On Being Childfree

I’d love to think that I have many things in common with Tracee Ellis Ross, Helen Mirren, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Paulson and Oprah Winfrey, but really there’s just one – like them, I’m childless. What I should say is, like them, I don’t have children. I hate the word “childless”. It immediately infers some lack, an absence of, or a void – like homeless or helpless.

Each of these celebrities has had their decision not to have children picked over mercilessly in the press. It’s still perceived as somewhat transgressive for a woman to deny her biological “destiny”, but as author Elizabeth Gilbert, another abstentionist, said on her blog, “It is every bit as important in life to understand who you are NOT, as to understand who you ARE. Me, I’m just not a Mom…”

Most of us grew up believing motherhood to be mandatory. That’s because we live in a culture which views parenting as an essential part of a happy and fulfilling adult life. We need only look back at the childless characters we encountered in fairytales as children to understand where the coercion into motherhood begins. From Snow White’s evil stepmother to the cannibalistic witch in Hansel and Gretal, women without children were pitched as bitter, amoral outcasts.

Hollywood promotes a similar narrative. In the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as her cousin Elizabeth I, Elizabeth is the one presented as pitiable simply because she has no children. Despite her enormous power and wealth and the fact that Mary’s throne is in jeopardy, Elizabeth tells Mary, “You seemed to surpass me in every way.” I based my Master’s thesis around the figure of Elizabeth I, and her status as a single, childless woman was nothing less than strategic and intentional in order to protect her power. She was highly competent, forceful, intelligent and dynamic and reigned for 44 years; not a woman to be pitied, but one to be admired.

It’s not surprising then to read in Psychology Today that, “Remaining childless by choice...is met with prejudice and even moral outrage. This is particularly true for women, whose gender identity and social value have long been tied to fertility and motherhood.” In fact, a 2017 study published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research found that “Participants rated child-free men and women as significantly less fulfilled than men and women with children. This effect was driven by feelings of moral outrage – anger, disapproval and disgust – toward the voluntary child-free people.”

As a child-free woman, I’ve never experienced this kind of vitriol. Although perhaps it makes a difference that I fall into the not-partnered-up category. Women who are married and choose not to have children are viewed far more suspiciously; peers can pity women like me, assuming we would have if we could have. To have the right circumstances and still turn your back on bearing children is too blatant an encroachment on traditional gender roles for some to swallow.

I don’t feel that my life has been “less” for not having had children. I can understand why others who are mothers might look at me and think my existence is emptier because of it. Of course when you have children you can’t imagine being without them. But it works in reverse too – I can’t imagine having them. I always suspected motherhood wouldn’t be my path. I say suspected rather than felt certain because in my twenties I assumed I’d probably wind up, someday in the far off future, like everybody else, with a husband and children. I didn’t dream about it, covet it or put any plan in place to have it, but didn’t these things just happen somewhere along the rocky road of our late twenties and early thirties? Not to me, as it turned out. And that never felt unusual or as if I had missed out on some monumental opportunity.

I’m always intrigued to read other women’s accounts of being child-free. More often than not, they’ll contain the caveat that despite not having their own children, they adore other people’s. They confess to being surrogate mothers to goddaughters, favourite aunts to nieces and nephews, and beloved babysitters of best friends’ infants. At the risk of sounding like some kind of Cruella de Vil-like character, I’d rather spend time with my dog. I have six nieces and nephews, and I admit I have never been a hands-on aunt with any of them. As Kim Cattrall once said, “I’m a woman of a certain age who doesn’t have kids… I enjoy kids but not for long periods. I think they’re adorable and funny and sweet, and then I have a headache.”

Though it doesn’t always feel like it living in the suburbs of south county Dublin, Ireland has the third-highest rate of childlessness in the developed world, according to a 2018 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In fact, 18.4% of Irish women over the age of 45 do not have children. Despite this surprisingly high statistic, there’s very little dialogue around the subject in this country. Any articles I’ve come across written by women about their decision not to have children have been in UK magazines or on American websites. More often in Ireland, the narrative is around women who can’t or have struggled to become mothers.

Not having children never scared me. Perhaps the fact that I’ve always had terrific child-free role models has helped. Three of my past mentors were women older than me who had chosen not to be mothers, for a variety of reasons. They were women I admired hugely, and liked enormously. They were smart, funny, fulfilled and happy, professionally and personally. I liked the look of their lives very much. I’m also fortunate in that my sister, who is 18 months younger than me, has also chosen not to have children.

As British filmmaker and creator of the documentary, To Kid or Not To Kid, Maxine Trump said, “I think it’s a wonderful choice to have children, but if everyone has to do it; it’s not a choice.” Women have fought for decades for the right to choose, between a work life and home life; between being a wife, a partner or a singleton; to go full-term with a pregnancy or terminate it. But the choice not to have children remains something of a battleground. I wrote about rethinking the narrative around happy endings for this website a couple of months ago, and just like marrying Prince Charming, becoming a mother isn’t for everyone.

There’s no cookie-cutter beginning, middle and ending for women’s lives. Each of our paths is different, and each is equally valid. We don’t all have to live in the same way, and wouldn’t it be boring if we did? To quote the incredible Gloria Steinem, “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.”

And anyway, if there were no child-free women in the world, who would adopt all those abandoned dogs that need rehoming? Mothering isn’t my mission but maybe dog rescue could be.

Marie Kelly, September 2020.

Have you made a similar decision? We’d love you to share your story in the comments below…