orbitedbyerin

I wasn’t always childfree or had any real qualms before. I had just never thought about it. During my grade school years I had this mindset that it’s just something you eventually want when you get older. Live your life in your teens and young adult years, then it will fall into the place that you start a family. Like a puzzle fitting all together.

This changed around the end of college. My mom would occasionally bring up children and having future grandchildren, and something felt off this time. I wasn’t particularly excited about the idea of children. This would have been within my early 20’s. Though again, I compartmentalized it as just not being “ready” or wanting to discover myself and enjoy life till then.

When I hit 24/25, it shifted. Some of my classmates from high school began having kids. It’s wild to see people you grew up with now have babies. However, what was different is that I did not see this as…a positive initially. I remember my first thought being “Why would you have them now?” Mind you these people and their families seemed happy, at least from what you can tell from the brief glimpse social media gives you. And before now, a lot of our parents were having kids around this age normally.

This stirred a thought in me, how did I actually feel about having children? Most of my thoughts on this topic just defaulted to “that happens later”. What if I woke up one day pregnant, what would I do or how would I feel? I had never taken the time to think about it. And I was half way to 30, which a lot of people really consider children in their lives by then.

Between the ages of 25 to 27 have been extremely formative for me in this regard. I had never had young children in my life to have first hand experience or a baseline, where I wasn’t also a young child. So I tried to do research on my own.

One of my biggest issues starting this discovery and still now, is how seemingly benign having kids can be for some people. I had an ex tell me that “I don’t think I could plan for it, I would just want it to happen.” I didn’t say anything at the time because I wasn’t sure myself, but that sentiment made me extremely nervous. How do you not plan extensively for a life long, forever responsibility like having children? Aren’t you setting yourself up for failure? Isn’t your child on the line?

This was a signal to me that I had a different view than I expected on children and was the huge catalyst for all of this. I came to realize I never viewed having a family as “babies are adorable and I want to love my children and be there for them, watching them grow older, etc.” that I argue a lot of people view having kids view it from. I was viewing it from the logistical stand point and considering the negative ramifications far more than I was feeling warm and fuzzy about it.

In my opinion, to be the best parent, you need both of these things. The best parents are the ones with all the love in the world to give, while also being able to understand the logistics and dynamics that change when you have kids. Finances, sex life, free time, mental health, goals, and be okay with that. From my understanding, that all instantly changes when you start a family. I think there is also a large amount of people who make it work with what they have, but I imagine that adds a lot of stress and strain on both the parent and child. I just think about all the people I know with parents who weren’t good to them. Those parents could have truly wanted them, but they weren’t ready for when the responsibility came. That can ultimately leads that child to grow up always having to work on themselves, their parents, and make up for the things their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t provide them. It actually alters their course in life. There is so much to that.

If you can’t already tell, I don’t take child rearing lightly, at all. I view it as one of the biggest choices in human life you can make. In doing my personal reading, I saw someone say “Bringing a life into this world should be just as serious as taking one.” I agree with that sentiment still after all this time. When people just shrug and say it will all be fine, I don’t get being so non-chalant about it.

All of this to say, this discovery led me to what I have now understood as being childfree. I logistically understand what goes into child rearing, and I don’t like what that would mean for my life, even with all the positive more emotionally charged reasons to want kids.

I don’t hate kids, babies, or family life. I find it quite cute actually. I am nervous around babies and toddlers but that’s just because I view them as so fragile. I think the childfree term is attached to some more aggressive view points about hating kids, hating everything child related, etc. I would point to the childfree and the regretful parents subreddits to get a glimpse into what I mean.

My choice to be childfree isn’t because of an issue towards kids themselves. It is the soul encompassing, deep and guttural feeling within myself that I am not meant to be a parent. I don’t want the late night fussy baby, the toddler stages, the teen stages. I just don’t. The responsibility is crippling to my freedom and dreams. I actually reached this stage mid way this year. It’s cons do not outweigh the pros for what I want my life to look like. And that is okay. Having a child is a choice, not a requirement for a happy life. Society pressures you into it a bit, and makes you feel that you will never truly be fulfilled unless you have them. I believe fulfillment means something different for everyone…

It’s not what fulfills me.

I’ve had people in my life tell me my mind could change. That I shouldn’t label myself childfree because what if it does? I can’t know what the future holds. I can’t know if it will so why would I plan for it to? Or let that steer me towards having them when I know now I don’t want them. If I do ever have some sudden change of heart, then we cross that hurdle when we get there. But if I feel certain now, I have to trust I am certain. If I am feeling like this, I know at the very least I shouldn’t be raising kids anytime soon.

I get to live my life by my choices. I am sick of caring about what others think about the decisions I make for myself. I have been letting go of so much of that these past few years. If I am not hurting those around me, why should it matter? In the past I was just allowing the door to be open because I thought that was just what you had to do. But it’s really freeing to know I can close it too.

I implore you, reader, if you don’t already have children. Think about it. I don’t like swaying people one way or the other. I am not in the business to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do with your life. I just implore people to think about it more in depth and what having children means to you. View the choice from all possible angles. Positive, negative, financial, etc. This could mean you find you really want kids! And more power to you, if that is what will make you most happy, that is great. The best parents out there feel that way. Like I said before, I don’t have these antagonistic views of it all.

I didn’t want this to come off preachy. I felt inspired to talk about it in the moment, and have had some struggles coming up with compelling discussion for a blogpost.

Feel free to email me at orbitedbyerin@gmail.com if you ever wanted to talk about this more with me! I love hearing peoples thoughts on it.

Stay safe out there.

-Erin