thats been great. Im shocked that women still do the majority of child care. When people ask, When are you going to have kids? they cant handle your freedom. If a woman is tied down with a bunch of kids, she cant make too much trouble. They want you to be on their level, but dont have the courage to say it. Men admit it when they check out and leave.

People think that women without kids will die alone. Actually, theres no guarantee that your children will care for you when youre old. And nuclear families are claustrophobic. This us against the world thing leads to that American individualism where you have your little biological pod and everyone else be damned. I think Golden Girls is a pretty good alternative model to that.

A lot of people invent explanations and say, Oh, youre single. Actually, I just happen to be single at the moment. When I travel to developing nations people ask, Why arent you a mother? I say, Im an auntie. (When my cousins kid turned 13, I introduced them to David Bowie; I get to be the cool aunt.) Ive also had moms care for me and include me. One woman sidled up to me at a ceremony in Kenya and said, I wish I didnt have to have them. And once, on safari, I overheard a mother say to her daughter as I walked by, There goes one independent woman.

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Female and Childfree, In Pictures - The New York Times

For some years now, anti-natalist groups have been proliferating on networks such as Reddit and Facebook, with thousands of members. Their arguments are varied, ranging from the most tragic vision of life as a path of unnecessary suffering, the meaninglessness of existence, genetic inheritance, human evil, the brutal economic crisis and ecology.

A philosophical movement whose roots are very old and can be traced back to the first religious traditions, from Buddhism to Marcionism and Catharism, and whose greatest exponents were the father of pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer, and the economist Thomas Malthus.

One of the most delirious cases linked to the question of consent occurred a couple of years ago in India, when a young YouTuber, Raphael Samuel, announced in a video that he wanted to denounce his parents for having fathered a child without consulting him and launched the Stop Making Babes campaign, arguing that being born is the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Something that is also defended by South African philosopher David Benatar, who published the essay Better Never To Have Been, focusing on the need for birth control to avoid overpopulation and its effects on the environment. Benatar argues that "having been thrown into existence is not a benefit, but always an evil".

All this was happening a couple of years ago but, according to a new study by the University of Arizona, the trend is on the rise, mainly because of concerns among many young people about climate change and uncertainty about the future of the planet.

A team of researchers interviewed some 24 adults aged 18-35 who said global warming has played a major role in their decisions about whether or not to have children. This is consistent with another recent Morning Consult survey of 4,400 Americans, in which one in four adults said that this was the reason for not having children.

A low-carbon alternative

The official data do not invite fertility: the World Health Organization (WHO) already warned in 2019 that almost 690 million people were going hungry in the world and that this number had increased by 10 million compared to the previous year and by 60 million compared to five years earlier.

Why should our future progeny sow chaos, increase the carbon footprint and live a miserable life?, ask conscious Z's and millennials.

"Many people are now severely affected in terms of mental health by concerns about climate change," wrote Sabrina Helm, associate professor of family and consumer sciences and one of the lead authors of the study conducted by the University of Arizona.

"Then you add in this very important decision to have children, which very few take lightly, and this is an important issue from a public health perspective. It all ties into this broader issue of how climate change affects people beyond the immediate effect of weather events," she added.

Interestingly, the months of confinement due to the COVID pandemic have not increased the number of births. The blackness of the social, economic and health context has taken its toll on the reproductive desires of many, as evidenced by another Brookings Institution report that describes the last 12 months as a "COVID baby crisis" and predicts between 300,000 and 500,000 fewer births by 2021.

And this question of "to have or not to have" has even reached politics. With reflections such as the one made in 2019 by representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a live broadcast via Instagram.

"Basically, there's a scientific consensus that children's lives are going to be very difficult," she said. "And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: is it okay to have children?"

While her comments drew angry reactions from conservative pundits at the time and she was even branded a "fascist,"the truth is that Ocasio-Cortez was echoing the new airs of an era in which children are no longer born with a loaf of bread under their arm, but with inherited debt.

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Generation Childfree: Not having children to save the planet - AL DIA News

Nancy Madrid has ruled out having kids due to concerns over climate change. (Photo: Courtesy of Nancy Madrid)

Nancy Madrid and her husband aren't climate activists, but do pride themselves on being "very intentional" about reducing their carbon footprint and living in an environmentally conscious manner. They limit their meat consumption. They conserve energy and avoid buying unnecessary items. They donate to underserved communities and vote for pro-environment measures. They recycle.

It's an eco-friendly lifestyle fueled by small household habits and one significant decision: no kids. "We do feel that our biggest contribution to reducing our carbon footprint is, of course, not having children," she says.

While the climate crisis isn't the only factor behind the couple's determination to remain childfree "there isnt really a desire to parent for either of us," the 34-year-old tells Yahoo Life it is what "ultimately solidified" the choice. Married for five years, the Texas-based pair represents part of a growing movement of young people for whom reproductive choices have been greatly affected by anxiety about climate change. For some, that means limiting the size of their family in order to reduce the impact a child might have on the environment. For others, it means not having kids at all, for fears of the impact a volatile, resource-depleted environment might have on a child.

A study published in the journal Climatic Change last November found that climate anxiety is factoring into reproductive decisions. Of 607 Americans between the ages of 27 and 45, 59.8 percent expressed being "very" or "extremely concerned" about the carbon footprint a future child might leave, whereas 96.5 percent were "very" or "extremely concerned" about that a child's well-being amid a climate-compromised world.

Whether or not to bring a child into the world is a decision that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, co-sponsor of the Green New Deal addressing climate change, acknowledged can have high stakes right now. "Even people my age are stressed and have anxiety about having kids just because we want to make sure we are bringing our kids into a healthy world, into a stable future, and we shouldn't ever have to be anxious about that," the 31-year-old congresswoman told TMZ in January 2020 as devastating bushfires raged in Australia.

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"The climate crisis specifically brings me a lot of anxiety, especially as we have begun to see more of the impacts in wildfires, extreme temperatures and displacement of communities," Madrid, who works in the nonprofit sector, says. "The lack of urgency for politicians to adequately address these issues while there is an inevitable threat of environmental disaster and a shortage of resources is pretty frightening. I think the pandemic, and more recently the winter storm crisis in Texas, definitely reaffirmed our decision and we were truly fortunate that we only had to worry about taking care of each other during such stressful and uncertain times. So, if there was ever any real desire to become parents, it would be greatly outweighed by the fact that we feel we are currently unable to provide a safe environment and future for our children."

For Sarah Baillie, getting a firsthand look at the challenges facing the planet through her work as a population and sustainability organizer at the Center for Biological Diversity affirmed her decision to not have children.

"It gave me confidence in my decision because it meant the effects of my choice go beyond my own life," the New York-based 31-year-old tells Yahoo Life of her work curating the Crowded Planet database, which looks at the impact population growth has on climate and extinction crises. "Similar to how you can switch to a plant-based diet for your own personal health, its nice to know that the decision reduces your overall impact on the environment too."

Both she and Madrid hope to normalize the child-free experience, whether it's motivated by environmental concerns. They've each had presumptive comments cast their way, and Madrid says she's "had folks take issue with me celebrating and even talking about being childfree, even though they are given all of the space in the world to celebrate parenthood." Married for almost two years, Baillie often encounters the warning: "You'll change your mind."

Not necessarily, says L.A. Sokolowski, an equestrian journalist who tells Yahoo Life she has no regrets about ruling out motherhood decades ago; she'll turn 60 in June. Sokolowski says the idea of "not overextending the capacity that the earth has to give us" resonated with her as a young woman, as did the rise of the birth control pill and an opportunity to not be defined by motherhood. Now divorced after 26 years of marriage wanting kids was a "deal-breaker" that she and her ex agreed upon early on, much to the chagrin of her in-laws the writer says that over the years, most of the pushback she's received has come from other women who have deemed her childfree lifestyle "selfish."

"I don't think there's anything selfish about having a bigger picture of the planet," she says.

Madrid admits that deciding to be childfree for ethical reasons can be a delicate topic to broach in certain company; some parents, or aspiring parents, see her choice as an indictment of their own lifestyle.

"I think its really difficult for child-free people to talk openly about their decision in general without some people getting upset or trying to convince you otherwise," she says. "I think when it comes to ethical reasons, it becomes even harder. The few times I have talked about this with parents, or people who planned to have children, I was made to feel as if this reasoning was kind of ridiculous. Someone once told me that the world has always been a bad place and that this day in age is no different, so that isnt really a good excuse not to have children. I have encountered defensiveness on their part, and I do think that a lot of times this stems from guilt and the fact that some people may not have just not really taken the opportunity to think through this, or even simply chosen to ignore the reality we live in."

But neither she nor Baillie cast judgment on those who do want children, though they hope that being candid about their own choices and the environmental implications will spark reflection and, as Madrid says, "at least get more folks thinking about what more we can do now for future generations" by organizing and pushing for pro-environment policies.

"Speaking more openly about my decision might at least get more people thinking about what more can be done to protect their own children," she adds. "The reason for these conversations is obviously not to shame people for their choices, but instead to create unity and put the pressure on leaders to implement changes that would promote a safer and healthier world for our future generations."

Notes Baillie, "the decision of whether or not to have kids is incredibly personal and it's human nature to defend our personal choices. If I want no judgment for my choice, its important to also be sure to respect others's decisions. I want everyone to have the information and resources they need to choose the right family size for themselves. I think everyone should appreciate the work it takes to raise kids and understand the environmental impacts of having them."

As anxiety over the climate crisis builds in 2018, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report warning that there were just 12 years to prevent irreversible and catastrophic damage protests over the pressure to reproduce amid government inaction to address climate change have gained momentum. Over the last few years, members of BirthStrike in the U.K. and No Future No Children in Canada have pledged to not give birth, either at all or until substantial progress is made.

But the founders of Conceivable Future, Josephine Ferorelli and Meghan Kallman, are quick to clarify that their women-led network is not anti-natalist (considering giving birth immoral) or in favor of population control measures which, they note, have historically been rooted in eugenics and targeted developing countries and low-income communities of color. They do not advocate for either giving birth or not giving birth, but rather for recognizing and "bringing moral clarity to the threat climate change poses to childbearing." Raising awareness about the impact climate change has on reproductive decisions can serve as an "entry point" into organizing and pushing for meaningful, large-scale progress, Kallman tells Yahoo Life.

"The point of these conversations is to build a little bit of political pressure and help people develop a language for whatever it is they're feeling," she explains. "How do we connect to the human stakes of this huge, huge crisis? How do we make a little bit of sense of it for ourselves around an issue that comes up for a lot of people, and then use that to really plug into the work that needs doing? ... The point is not whether or not to have kids; the point is, what can this political moment teach us about what we have to do? The fact that people are asking themselves these questions, having these thoughts, that's the problem. The problem is that we have built a world where people need to ask [themselves if the climate is too much of a threat to a future child]."

They hope that the personal stakes will motivate people to demand action an end to U.S. fossil fuel subsidies, for example that will make a bigger dent in the climate crisis, as opposed to an individual decision about whether or not to reproduce, or to recycle, or to car-pool, or any of the countless other choices humans guiltily contemplate day in and day out.

"We've been trained to see that it boils down to this individual decision," Ferorelli says. "We've been trained to see that as the only place where we have agency. And when we look at it that way, we're training ourselves from asking the bigger questions. So like, why is municipal water bad enough that people are drinking this much water in plastic? Why are people forced to choose between a 15-minute car ride and a two-hour bicycle ride to work? Why isn't there a good public transit option? All of these are questions that we're not in the habit of asking, because we think it's our own personal culpability. We think we're lazy and selfish Americans and it's all our individual fault."

It's all part of a "narrative" that industries who are culpable, and have the power to implement substantial change promote so that people feel that "it comes down to you."

"You might grow up thinking that overpopulation is this huge, gruesome problem and that it's your fault," she notes. "And [you feel like] it's your responsibility to make the only ethical choice there is, whatever that might be. But there is no right answer in this scenario there's only a huge amount of guilt and anxiety that people carry because we don't have the analysis to turn the question on its head."

Madrid says she knows the burden of saving the planet doesn't fall on her shoulders alone, but the decision to not add a biological child is one that she and her husband still stand firmly by.

"At the end of the day, we know that it is the biggest corporations and economic systems that are most responsible for the climate disaster," she says. "The little things we do as individuals cannot compare, but I think we can make a significant impact when we reconsider societal expectations.

"We truly feel that our best life possible is one that does not include children," she adds.

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As climate anxiety builds, these women are choosing to not have children - Yahoo Lifestyle

Nearly half of Canadians feel that their career options would be limited if their employers knew about their mental health issues, a recent report from Morneau Shepell has found.

The report, released Tuesday (March 23), measures mental health of working Canadians throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as the 11th month of the crisis continued to take its toll.

It found that 44 per cent of Canadians surveyed believed their careers would suffer if their bosses knew about their mental health. These employees were also found to have the lowest mental health of all groups surveyed, as well as being the least productive at work.

But the bosses may be struggling too, the report found. Half of managers believed their careers would be at risk if they revealed their mental health struggles and 42 per cent said they would feel more negatively about themselves if they had mental health issues. Half of managers also said they drank more in February, when the third wave was on its way, than they did in October, before the second wave.

Overall alcohol use increased among younger and older working Canadians alike during the pandemic, but at different times.

People under the age of 40 were twice as likely to report an uptick in their drinking during the first wave of the pandemic compared to the second wave. Parents were twice as likely as childfree people to drink more during the second and third waves of the pandemic.

Overall mental health has gone up and down for many Canadians throughout the pandemic. Canadians saw a big drop in their mental health in April of last year, as the full force of COVID-19 hit. It then increased somewhat until July and fluctuated throughout the summer before dropping to its lowest point in December. Since the new year, it has lifted slightly.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2021, 23 per cent of employees think that their employer will struggle and one per cent believe they will go out of business.

@katslepian

katya.slepian@bpdigital.ca

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44% of Canadians feel their careers would suffer if they revealed mental health issues: report - Coast Mountain News

When Melinda Sharpe began training to become a firefighter, she was the only woman in her course.

While her colleagues relaxed in hotels between gruelling training days, Ms Sharpe went home to breastfeed her one-year-old baby and got her two other young children to sleep.

"I'm not a quitter so it was something I was determined to do no matter how tired I was," she said.

"I was up two to three times a night while I was doing my recruit course and expressing [breast milk] on my lunch break.

"[The other participants] were pretty much childfree so they didn't have the responsibilities of family life."

She wants to inspire more women to enter the male-dominated field but warns it is not easy.

Supplied: Melinda Sharpe

Ms Sharpe, a former emergency department nurse from southern Queensland, passed the auxiliary course in 2017 and began on-call work at Inglewood, near Goondiwindi.

She is now a full-time firefighter in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, after three attempts at the challenging assessments.

Supplied: Melinda Sharpe

"On my first two goes I failed the physical test," she said.

"There's a beep test, claustrophobia test, then a set of online aptitude tests that you need to pass.

"We then go to a physical test, which is quite difficult, quite intense."

While she was physically smaller than most of the men, she was expected and determined to perform "like any of the boys".

"There's no difference for males or females. We all do the same testing," she said.

"Women are fighting to be treated equally."

Out in her community, Ms Sharpe is working to challenge people's assumptions that fire trucks are driven by firemen.

"I've jumped out of the truck before when we've pulled up in public and you'll hear a mum say to their little child 'Oh look, the firemen are here'," she said.

"And the mum will see me.

ABC Southern Queensland: Lucy Robinson

"I'm not one to jump in and correct someone but you can see that they've noticed it's not all firemen, it's firefighters.

"Just being a female out in the community will allow other females to see females in the role and maybe consider it as a career."

Several years into the role, she is beginning to see more women enter the profession.

Four women now work in Queensland Fire and Emergency Services' south-west region, up from two 12 months ago.

Nursing helped prepare Ms Sharpe for some of the confronting scenes she faces as a firefighter.

"I've seen it all. I'm not fazed by gory things," she said.

She prides herself on bringing a caring nature to the role.

ABC Southern Queensland: Lucy Robinson

"I'm not saying the men aren't caring but they can be a bit more abrupt," she said.

"[But] there are no issues being in a male-dominated profession really.

"The only thing that's changed from my nursing is basically the tea room conversations I'm learning a lot about old cars and sport."

Elsewhere in the emergency services, women are determined to turn around the gender imbalance.

Group leader of the Dalby State Emergency Service, Tanya Mudie, has spent the past two years handmaking hundreds of hair bows for female volunteers in south-west Queensland.

It's part of her self-funded 'Empowering Women' project, aimed at building up the confidence of the women in the service.

"It was very much a boys' club. There was the mentality that it was man's work that we were doing," Ms Mudie said.

"We do take the same tests, we have the same training, but I feel like a lot of the time the women are behind the eight ball and feel like we can't do it because we don't have that formative background a lot of men have.

ABC Southern Queensland: Baz Ruddick

"For example, I'd never held a chainsaw, I'd never been in a boat."

Ms Mudie says while the journey to success is often tougher for women, they are increasingly taking on leadership roles in emergency services.

"We're able, we're empowered, we can do it," she said.

"Women are finding their voice a lot more than they have before."

Continued here:

Female firefighters lead the charge for change and urge women not to give up - ABC News

Indra Nooyi, the first woman CEO of PepsiCo and an epitome of success for millions of women across the globe, claimed in an interview once; I dont think women can have it all. I just dont think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all. Along similar lines, in a 2016 article titled No, women cant have it all, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a renowned American international lawyer, talked about the challenges she faced when balancing professional success with familial responsibilities and why she could not have it all.

As evident then, having it all is a phrase used exclusively in the context of women who juggle a professional career (typically a high-paying and respectable one) with a family, without having to sacrifice one for another. It is often seen as an ideal that all women aspire to and only a select few can accomplish, and the two most important variables that go into achieving this ideal are a great family and a great career. Such a formulation of having it all for women is deeply problematic for several reasons.

First, if you are a single woman, a single mother, a childfree married woman, or a homemaker, then based on this definition, you do not have a shot at having it all. This is an immensely reductive definition of success, which essentially works by exclusion. For instance, according to Gallup world poll data aggregated from 2014-20, 23% of the worlds female population is currently married without any children, 16% is single, and 13% are single mothers. So are we to assume that these women, who comprise 52% of the worlds female population, cant have it all until they get married and/ or have children?

If having it all refers to a womans happiness and well-being, then why cant a single woman, a single mother, a childfree woman, or a homemaker be seen as having it all? More so because the existing research about the correlation between happiness and working full time with a family for women is, at best, contradictory.

A 2019 study carried out by a group of researchers from the University of Manchester and the University of Essex revealed that women with two children who are working full time are, on average, 40% more stressed out than those who are single but also working full time. It is quite plausible then that a single woman who works part-time has a more fulfilling and satisfying life than one who is married, has children, and works a high-powered corporate job. The former could be spending her time reading books, travelling, and gaining new experiences while the latter could be enmeshed in an endless quagmire of phone calls, household concerns, and business conferences.

The point being that there is no single definition of happiness and success, and they mean different things for different people. The reductive notion that only women who have both a career and a family can be considered as successful and/ or happy ignores the complexity of human personalities and desires. Also, it is heteronormative to the core.

If you are a single professional woman, then to have it all you need to have a partner and subsequently children. And if you are a married woman with a career, then having it all becomes a patriarchal shorthand for doing it all, especially if you have limited access to childcare or are still climbing the professional ladder. It implies that you need to excel at your workplace, then be back in time, go on playdates with your children, and follow it up by reading bedtime stories as you tuck them in bed. Unrealistic expectations like these set working mothers up for disappointment and guilt, and any rational person should be able to see through the exploitative intent of such a formulation of a successful woman.

Unfortunately, not only are such unrealistic expectations from professional women accepted within society, they are glorified. There is no glory in drudgery, and that is exactly what having it all encompasses for a regular, middle-class woman who wishes to climb the professional ladder while managing a family.

Therefore, it is high time that we redefine the notion of having it all for women to make it more inclusive and kinder. Such a redefinition should ensure that every woman on the planet, whether trans, disabled, cis-gendered, straight, homosexual, single, married, childfree, old, widowed, divorced, and so on has a reasonable shot at achieving it. And the only way to do it would be to let each woman decide, for herself, her definition of having it all.

Doing this would provide society with myriad definitions of having it all, and pose a daunting challenge to apologists of patriarchy who want professional women to believe that to be happy, they need a family. It would also undercut the notion held by those among feminists who believe that the only way for a woman to have an enriching life is to climb the professional ladder.

So, for all the women reading this, chances are you already have it all but even if you feel you dont, make sure that you define it for yourself rather than letting society do it for you. And once you do that, you will realise that having it all is not as challenging as it is made out to be, and the journey towards achieving it will be just as beautiful and enriching as the goal.

Today is International Womens Day

Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Having it all, redefined: Every woman gets to have her own definition. Dont let unrealistic expectations bu - The Times of India Blog

By Natalie Trznadel

Today, everybodys swift to weigh in on other peoples life choices.

Despite the push for equal rights, people still judge women for their decisions. We tell them how to dress, how much to weigh, when they should marry, and when to have children.

But telling women when they should procreate is particularly dangerous, as it implies that there is a right or a wrong time to create their own families. This couldnt be further from the truth.

RELATED:I Use My Medical Condition As A Reason For Not Having Kids

Theres never a right time or the wrong time for anything in life. Theres simply a time. The suggestion that theres a special moment for every single achievement in life could not be more absurd.

Life is a compilation of moments and actions. Theres never a good time for anything, be it obtaining a university degree, jumping into a relationship, planning a wedding, or birthing children, nor is there a bad one. We simply do things.

When we map out every moment of our lives, those extra-special moments lose significance. Spontaneity makes life worth living. Since we never quite know what will happen, life is constantly exciting. The fact that we can make decisions when we want to make them adds uniqueness to our journey.

Having children is a choice. Women already stress over performing and behaving in certain ways. Imposing deadlines and a time for childbirth puts additional pressure on women to settle down and start families.

Its way easier for men to decide to have a baby. They simply do it, then continue their lives with a child.

Women, on the other hand, dont have such an easy time. They put their careers on hold at least for a few months, their bodies go through major changes, and they must fight to maintain their own identity.

All this makes it an impossibly hard decision without even factoring the "when" aspect of it. Thats why its so important to understand that the time to do these things is everyones own choice.

RELATED:I Didn't Want To Be A Mom, But I Had Kids Anyway

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Telling women that theres never a right time to have kids basically suggests that they should never have them.

Some women consciously choose to stay childfree, but others want to have a family. Childbirth is a personal choice that doesnt require an outsiders opinion. It doesnt matter if a woman has her first baby in her early 20s or waits until shes turning 40. She should be able to decide without others pressure and judgement.

Its not that theres never a right time to have children theres actually always a right time.

No matter when or what you want to do, the time is now, and you just have to do it. If having a family is what you want, then do it.

Youre never going to be truly happy if you dont do what youre meant to do. Youre always going to be told that its not the right time, and youre always going to feel that way. There are always going to be doubts in your mind, youre always going to be worried about the money, youre always going to wonder if youre going to be a good parent.

However, the truth is that no one knows for sure that they can do it. They simply do it. Because thats what their hearts desire.

So, if you want to start a family, do so on your own terms.

People will always weigh in on when the right time is, but remember that theres always the right time to make your dreams of motherhood come true. Simply take that leap of faith and make sure it agrees with you inside. Thats the only right way to make any major life decision.

Remember, its your life and your choice.

RELATED:I Don't Want Kids: Don't Tell Me I Will Change My Mind

Natalie Trznadel is a writer and editor whose work has been featured on Unwritten, Thought Catalog, and YourTango. Follow her on Instagram or on Twitter for more.

This article was originally published at Unwritten. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Originally posted here:

Stop Telling Women That 'There's Never A Right Time To Have Kids' - YourTango