I always wondered when I would begin to feel the biological urge to have a baby.
When I was 25 and he was 28, my former partner told me that he wanted to have kids by his 30th birthday. Instead, when the day arrived, I threw him a surprise party and drank most of a bottle of champagne, marveling at the fact that I wasn’t yet pregnant, without a trace of the disappointment I knew I should feel.
I had a dream that I was in labor at the hospital and heard a surprised murmur from the medical staff assembled at the end of the bed. Swaddled inside the bundle of blankets they handed me was the glossy black kitten that I’d given birth to instead of a baby. With worried looks on their faces, they watched to see what my reaction would be. I just shrugged and said, “That’s fine.”
We had always talked about having kids, to the point that I’d never really had the space to consider that I might not want to—I just kept thinking that I wasn’t ready just yet, but I surely would be once my biological clock started ticking. I tried to expand my self-concept from the person I had always been to a soon-to-be mother, holding other people’s newborns and imagining how I might feel if they were mine. I left books like Here’s the Plan: Your Practical, Tactical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood half-read on my bedside table, knowing that I should prepare for the inevitable, but unable to convince myself that this knowledge was anything more than abstract. It felt like I was studying the behaviors of mothers and their babies as an anthropologist rather than as a future mother myself.
Spoiler alert: Today, I’m married to a man who felt as aggressively ambivalent toward the idea of devoting his life to raising children as I did when we met. We have not one, but two black cats; two dogs; and zero plans to ever have kids.
I don’t know why I didn’t get pregnant back then, or why I’m seemingly immune to the forces that make a majority of people feel that having children is an integral part of their life’s purpose. But I do know that with every passing year, I find new reasons to be grateful that I’m a member of a generation of women who have so many more choices than they did in the past, and that I was given the chance to step out from under the pressure to help someone else hit traditional milestones that never really felt fulfilling to me.
The truth is, the biological urge to have a baby that I kept waiting to feel—the one that pop culture tells us magically activates in women of a certain age, prompting us to fling our birth control packs away from us—it doesn’t actually exist. Our “biological clock” is simply our desire to have children, made urgent by awareness of our own age; our exposure to other people’s children within our social circle; and the implicit or explicit pressure we might feel from our partner, our family, or society. It’s been posited that women who don’t want children might have descended from countless generations of women who felt exactly the same way that they do, but who lacked the autonomy to choose not to have children; and so, they passed this unusual trait down to us: one of the first generations of women who actually have the power to act on it.
But regardless of the reason that some people don’t crave children in the way that others do, there are a variety of emotional and practical reasons why people don’t have children, including changing conditions in our own lifestyles and in the world at large. The reality is that a growing number of adults are making the choice not to have kids; and so, talking about the legitimacy of this decision is incredibly important in this moment. That’s why I wanted to take the time to talk through some of the considerations that were most influential for me in deciding not to have kids, in the hopes that someone out there who might be feeling confused or guilty about their own predilections will know that they’re not alone.
Before I begin, please know that this post is not a judgment on those who do feel that having children is an absolutely integral aspect of their time on Earth. The devotion that parents feel toward their children from the moment their cells begin to coalesce is one of the most profound forces in existence. I find this absolutely beautiful, and will never fail to cry when I find out that someone I love is becoming a parent, because I can imagine all that it means to them.
But I also believe that we’re entering a period of history where more of us will be forced to ask ourselves, “What if I’m on the fence about having children, and I’m not sure how to reconcile all of the potential considerations at play—both in my own life and in the world in general?” If those kinds of questions have ever crossed your mind, this post is for you.
So, here are the 5 considerations that influenced my decision to not have kids.
1. The Impact of Having Kids on Free Time & Creative Pursuits
Many people feel called to bring something to life that doesn’t yet exist, but that they feel just might make their corner of the world a tiny bit brighter. For some people, that might be a child; while for others, it might be a novel, or a restaurant, or a non-profit. Others have no grand ideas of how their hobby will change the world; they just want to be able to go out after work without worrying about finding a babysitter, or curl up with a good book in uninterrupted peace and quiet, or simply spend their off-hours not being responsible for someone else’s well-being.
A 2018 survey for the New York Times found that the desire for leisure time was a consideration for 42% of respondents who ended up having fewer children than they’d originally planned, as well as 36% of respondents who weren’t sure that they wanted kids at all. Though the term “leisure time” makes the activities that we do outside of going to work and raising a family sound trivial—and even serves as fodder for the argument that not having kids is selfish—the things that we do in our free time can be crucial to our sense of fulfillment, and to our sense of self.
Everyone has a finite amount of energy and focus every day, forcing us to choose what we allot it to. I know that as someone who works full-time—even though I no longer have to spend two to three hours a day commuting to and from the office—it really does take conscious effort to squeeze all of the things that are important to me into twenty-four hours: dividing my most productive hours between my job and my novel; taking care of my body; appreciating my time with my husband and our pets. And it also takes conscious effort to prevent these moments from being compromised by leftover concerns from the preceding hours, or to-do list items for the following day. Now that I’ve engineered a routine that allows me to split my attention between each of the pursuits that makes my life worth living, I would find it extraordinarily difficult to cede that control to tiny humans who would need and deserve my undivided attention. And because creative work requires the same kind of undivided attention and unquestioning devotion, it can be hard to see a way to consistently nurture both children and art.
I do wonder sometimes if I would have felt more compelled to have kids if I didn’t feel so compelled to write books and essays and music. I have always been the kind of person who needs a purpose toward which to direct my intense focus and creative energy; so it has never been hard for me to imagine how I might fill the time that’s not filled with raising children. But if I weren’t this way—if I looked at the hours after work or on weekends as empty time that I didn’t know how to fill, that I dreaded not knowing how to fill—would I still feel the same compulsion to protect it?
I’m not sure, but that version of my life is as hypothetical as the one where I’m raising the children that my former partner and I had imagined having. The version of my life that I now inhabit is one where I’m incredibly grateful for the uninterrupted hours that I can devote to the work that makes me feel as though my life is purposeful, fulfilling, and streaked with beauty that I wouldn’t get to experience any other way. And isn’t that what we’re all hoping for, underneath it all, no matter how we decide to spend our lives?
2. The Impact of Having Kids on Relationship Satisfaction
For so many couples, raising children seems like a natural outcome of their love for one another—including, for many, creating a human being that is literally a combination of their two sets of genes. (That’s still wild to me!) But no matter how much joy or meaning it might bring to our lives, raising children also undoubtedly consumes large portions of our time, money, energy, and patience; so it would be impossible for this to not impact our romantic relationships. Especially in those early years when a child needs constant supervision, by necessity, many of a couple’s interactions become centered around parenting; so the attention that they may previously have devoted to their relationship might get diverted elsewhere. (I can attest that this totally happened to us when we adopted a new puppy last year—my husband and I found that we needed to reconnect after those early weeks when every conversation revolved around where Scout was and how long it had been since she’d last peed!)
When you take a long-term view, raising children is consistently named as the most rewarding experience of many people’s lives; but from moment to moment, I think many parents would agree with the finding that parenting is associated with an increase in both positive and negative emotions. Many parents simply feel more stress on a daily basis than non-parents do, even if it’s coupled with the unmatched joy of watching their children grow up. So, for many couples, it’s understandable that raising children can insert stress into areas where it didn’t exist before, or exacerbate existing fault lines. The division of responsibilities can put pressure on the healthiest of relationships; even partners who split chores equally prior to having children can begin to feel the resentment of either having to earn more of the family’s income, or having to do more of the family’s chores, with many couples unintentionally falling into more traditional gender roles after a baby is born, even when women are the primary income earners.
Having been through a divorce before, my senses are keenly attuned to the distance that can grow between two people who feel worn down by the conditions of their lives; as well as the resentment that can grow between two people who each feel that the other isn’t carrying their weight, or doesn’t sufficiently appreciate their efforts. So, my husband and I have constructed the most egalitarian, gender-role-conscious arrangement that we can. We divvy up tasks like cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, and paying the bills based on who dislikes them least and who has the time. But though we initially tried to resist assigning one another to the seemingly old-fashioned roles of “breadwinner” and “caretaker,” we’ve found that we can’t each divide both roles equally without it sapping our sense of contentment, both within our relationship and within our individual lives. I’m lucky to have a full-time job that’s fulfilling to me and that pays our bills. When Chris tried working the hours that I do, he felt overburdened and completely unfulfilled; and when I tried to split the care work with him during the day, it left me feeling frustrated and unproductive. So, Chris switched to freelance work that allows him to be the dog dad he was always destined to be, taking the lead on attending to the pets’ needs during the day; which enables me to achieve the deep focus I need to do my job well (though periodic pup breaks remain a key part of my workday).
My relationship with Chris is the most important thing in my life, full stop; and the fact that we don’t have kids allows us to focus on perpetually improving our marriage in ways like this, paying close attention to signals that we need to tweak the way we do things or the way we interact with one another for the longevity of our relationship. This is something that I’m incredibly grateful to be able to commit to for the rest of my life; and I have never felt for a single moment that something is missing from all that we’ve built together just because it won’t include the joint experience of raising children.
3. The Financial Impact of Having Kids
In the United States, it’s estimated that raising a child through the age of 17 currently costs $267,000. In the New York Times survey that I mentioned earlier, childcare expenses were the #1 reason that respondents decided to have fewer children than they’d originally planned, selected by 64% of respondents; and they were a major factor for 31% of respondents who weren’t sure that they wanted to have kids at all. Other finance-related concerns were at the top of the list as well, including financial instability, student debt, lack of paid family leave, and inability to afford a house for their family to live in or tuition for their kids’ education. (That number I mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph? That’s the total that it costs to raise a child before college, which can tack on an additional $100,000 to $200,000 or more for a four-year degree, depending on the type of school.)
In researching this article, I kept coming across the finding that parents are less happy than non-parents; and one study that examined the causes behind this phenomenon found that it’s only true in countries like the United States, where it takes considerably more money and effort to raise children than in countries that are similarly wealthy, but that offer families more support. When social programs are created to reduce the burden that parents have to take on to raise healthy, happy children—things like mandated parental leave or free daycare—they’re able to enjoy the experience of parenting more. (And as with many areas of our society, the pandemic has made the gap between the support that parents need and the support that our society is willing to give all the more clear, potentially motivating even more people to forego having children, with the supposed ‘pandemic baby boom’ having turned out to be quite the opposite. Many other parents—particularly mothers—have been forced to drop out of the workforce entirely.)
Having made the case for how stressful and expensive the United States makes it to raise children, I want to transition to talking about what a couple’s financial picture might look like if they didn’t have to worry about any of these expenses. As DINKs (Double Income, No Kids, as our financial planner facetiously refers to us), we’re able to ask how, exactly, we want to spend our money on a macro scale. Discussions of what people might do with the money that they won’t spend raising children tend to bring to mind luxurious homes and frequent vacations. But I would propose that we think more broadly about where we want to devote our resources throughout our lifetimes, and the amount of good that we can do with the money that’s left over after paying for our basic living expenses.
For example, maybe you want to devote a significant portion of your income to supporting charities that you feel passionate about; or you want to retire early so that you can volunteer for a cause you care about or devote more time to a passion project. For example, about half of my income goes to our basic expenses and savings; a quarter goes toward retirement so that we can stop working while we’re still healthy enough to enjoy it; and a quarter goes to causes that I care a great deal about. Our will first makes sure that our extended family is taken care of; but most will be allocated to the charities that we believe will continue to be vital to the world no matter what decade the money reaches them. I don’t say any of this to try to demonstrate that I’m a good person, but to let other people know that this is a completely legitimate way to structure your finances if you’re fortunate enough to have a say in where your disposable income goes. We can begin to make the difference we want to see in the world with every single paycheck that we earn.
4. The Impact of Having Kids on Mental Health
The existence and prevalence of postpartum depression is now (thankfully) common knowledge; but it’s estimated that during pregnancy, 1 in 5 women experiences anxiety, and between 1 in 7 and 1 in 10 women (depending on the study) experiences depression. The rates are even higher for women who have a history of mood and anxiety disorders; and so, when I was considering whether or not to have kids, I was overwhelmed by the prospect of managing my anxiety and depression while I was pregnant and breastfeeding.
Based on my many years of experience living in my body, I knew that the hormonal fluctuations that take place during the prenatal and postpartum periods would leave me incredibly vulnerable to recurrences of the anxiety and depression I’ve had for as long as I can remember. One doctor advised me to stay on the prescription that I use to manage my mood, since the presence of stress hormones like cortisol could make me susceptible to delivering a baby that was too small or arrived too early. Another told me that the lack of data on the effects of certain medications on a developing fetus meant that I could very well be placing it at risk. I imagined delivering a baby with a condition that would make its life more difficult than it otherwise would have been, and wondering for the rest of my life whether the choices I’d made for my own well-being had been responsible, and knowing that my partner would be wondering the same thing.
What made me feel even more overwhelmed was the likelihood that I would pass on my predilection toward anxiety and depression to my children. I couldn’t imagine how it might feel to watch my child experience the same agonizing emotions that I had, and knowing that it had been my choice to bring them into the world and share my genes with them. And I also worried about my own capacity to simultaneously manage my children’s mental health and my own. I knew the difficulties of being raised by a parent struggling with these disorders intimately; and I worried that in the face of intense anxiety about their well-being, I wouldn’t be able to give them the autonomy that they would need to develop as individuals.
I can hear the voices of all of the wonderful parents I know saying, “Everyone struggles with that; but the fact that you care so much about being the best possible parent is what would make you a good parent.” And I also know that in previous periods of history, when propagating the next generation was seen as a moral imperative, my decision would be cast as selfish. But I am simply not the type of person who embarks on a massive, life-changing endeavor if I genuinely believe that I might fail at it—not if other people’s lives are hanging in the balance. And so, for me, it’s actually a huge relief to not have to weigh any of these concerns anymore, and to be able to simply care for myself.
5. The Environmental Impact of Having Kids
It’s hard not to feel angry at the world that previous generations have left for us. The policies that were enacted, the level of consumption that was encouraged, and the complete lack of consideration for the long-term consequences of all of these actions have left us with an ecosystem that’s collapsing all around us. The future that we envision for the children that are currently being born—a world that looks and functions just as it does today—has begun to seem virtually impossible in the face of the revelations that have come out over the last few years.
Here’s the thing: Studies suggest that the decision to have children subsumes the effort we put in throughout every other area of our lives for all of the decades that we’re on Earth. The decision to have one fewer child is the single biggest action we can take to lower our carbon footprint—to an exponential degree: One study found that when it comes to your carbon footprint each year, deciding not to have a child is 24 times more impactful than living without a car, 37 times more impactful than flying less, and 73 times more impactful than switching to a plant-based diet. This makes perfect sense if you think about it: Every child that’s brought into existence will use a lifetime’s worth of resources and create a lifetime’s worth of waste that simply wouldn’t exist did they not exist. Already, in the New York Times survey I mentioned earlier, 33% of adults who have decided to have fewer children said that climate change was a factor in their decision, as did 11% of adults who weren’t sure that they wanted to have children at all; these numbers will only grow as the situation becomes more dire.
To be clear, I don’t judge anyone who does make the decision to have kids—not in the least. Not only is raising children an incredibly meaningful life experience for so many people, countries actually suffer when they don’t have enough new residents being born or moving in to replace those who pass or move away. There are very real concerns that this challenge awaits a number of affluent nations, including the United States, in the decades to come. But if you’re like me—you feel ambivalent about becoming a parent, but consider doing so because you feel that it’s expected of you, or because you aren’t sure what a life without kids would actually look like—we’re the people whose decisions, one way or the other, have the potential to make a big difference in this area throughout our lifetimes. We’re entering a time in which it makes sense for not having kids to become the default, freeing up resources for those who really, truly want the opportunity to do so.
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Though I’m very lucky to be a part of a family that’s fully accepting of the choices I’ve made, for women in particular, choosing not to have children is still seen as a radical decision that they’re likely to regret. In researching this article, I was shocked to learn that women still have trouble convincing doctors to perform surgeries that will render them unable to have children, even when it’s critical to their health. Even the Pope weighed in recently, saying that people who choose to have pets rather than children are acting selfishly and diminishing humanity, even in the face of climate change and overpopulation.
I think it’s vital that we all view having children and not having children as equally legitimate options; to trust other people to make their own reproductive decisions; and to give ourselves permission to be honest about our own predilections. Some people have carefully constructed their existences around the pursuits that they find fulfilling and meaningful; they have no reason to invite the joyful chaos that is raising children into their lives, because they don’t feel that they’re lacking anything in its absence. For others, their desire for children permeates all of their dreams for their lives, to the point that they’re completely ready to raise a child on their own, despite not being in the kind of relationship that our society has traditionally seen as a prerequisite. What matters is that we’re each living in a way that’s fulfilling to us, and that allows us to care for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. Whatever that looks like for you, I fully support it.
Recommended Reading on the Decision to Have Kids (Or Not)
- The Guardian’s “Childfree” series
- I Help People Decide If They Want to Have Kids. Here’s My Advice
- The Decline in the U.S. Birth Rate is Not About Moral Failure, It’s About Economics
- Decades of Data Suggest Parenthood Makes People Unhappy
- 7 Women on Deciding Not to Have Kids (check out the comments on this one, too)
