Dont Have Children if You Dont Know How
"I don't want to take kids."
It'south the kind of statement that frequently prompts full disbelief.
It's known to finish conversations, leaving behind confused bare faces and dropped jaws.
Particularly when coming from a woman.
"The response is always, 'You'll change your mind eventually'," says Jess Saras, 32.
She's childfree past choice, and despite being confident in her decision, Jess is constantly undermined by society's disability to separate women and motherhood.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that old in the next decade, the number of couples without children will overtake the number of couples with.
That means more women are choosing non to have kids.
It's a trend psychotherapist Zoe Krupka says is oftentimes wrongly labelled selfish, shallow and young.
ABC podcast Ladies, We Need To Talk is sharing the stories of women who cull to be childfree to help clear upward some pretty shitty misconceptions.
Why women cull non to have children
Dr Krupka defines childfree by choice as a woman making a conscious decision that she doesn't desire to have her own children.
"It doesn't hateful she doesn't want to co-parent or stride-parent or help her friends out with their kids or be an aunty, just she'southward made a conscious conclusion that's non based on infertility or take chances or circumstances across her command," she says.
And rather than it beingness near cost, ruining your body or the fact having kids can be a rough gig, Dr Krupka says women are turned off by the ridiculous standards around motherhood.
"You lot would remember that it was virtually the terrible deal it can exist when yous take kids.
"It's not just that there isn't support for women to 'take it all', merely that there is intense social criticism of mothers that makes it a especially unattractive choice."
Enquiry shows women'southward reasons for choosing not to have children are multifaceted and complex.
Overpopulation and climate change, a lacking maternal instinct, health concerns and a desire for independence and freedom are just a few.
"There'due south this assumption that y'all're selfish because yous've chosen non to accept children," says Tory Shepherd, who has published a book on her conclusion to remain childfree.
"And at that place is something in that, because if you're having kids y'all need to give them everything.
"But then if you're having a kid just so they look later you lot when yous're older, that's pretty selfish."
Dr Krupka adds there is no show to prove people are more selfless every bit a parent.
'Life has to change' when you have a baby
Actor Jess, who we heard from earlier, says she doesn't actually like children.
And given the state of the globe, she worries about what kind of life they would have anyway.
"Information technology'due south a huge weight on my mind … what problems are we passing on to them that they had no command over?"
Caroline Epskamp is 48 and says she's never felt maternal. And her husband of 22 years didn't take a potent stance either way.
"I'k a big animal lover, like show me a puppy and I'll be pretty excited. Prove me a baby, and I'k fairly blasé about the whole thing."
She values her freedom and independence and says kids would have hindered that.
"You lot have to give some stuff up when you have children, life has to alter," she says.
"Nosotros travel a lot … [and] we've ever been really happy with our union and our partnership and the life that nosotros lead."
Melbourne writer Gemma, twoscore, says the selection non to exist a parent was fabricated with her mental health in listen.
"The main reasons I'chiliad childfree by choice is my fright that my post-natal depression volition be and then debilitating that I would not be able to bond with my child," she says.
Women are happy with their decision, but no-one else is
Whatever the reason, the research shows virtually women who cull a childfree life are confident in their decision.
It's everybody else who struggles with information technology.
"There's this kind of cultural ideal that [as a woman] you lot're supposed to desire to nurture and care for," Dr Krupka says.
"Then when you say, 'I don't desire to do that', it's like yous're non a real woman."
Tory says she'due south been fabricated to feel like if y'all don't use your womb, "you're non really a woman".
"Information technology's just the next step yous do, you become married and you take kids."
Caroline says there is "stunned silence" when correcting people who presume she has kids.
"And how dare you suggest that I made the wrong determination by implying that I'll come to the correct one eventually."
Another woman Ladies, We Need to Talk spoke to put it as: "I would love information technology if people wouldn't see it equally something you lot lack … [but rather] every bit something that embraces other things."
No kids? No invites
Women without kids don't but face judgement and scrutiny, they can be socially excluded besides — and non just during the 'childbearing years'.
That can be in small ways like beingness excluded from conversations, or bigger ways like not being invited to a child's altogether political party, explains Dr Krupka.
It continues throughout life, to the point women are expected to not but exist mothers, just grandmothers too.
"You get to the age people expect you to be a grandparent," Dr Krupka says.
"Women I know in their 60s and 70s who haven't had children say information technology'south the first thing people ask yous, just similar they used to in your 30s.
"[Except] at present information technology'south like, tell me about your grandchildren. I don't have any. End of conversation."
The Ladies, We Need to Talk squad spoke to a woman in her early 50s who relates to exactly this.
"Women your own age don't seem to know how to talk to you anymore unless they're in the aforementioned boat because all they seem to talk about of their children or their grandchildren," she says.
"Because you lot don't have children, you just don't count anymore."
The all-time role of being childfree
Jess says the best thing about being childfree is "not having to recollect about anyone else in terms of choices that I make with my life being spontaneous. Being truthful to myself".
"We mostly sleep all night, we can cook whatever we want for dinner and information technology gets eaten by the other person in the house — gratefully received. No bottoms to wipe," says Caroline.
Tory says information technology's the extra brain space she enjoys.
Ultimately, the liberty to choose, 1 way or the other, is something we should celebrate.
But just how gratuitous that choice really is, when much of society still expects women to cull to be mothers, is something worth considering.
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Source: https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/more-women-are-choosing-not-to-have-kids-and-society-cannot-cope/11160788
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