Why I was never free until I was childfree: pro-natalist pressures and the unseen consequences

I, like many women, wanted or assumed I would have children. I held a life map in my mind of how and when it would happen. There was a schedule of life goals planned around the eventuality. We, women, anyone female-presenting in a western country in my case, are bombarded with the message to reproduce from the moment we are born. We must reach specific goals to be happy. These typically include the systematic acquisition of a partner, job, home, car, and marriage, swiftly topped off with having children, termed in some circles as ‘The Lifeplan.’

In my twenties, I met my now ex-husband and ‘The Lifeplan’ became our goal.

We worked hard to achieve the checklist of expectations and eventually, after eight years, found ourselves at that final hurdle. A hurdle, I will add, that I had avoided quite successfully and passionately from the age of sixteen. Unfortunately, it was the time, the dreaded thirties. A time when all women, either directly or indirectly, are told that life as you know it ends. You hang up your childish things, well, the childish things you enjoy, and trade them in for ‘adulthood’ which somewhat ironically replaces your childish things with a child.

The pressure of thirty, that deadline, is always there. Hanging over your head like an annoying, Alice-in-Wonderland-type stopwatch. Tick, tick, tick, don’t be late!

It is a constant reminder that your life is not your own. It belongs to your non-existent child. You are reminded at every birthday or event you attend. Every time you go to a wedding, family party, or get-together, the inevitable question will be asked, “So, when are you having kids?” It’s enforced with, “Well, aren’t you nearly thirty? Better get on that!”

I noticed that I’d started avoiding family gatherings. For some reason, people thought that they were entitled to know why I hadn’t ticked these life boxes and why I wasn’t checking them at the assigned time.

The Lifeplan and all associated expectations are an invisible mental load. The extent of which I only understood after I made my childfree choice.

Examples come to mind, you might choose your career path in preparation for having children. Deciding that there is approximately a decade of work and then you will need to adapt, change to part-time or quit entirely to raise children. Even now, women are the primary caregivers of the young, so, we keep it in mind even if we’re unsure. Some people will attend higher education to meet a partner, knowing they will soon be dependant on them. In other cases, the planning begins from the minute they meet their partner.

People who are sure they will have children focus on it even in the most abstract sense with every choice they make. My ex and I, as an example, would discuss our finances, taking time off for pregnancy or for the permanent move into my role of a stay-at-home mother and how much we would need to put aside for the associated costs. It impacted every single aspect of our lives. Planning around future kids impressed on our freedom, taking away our spontaneity and options.

All of this shows how there are long-term consequences to the assumptions imposed on us.

So, when it was asked on Twitter: “Is being childfree the same as the time before you have kids?” I could, with surety and passion, say that being childfree is nothing like being pre-children. When parents say “I understand what it’s like, I wasn’t always a parent.” I can safely say, no, you don’t.

You don’t understand that before kids you were still thinking about kids and making decisions based on that possibility, which childfree people don’t do.

When I made my decision to be childfree, the mental energy that once went towards planning for children and the surrounding practical effort was removed. The limitations on my life, such as the future pressure to be the main caregiver to children disappeared. The responsibility for their education and the expected changes to my body all vanished. I no longer needed to maintain the pretence of my failing marriage. I was financially free because I’d only have to look after myself and my life was suddenly my own in a way it never had been. I had no child-orientated obligations on my remaining time or my mental load.

I understand that having an awareness of future responsibility may seem sensible and for those who have kids, sure, there is a benefit to it. It’s sensible and necessary because children are expensive and ideally require planning. However, the length and breadth of it, even for people who choose parenting is excessive. For those of us who chose the other path, it is a form of completely unnecessary social and self-imposed oppression. It becomes a metaphorical noose around your neck that bites further into tender skin with every year you stalk closer to the big 3–0 or in my case, two years past it.

I can hear parents shouting, “Yes it was! I was free!”

What I ask is, were you? While you were physically free of children you were not free of the expectations associated with the possibility of having children and these are two very different things.

Whether familial or societal there is pressure and in your mind. The idea that one day you will have children, whether vague and unsure or solid and absolute, is a form of mental restraint that childfree people do not have.

It’s difficult to see these ‘normal’ life occurrences as pro-natalist pressures, but they are and they affect every choice we make. It’s like a shadow, one you know is there but are rarely aware of it. I’m sure you’re sitting there wondering how many decisions you may have changed if you had known? If you could have seen and understood how these things were affecting your life? Could you have been childfree sooner? I know my life would have been different. I only hope that in the future we can reduce these expectations on women and allow them to be truly free to make whichever choice is best for them.

Edit:Corrections (Grammar & Syntax)