In case you haven’t heard, many childless couples are now what is called “childfree.” It’s not that there is necessarily any impediment to welcoming children; some post-modern couples are consciously choosing not to procreate. The wide availability and social acceptability in all but the most regressive religious circles of chemicals and devices to thwart and to suppress reproduction mean that adults today believe without a doubt that the choice is theirs entirely.
Since time immemorial, people have wanted to get the goods without dealing with the baggage. It’s not as though copulating without procreating is a new phenomenon. What is new in our cultural context is the open discussion of the means of and reasons for avoiding children.
There are emerging circles of the self-described childfree on Reddit and YouTube. Through these informal channels, people lay out their reasons for not wanting children.
Not having spent hours in these online “communities,” this writer is no expert on the phenomenon of voluntary childlessness but merely an interested observer. After a cursory overview of sources, including the ever-popular r/childfree (1.5 million subs strong!), the ever-charming Childfree Kimberly (how could we forget her?), and various other YouTube channels and online personalities who refuse to allow children into their lives as a matter of principle, here are the main categorical reasons for not wanting children:
Top Reasons for Avoiding Children
- Personality Fit
Innumerable women who do not want children claim that they were never “maternal.” Because they lacked interest in babies and children, never wanted to babysit, and never envisioned themselves as mothers, they argue they are not “maternal” and have no desire to have children.
If there are passionate men choosing not to have children, they have not been as noticeable as women. Despite decades of relentless effort to equalize the sexes in the realm of childbearing, the fact remains that many women feel the need to justify their decision not to welcome children while childless men feel no such urge.
- Lifestyle
Much more compelling than the maternal personality argument, many childfree enthusiasts recognize that their lifestyle is not conducive to caring for children and they do not want to change. As one childless lady put it, she wants nothing more than “sleeping in until noon on Sundays in the one-bedroom apartment we can actually afford, and never having to compromise on prioritising a career I love.”
Childless people will explain with sincerity that they do not like loud noises, messes, disruptions, or disorder. Therefore, they argue, they wish not to have children who are renowned for their selfish tendencies to produce noise, messes, and chaos.
Travel, the national pastime of childless young people with disposable income, is also a big part of lifestyle that many of the childfree do not want to surrender.
- Fear of Pregnancy and Childbirth
Many women are disturbed by the physical realities of pregnancy and childbirth. To the point of irrational fear. Obsessing about how disgusting and dangerous normal human reproduction is seems a bit overblown when you consider we are hurtling through outer space on a large rock with a thin atmosphere separating us from the great beyond. At any moment, any number of horrid deaths await us. Is pregnancy really so exceptional?
- Feared Outcomes for Children
Many childfree enthusiasts are surprisingly myopic, fixated on their dislike of newborns and toddlers. Of course, this is but a brief phase of human development. The fact that dual-income couples with a child or two are briefly and intensely overwhelmed by the needs of the baby stage while continuing careers does not mean that the entire experience of having children is so overwhelming.
There are different camps within the childfree world: Those who admit that they dislike children and those who claim that they don’t hate children per se, they just don’t wish to have children of their own. There’s a great many childfree types who are perfectly fine loathing children and everything about them. Introspective childfree commentators must grapple with the fact that they were themselves once children.
The more thoughtful—if pessimistic—childfree cheerleaders point out just how loathsome their friends’ teenage children are. The argument goes: You can have children and pour yourself into raising them and they can still turn out to be terrible people who don’t respect you and are a drain on society. Assuming the worst in life is a good way to protect yourself from disappointment.
- Climate Change
It goes without saying—and often almost does—that we are no longer allowed to question if the world is in precipitous decline. “The climate” as a reason not to have children wins broad appeal and affirmation. It does seem quite low on the list for anyone honest about their motives. Indeed, if avoiding children is in the service of a comparatively lavish lifestyle involving frequent travel, “the climate” seems to take a back seat.
- Lack of Meaning
This reason is often not stated directly but implied. Many cultures, especially those tied to a religious outlook, view children as a blessing or at least a necessary obligation. If there is no coherent trajectory for human life, there is no reason to produce more beings who will suffer. There is no reason to give up petty comforts for other people. New life and the preciousness of the vulnerable have no existential meaning for the nihilist.
As one amusing but bleak redditor put it when rejecting the professed “duty” of younger generations to carry on the human race by having children: “My kid would probably be just be like me, bitter about the world, watching animal videos to keep themselves happy & ranting on Reddit for relief.” That is the way things go.
Some Conclusions
A lack of meaning is often the unstated but powerful reason people do not want to have children. It seems that voluntary childlessness is sometimes a symptom of a worldview and not a unique worldview itself. There are people who try to adhere to a scaffold of meaning only to have it crumble beneath them, untethered to reality as it was. You see this with zealous religious converts who produce many children only to lose their newfound faith midway on the journey.
Reading anonymous internet postings from parents who claim to regret having their children approaches the reverence of ritual with the childfree crowd. Parents who ardently profess in typed script on the internet that their lives were “ruined” by their children and they wish only that they could go back to the life they had before children are one of the favorite subjects for the childfree. And here is the odd thing: The premise of the loud and proud childfree is that they live full and joyous lives enjoying hobbies, extra income, time with friends, and lots of travel. Yet, so many of the childfree feel the need to actively combat the prevailing norm of mom-dad-plus-kids. Why?
Some More Conclusions
It’s my blog after all. I’ll make a few more conclusions if I feel like it. There are many mothers who say that they were never maternal prior to having children, and that the experience of raising children, whether through birth or adoption, opened them up to a maternal connection that expanded their personality. In a culture with babies increasingly relegated to circles of reckless breeders, there are more young women in small families with few if any neighbors with young children. If the only birth you have attended is your own and you can count the number of babies you’ve held on one hand, how can you know if you like babies? Maybe the decrease in maternally-inclined young women is related to the decrease in babies around to be enjoyed. Babies are strange to those who have never experienced them. Absent the opportunity to learn anything from them, they will remain such.
Additionally, most women find an outlet for maternity. Whether through pets or plants, many women find a way to nurture. As much as we may claim that womanhood is not specific, there is a wide range of ways that maternal impulses arise in women of all walks of life. The fact that someone didn’t find babies interesting at age 15 is not particularly meaningful or relevant.
It is a regressive society that encourages people to act with more self-interest instead of less. Instead of continually demanding to know why past generations thought that we would welcome and raise children, perhaps we should ask why our ancestors did—even in tremendously difficult circumstances—continue to welcome children. By the simple fact that we have ancestors, we know that they did. Maybe they had reasons we would do well to rediscover.
