“What kind of woman are you?” my grandma asked me the first time I suggested to her I didn’t want to have children. “That’s so selfish; you can’t really call yourself a woman if you don’t have a child.”
Granted, she was raised in a completely different mindset. Granted, there’s a huge generational gap. Granted, I am selfish, but my womanhood doesn’t magically disintegrate because I choose not to have kids.
We’ve grown up in a society that pushes us to have children, pushes us so hard we sometimes can’t tell if we actually ever wanted them at all. We’re told it’s natural, a miracle, a necessary milestone. We’re given dolls to take care of when we’re small. We’re told women have a maternal instinct that we must pursue. We’re told of course you’ll want kids even as we’re still kids ourselves – so when you first tell a mother or grandmother or aunt that you don’t want children when you’re older, the response is always the same. You’ll change your mind.
A few days ago, I found out that my manager does not have kids. She’s in her late thirties, has hated children all her life, and does not have kids. She shrugged, told me she never wanted them so hence she never had them. I almost cried real tears in relief. I sat there and felt pure and honest relief. I felt validated.
She told me she still gets told she’ll change her mind, that she’s still young, and the constant attempt to invalidate the fact that she, a grown woman, does not want children is infuriating. At 18, I’m told by 95% of everyone I meet that I will change my mind about wanting kids. While it’s totally and completely possible that I will wake up one day in my late twenties and decide that I do want children, the fact that my manager is told the same proves how disrespectful we are towards women who decide to abstain from raising a child.
It's the assumption that a grown woman does not know what she wants from her life; the fact that someone can stand there with a knowing smirk and act like they’re the authority on what she does erases her agency and autonomy. By telling women that they’ll change their mind, you assume you know what they want better than they do. You assume that they have the same life goals, the same circumstances, the same personality as you and all the other people that become mothers.
Motherhood is forced upon us so subtly yet so strongly, that so many women don’t take the time to evaluate whether or not they want and are capable of raising children. Some women are missing the “motherly instinct”; some women have career goals that are incompatible with family life; some women dislike children. Some women are selfish, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to devote your life to your goals and your pursuits and your dreams. There’s nothing wrong with you if a child is not included in that plan. It’s time to stop assuming that all women are selfless angels who want nothing more than to dedicate themselves wholly to a child. Some women intend to dedicate themselves to a career or to travel, or even to a husband and a dog.
It’s not about whether they change their mind, it’s about their decision. It’s about each and every woman deciding what is right for her. You don’t get to tell me that I’ll change my mind because you don’t know what I want or what I’ll do. I’m not your story, where you “didn’t really want kids until you held your first child and totally fell in love.” I’m not the story you’re telling me about your coworker who “was completely adamant about not having kids but is totally pumped about the fact that she popped out two kids when she was 27.”
I know better than you what I want, at 18 and at 37 and at every day in between, and whether I change my mind or not is none of your goddamn business.
