Four years later: an update
Hi all
About four years ago I (37F) wrote a post after my husband (39M) and I decided to be childfree. This community was incredibly helpful while we were making that decision.
When we were deciding, I remember desperately searching for updates from people who were a few years ahead of us. They were surprisingly hard to find. Over the years I’ve gotten quite a few messages asking about more ordinary, everyday things, so I figured maybe this could be that post for someone else.
For anyone wondering what ultimately made the decision for us: it wasn’t one dramatic moment. It was realizing there was a difference between wanting to have children and wanting to be parents. Once we separated those two questions, our answer became much clearer.
I go into more detail about our journey in my original post, I would link it here but my technological capabilities peaked in ‘07. I apologize.
Day-to-day stuff
I’m 37 now. Most mornings I get up around 6, journal, make coffee, and sit on the porch before work. If I have time I’ll take the dog for a walk or squeeze in a little creative work.
I work remotely for a nonprofit, so I get to sneak outside into the garden during the day, which is one of my favorite parts of working from home. After work I’ll eat something while doing whatever I feel like. If I don’t have plans, I’m usually in my craft room, reading in the sunroom, or back out on the porch. We live in a vacation town and love walking the boardwalk just to people-watch.
My husband works part-time at our local library. He can walk to work (but usually he doesn’t lol). We have one car, one tiny dog, and a huge flower garden.
This weekend my husband is across the country promoting a film he wrote and produced with his best friend. It won an award at a film festival in LA, which still feels completely surreal to type. I teach a few college courses every year, and the extra income is nice.
Yesterday I accidentally fell down a rabbit hole researching local honey and somehow spent an amount of money on honey that I refuse to discuss.
We’re slowly fixing up our old, crusty house from the late 1800s. One unexpected perk of knowing we won’t have children is that we’ve designed the house around the people who actually live here.
One bedroom became my craft room, office, and reading room, and my husband has his own creative space. Every room feels like it has a purpose.
We still love to travel and love learning new things. Some weekends we’re exploring somewhere new. Other weekends we barely leave the house.
I cannot believe I’m admitting this on the internet, but every once in a while we’ll decide to sleep in the living room for two or three nights because we’ve built ourselves a blanket fort like we’re seven.
When Artemis launched, we rearranged the furniture, threw pizza rolls in the air fryer, built a fort, stayed up watching the launch, and halfway through looked at each other and silently communicated that this was actually f**king awesome.
We have a perfectly good bedroom.
Sometimes we intentionally choose chaos because it’s just the two of us.
We’re not as spontaneous as we used to be, but if we decide on Friday afternoon that we want to spend the weekend somewhere else, we usually can.
Not all childfree couples are gallivanting around on yachts DINK-ing to their hearts’ content. Some are.
Most aren’t.
That said, we do have financial flexibility. We’re able to save, live below our means and still do what we want to do individually and as a family (yes, I say family even though it’s just us two. People have told me this sounds misleading. But I don’t think you need human children to be considered a family).
Our life isn’t glamorous, it’s actually very ordinary. And I genuinely love it.
There are hard parts
Choosing to be childfree wasn’t easy.
There was grief. There still is sometimes.
Not because I think we made the wrong decision, but because every meaningful decision asks you to let go of another possible version of your life.
I grieve the version of me who would’ve become someone’s mom. Someone’s grandmother. I loved her too, and sometimes I wonder what she would’ve been like. Sometimes I feel an unreasonable urge to apologize to my ancestors in the family tree.
I don’t push those thoughts away, but I also don’t mistake them for regret.
I think you can mourn a life you didn’t choose while still being deeply grateful for the one you did.
One thing nobody really talks about is how quietly the world moves toward families with children.
Your friends’ schedules change. Weekend plans change. Nobody is doing anything wrong, you’ve just stopped moving in the same direction.
Sometimes it feels like everyone got on a train and you’re standing on the platform waving as it pulls away.
I also think society quietly assumes adulthood ends with children.
“So… do you have kids?”
“No.”
There’s often this tiny pause.
“Not yet?”
“You can’t?”
“You don’t want to?”
Not always. But often enough that you notice.
One thing that always makes me laugh is when I’m talking with a parent who’s venting about a rough week.
I’ll say something like, “Wow… that sounds like a lot. They’ll laugh and agree.
Then they’ll remember I don’t have kids. Suddenly it’s, “Oh, but don’t get me wrong… it’s the BEST thing I’ve ever done.”
I always find that funny. You don’t have to reassure me. I can see that parenting is incredibly hard, and I can also see how much you love your child. Those things don’t cancel each other out.
I’m sure I say things as a childfree woman that make parents scratch their heads, too.
Something else surprised me. I genuinely believe there is nothing like having a child. I’ve only ever observed that love, but even watching it has brought me to tears.
I still remember the look on my brother’s face when he held his son for the first time.
No one needs to convince me parenting is beautiful.
It absolutely is. It’s just not the only beautiful life available.
Feeling outside the default doesn’t mean you’re outside of a meaningful life.
It just means you have to build more of it yourself.
One thing I’ve learned is that being childfree isn’t simply the absence of children. It’s the presence of a life you’ve built intentionally.
For me that ended up looking like writing, gardening, volunteering, teaching, traveling, creative projects, a marriage that has had room to deepen, and a house we’ve slowly made our own.
The freedom to become deeply interested in wonderfully weird things…Like honey.
Do I ever wonder “what if?”
Sure. I also wonder what would’ve happened if I’d moved across the country. Or bought a farmhouse.
Or changed careers.
Every meaningful decision closes a door.
I don’t really see that as regret. I think that’s just the cost of choosing.
Somewhere along the way, the question stopped being, “Do I want kids?” and became, “What kind of life do I actually want?”
Those turned out to be two very different questions.
The thing that surprised me most wasn’t that I stopped wondering if we’d made the right decision. It was that our life slowly became so full that the question just got quieter.
Questions I’ve Apparently Agreed to Answer for the Rest of My Life
“Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?”
Honestly? No idea. But I also don’t think children are a retirement plan.
They’re people.
They grow up and build lives of their own. Some stay close to their parents. Some move across the world. Some become estranged. Some die before their parents do.
Having children has never guaranteed anyone care in old age.
“What if your partner dies?”
Then I’ll grieve. Just like millions of parents would if their spouse died.
Children don’t prevent loss. Death is a human problem, not a childfree one.
I think the saddest part of questions like these is that they mistake having children for having certainty. Life has never made that promise to anyone.
If you’re still deciding…
Know that you have a choice.
You don’t have to choose the childfree life.
And you don’t have to choose parenthood.
But don’t make either decision out of fear.
Don’t have children because you’re afraid of being lonely someday. Don’t stay childfree because you’re afraid of change.
Choose the life that feels most like yours.
Four years later, I can honestly say this one still feels like mine.
Sometimes I look out at the garden and think about how many people have said “you’ll change your mind” Mannnn that used to bother me.
And maybe they were right, maybe I did change my mind.
I just didn’t change my mind about having children. I changed my mind about what I thought a full life had to look like.
I hope this helped someone :)