Do Childfree Women Get Criticized For Their Lifestyle Choice?

I find it so weird when women get criticized for their decision to be childfree. Sometimes it’s not even a decision (see my blog post part 1).

I think it would have been more from my family friends, a colleague or strangers, or from my husband’s family or relatives but this is his problem to deal with, not mine. It’s about setting boundaries and I really don’t care now what people think. I think I got frustrated with people in my twenties but now I don’t think there is anything to discuss with them. If they ask out of curiosity so they can learn something from me maybe I’d just explain how natural it was for me, but it would be usually for them an opportunity to judge and make snarky remarks. 

It’s interesting that the people criticizing are mostly women.

I think these types of comments are actually probably about themselves. Maybe they are unconsciously envious of our freedom and the fact that I had the strength to listen to my inner voice and not get controlled by what other people were telling me to do. Or, they think they did the right thing and so they’re going to talk down with a condescending tone to others about how other women should live their lives. Now there it’s about asking them “why did you have kids?”, but some of them won’t reply the honest truth, especially as it would come out as heartless to say they actually DO regret having a child when the human being is there now and it’s too late because they have to take care of him/her.

Also I know someone that could not get over the fact that SHE didn’t have children because of her own priorities for example she was always keeping herself busy taking care of others, but she did want to have kids, and so she’d make bitter comments to me. For example when I was 22 she said “when are you gonna find a boyfriend, get married and have kids, if you wait you will regret it you have to do it in your twenties when you have the energy”, that, again was about herself, her life, her story, her mistakes and not mine. 

I was called selfish a few times – I never understood how not having children is considered selfish when in my perspective continuing to put kids in this world while having no mean to support them IS selfish. A lot of people have kids for themselves. I was told “who’s going to pay for your nursing home, who’s gonna take care of you when you’re old?”. So you put new humans in this world to harass them until the rest of your life so they are a source of income and a free nurse? Plus, there are so many stories of kids that got so fed up with their parents bullying them or that suffered from their parents’ poor marriage that they just disappeared out of their parents lives and never came to visit them. So if these people are having children as an investment, to me, THAT’S disgusting, controlling, and a REALLY unreliable and bad investment.

I was also called in a passive-aggressive way of being unloving or that it’s not normal for a woman to NOT have the baby-crazy phase. To have to prove that I am a loving person is a pretty awful thing to have to do – because by being able to take care of myself I am more available to send Love to the world, especially the children that were abandoned or abused. Also, I am an artist and I do believe that creative women get this special capacity to create Art in harmony with their hormones or moon cycles or femininity. It’s a very powerful and beautiful thing to be in sync with this nature within us through Art.

See part 3 in 2 weeks. Until then, listen to my Childfree song and sing along the lyric video below.