Anatomy of a Decision (to be childfree)

Reflections from group sessions on making the decision to be childfree

I imagine myself standing at a crossroad, looking at my feet that feel stuck to the ground like melted candles. The road ahead splits into two distinct paths. The first path leads towards a familiar town, places I could find my way around with just muscle memory. I can see many of my loved ones there. If I go down this path I’d know exactly what I need to do. The template has been laid out loud and clear. I don’t know yet if I want it. I don’t know if I can be like them but I know they are expecting me there tapping their feet, irritated by my dillydallying. Almost everyone I have ever known lives there and together they have drawn out, with a stick in the mud, lines for where my house will be. There are two children’s rooms and a big kitchen. A small yard for gardening if I’d like to. The sketch of the house looks big and beautiful, but I don’t know if it feels like mine.

The second path leads deeper into the woods. I can’t see exactly where it leads to from this point in the crossroad. It’s a dirt road that not many seem to have taken. The unknown with its darkness and mystery pulls me and pushes me away with equal force. I feel compelled to know where that path goes but I can’t until I begin walking on it. There are no maps to this place, just some broken signboards ominously pointing in wrong directions. I am afraid that I can’t see any familiar faces down this road. I fear being lonely while I walk. I wonder if this is what the road to regret looks like.

It is often at this crossroads that our work in group sessions begins. One of the first feelings that emerge when what has yet been mostly internal dialogue moves into the group space is recognition closely followed by a deep belly breath of relief. I can see my struggles reflected in the questions someone else in the group is raising. There are others like me.  And the first gift of group work emerges- I am not alone.

Some lights appear on the second path and some new faces are now visible in the distance. I am not the only one considering being childfree.

But what if we are all wrong? Misguided in our attempt at an unconventional life. Full with regret and bitterness about our decisions in ten years , or twenty when it is no longer possible to detour into parenthood. When the seeds in our bodies that contain life have withered away, tired of waiting. What then? To not have children is one thing and to not have the possibility of children in the future is quite another. 

It is rare that these conversations don’t lead me to bring in philosophy. So many of these conflicts are deeply existential in nature. 

What if I regret not having a child? What if I die lonely and forgotten?

I talk about the inherent loneliness in the human condition and ask whether instead of functioning from a place of fear, we can use our agency to decide how we would like to make sense of the loneliness we experience in our choices. We are told to chase happiness for almost all our lives and that’s like chasing the rainbow, it’s beautiful when it appears but also transient. Purpose and meaning are much more stable in their ability to 

We unpack the scripts that chain our feet to one path or the other and try to ask different questions:

How can I find meaning and connection in life without children?

Some come with clarity about what they would like to choose but come into the group seeking permission for their choice. I know I want this but everything I have been ever told about love or family or happiness involves having children.  This other life I am imagining, childfree, seems almost illicit. I feel deviant for wanting it so naturally, for rejecting what so many dream of having or have been taught to dream of having? What kind of selfish, shallow and self-absorbed person does not want to have children? I am questioned deeply and repeatedly and in turn I end up questioning my own clarity. 

Religion tells me my journey to the next word depends on my offspring. I wonder what happens to those who don’t have one. Do we wander endlessly between this world and the next, suffering for our own selfishness banished for eternity to a crossroad we can no longer walk on.

In mainstream discourse, there is a single narrative of being childfree and it has to do with not wanting responsibility. The multilayered reasons that actually lie beneath this choice are underexplored and actively discouraged from being discussed. As a result most of us grew up with templated ideas of what a good life means. When we think of individuals without children some stereotypes emerge : the childless woman – suffering her fate, victims of their own infertility. The idea of a woman actively choosing to not have children is demonised or binarized into being a “career” woman. The bearing of children is popularly seen as the epitome of patriarchal femininity. Without a child of their own what kind of a woman can one be? 

In mainstream discourse, there is a single narrative of being childfree and it has to do with not wanting responsibility. The multilayered reasons that actually lie beneath this choice are underexplored and actively discouraged from being discussed. As a result most of us grew up with templated ideas of what a good life means. When we think of individuals without children some stereotypes emerge : the childless woman – suffering her fate, victims of their own infertility. The idea of a woman actively choosing to not have children is demonised or binarized into being a “career” woman. The bearing of children is popularly seen as the epitome of patriarchal femininity. Without a child of their own what kind of a woman can one be? 

And what about my partner/ my marriage? What will bind us together till the end of our days if not a child? What if we run out of things to say to each other? Already there are days and moments when the silence fills the room. What if someday my partner looks at me with resentment in their eyes. Of all the prices we pay for our togetherness this one seems too heavy: to never see my partner playing the role of a parent and never witnessing the kind of parent they would be. It seems like a lot to carry for the rest of our lives. 

But also what of we have a child and completely fuck it up? The last thing I want to do is to put my child through what I have gone through as a child. Some day our child would sit across from a therapist like you and enumerate all the ways in which we failed at parenting.  So what, I ask. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. The only one who fails is the one that stops trying. And why live tyrannised by the fear of disappointing your child’s future therapist? 

The heaviness of disappointing loved ones hovers over the group. Robbing them of the joys and pleasures of a grandchild, a niece/nephew. Over time their questions may peter down, their disappointment and pain hangs in the air. We talk about practising coexisting with this disappointment, maybe someday being ok with it as well.

Of all the despairing questions that are placed before the group, one feeling makes its way into every single discussion:  Regret. I quote Kirkegaard and bring in the inevitability of regret. No matter what we choose, there will be some element of regret. There is no “right” choice for any of us: there will be suffering in having a child and there will be suffering in not having a child, the question really is which suffering do you prefer?

Towards the end of our work, I bring in a word that surprises many. Grief. What place does grief have in a decision making process they ask. No matter what we choose, it is important to make space to grieve the life we did not choose. To honour the version of ourselves we will never get to know, the places in life we will never go and to bid it a heartfelt and respectful goodbye.

I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

– Cheryl Strayed