Boyfriend and I say this to each other at least once a day. Neither of us want kids right now, and neither of us can imagine ever wanting kids. Maybe I can blame my lack of maternal instinct on my genes , but however I choose to do it, I understand that I will be forever justifying this life choice to strangers, friends and family alike.
There are a lot of reasons why we've decided not to have children, but the primary reason is always going to be that neither of us have any desire to be parents. I've felt this way for a long time, and I can pinpoint the moment when I realized that my discomfort around children was based in discomfort with the idea that I should have them someday.
I have a very dear friend who has one child and is pregnant with another. After a mutual friend gave birth to her second child, my dear friend and I went to visit her. This was well before the birth of Dear Friend's son. At one point during the visit, Dear Friend held the infant with a look of real affection, happiness and hope in her face. I knew instantly that whatever she was feeling looking into that baby's face, I did not feel. Although I could recognize it as an expression I had seen before, I recognized none of those emotions as anything I associate with babies or children. I think babies are pretty cute, I suppose (and sticky lookin'), when they are dancing to Beyonce songs and whatnot. But they need and deserve hella love and nurturing, and I feel that's something I'm not prepared or able to offer to a child. I'm pretty open to calling it selfishness. I don't want to devote that kind of time, money or investment of emotion into something just because someone tells me that I should want to when none of that investment would be genuine. A potential child deserves a better life than that.
Whenever this conversation comes up, I inevitably hear "Oh, but you're still young, someday you'll understand". Someday I'll understand what? That as a woman, my life and my emotions are predestined by the organs between my legs? To say that I will automatically want children someday is to say that you know my mind and my heart better than me just because you know that I have a vagina. The idea that every woman wants children just because they are a woman negates EVERY WOMAN'S ownership of her body and her intellectual decisions on what she does or doesn't do with it. It's just another way of saying that you know what is best for not just A woman, but EVERY woman better than they know themselves.
Thanks to finding a wonderful man who loves me for all of me, and thanks to discovering a few great feminist communities online, I feel I have the support to stand by what I know is right for me. I also have the support to deal with the years and years I have ahead of me, hearing strangers who don't know shit about my life saying "Oh, she has that job because she doesn't have kiiiiiiids" or "those cats are filling the void left in her heart by the kids she doesn't haaaaave". I have jobs because I need to pay for shit like bills and groceries and because I have found something I actually like that I'm pretty good at, and I will have pets because they bring me joy. These are choices that I have made, and the ability to make these choices and the strength to stand by them are yet more reasons that I'm grateful to have feminism (and a hot, sexy feminist XY) in my life.
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