r/childfreewomen

Came across some instagram account of a midwife today. Endless pictures of newborn infants, recorded births, babies attached to placentas with umbilical cords attached. The account is very much like... female power, birth is beautiful and magical and women's bodies are full of wisdom kinda woo. Scrolled through for a moment in horrified fascination and just... ew. It's not beautiful. Or magical. It's straight up nasty. Doesn't mean I don't admire those who go through it because like good for you I could never. But it's freaking gross.

As women who don’t want children, I feel like we often have less pressure to settle down by a certain age. We have the freedom to take our time and be intentional about who we choose to spend our lives with.
So I’m curious: Did you keep dating until you found someone who genuinely checked all your boxes, or did you eventually decide that the qualities your partner did have outweighed the ones they lacked?
For those who compromised, what did you compromise on, and how did you decide it was worth it? Were these things you could live without, or did you learn that some of your original requirements weren’t as important as you thought?
And for those who didn’t compromise on their core requirements, how long did it take you to find your person?
I’d love to hear honest answers, especially from women who are happy in their relationships. I’m trying to understand the difference between healthy compromise and settling when you have the luxury of not feeling pressured to partner up on a timeline. ❤️

Are you familiar with the MBTI personality test? I wonder if certain personality types are more inclined to be childfree. Though the number of people we'll see in the comments with a particular type could simply reflect how common that type is in the population.

Also, is it possible that there are patterns in the reasons we chose not to have children across personality types? For example, I'm an INFP, and so is one of my favourite YouTubers. I heard him say the other day that he's not sure about having children because what if “[his child] sucks” as a person? It made me chuckle because one of the reasons I haven't wanted kids is that child's character or personality are beyond parents' control despite their best efforts to raise a good human being..

So, I'm curious about your MBTI type and some of the main reasons you decided to opt out of having children.

hey everyone, i’m 27 and i’ve known for a while now that i’m never having kids. a huge reason for this is that i’m the eldest daughter in a middle eastern immigrant family. growing up i was heavily parentified and basically adultified from a super young age. i was basically a third parent, always helping my parents navigate everything in the country they immigrated to, taking on tons of responsibility, and i never really got to have an actual childhood. besides that, my childhood was unfortunately abusive and traumatic.

now that i’m approaching 30, the absolute last thing i want to do is sign up for another lifetime of caretaking. as egoistical as this might sound for some parents…. i just want to finally live for myself.

i’m currently in a long-term relationship, and because of that, my family just naturally assumes kids are the obvious next step. people don't even ask if i want them…it's just treated as a given fact. my partner doesn’t want kids either. my mom constantly says things like, "when you have kids, i'll do this for them" or "when you're a mom, we can do that." up until now, i've just been ignoring it and keeping quiet, but I’ve never actually had "the talk" with her.

In my family and culture, motherhood isn't just an expectation, it's pretty much mandatory. choosing not to have kids is treated like a total scandal. to make matters even more intense, i have a sister (couple years younger) and she doesn't want kids either, so my family are going to be in for a real shock 🤣

for those of you who are older or come from similar traditional/immigrant backgrounds: how did you handle this? did you actually sit your family down and "come out" as childfree before you hit 30, or did you just live your life, keep quiet, and let them eventually figure it out when the grandkid questions fell flat?
would love to hear how you guys navigated the cultural pressure and fallout. thanks!

Even in a house where both parents do 50/50 when it comes to kids, how are we supposed to take proper care of kids with the little time we got ? I dont see any other choice than to sacrifice our own free time for it.

I'm a hobbyist (mostly fiber arts) and a gamer (as well as my boyfriend). We both play an online game that takes us sometimes hours, one game is anywhere between 15 to 50 minuts long. That alone takes so much of our free time, but its something we love to do and makes us happy.

Now with a kid... how are we supposed to take care of a kid AND play games/do hobbies that take us hours ? We just cant. Even just cooking for the family would take 2 hours. I cook sometimes for my family of 5 people and the time it takes to cook everything just doubles or even triples compared to cooking for 2 people !!! Just no. I want MY time and MY money for myself.

This vid came into my feed and it reminded me of a post not that long ago. Someone was wondering whether this so-called loss of the village was masked lamenting that women weren't providing free care (childcare especially) anymore.

I commented that most of the village would be largely redundant if men actually ponied up their side of the bargain by being an actual husband and father. Got beef with someone who was insisting that this loss of the village was broader than just childcare, well most of the time is about childcare. Why should I as CF woman take the fall for children I didn't choose to have, just because daddy couldn't be bothered to do actual childcare?

Hey yall! I am child free for ethical reasons— I am mentally ill and don’t want to pass down my miseries to an innocent babe, but i also feel concerned about climate change. Any other ladies in here choosing to remain child-free due to climate grief/climate anxiety?I would love to have feedback and a meaningful discourse about this issue

Is it as bad as I think it is??? And it feels?? Anyone else want to share on something I might be missing? I'm baffled at this text.  I know my friend here meant well and maybe she's had a few drinks already but damn. Sooo......

1. I should just suck it up b/c my feelings, preferences don't matter as much as their own selfish wants / entitlement?

2. I have no other life, schedule, priorities, budget items that I should immediately drop ALL plans to hop on a train THE NEXT DAY from NYC?

3. I should 'suck it up' and be forced to be around a person that's been a dismissive piece of garbage toward ONLY me?

4. I should for some reason want to come to a city when I wasn't included or considered in the decision-making to GO there???

- - Feels like bc I don't have kids or a husband I just in general am not a valid 'real' adult or being 'dramatic' ??? - -

TEXT MESSAGE:

We're all showing up in Philly. You can change your mind and come up still. Tmrw AM? The best way to be is in person, show up for everyone else? Just sayin. Hop on a train ?! Would love to see you!

Solo non-mom in group of 6 moms - early 40s all kids under 6 - since college. They are on a group trip to Philadelphia. I passed on going bc I'd been multiple times there already (same excuse many have used in past on other group trips to other US cities each would pass on) We all live in different cities spread across the US. Mind you I was NOT a part of conversations that even chose Philadelphia and do NOT know WHY. I was TOLD that was where it would be when it was brought up initially on group text to choose dates, hotel etc.

I recently shared w/ one close friend how another one mysteriously randomly ghosted and went no contact w/ me 4 years ago and hadn't seen her face to face in even longer.  The ghoster doesn't participate in group chat either just observer on it and texts others directly. Another reason I was not comfortable in a group setting with a clearly unhealthy person and better to keep the peace despite it being very painful, lonely.

I get this text from her at 8:00 PM last night.

We are all close yes but not quite tight knit like family - there's for sure been some selfish behavior displayed in past more over recent years including in the group chat the few times I share my own life updates I get crickets meanwhile I'm a support system all our whole lives and on their life milestones, big or small updates. I got a big ass family and other circles of friends, got pretty strong gauge of what's typical versus not.

More and more with this group, I feel like maybe??? some of their own bitter resentment comes out as being dismissive of me or belittling my life. Not all of them are like this and not all of the time. I don't know what to make of it tbh maybe they don't even realize how it comes off?? This whole trip and one of my friends who was like a sister disposing me like garbage no reason on top has maybe pushed me over a limit and levee wall. lol damn this is long

They been planning this since August. I can't ya'll. I'm tired. Talk about Halloween and scary. This shit's one of my nightmares. Thank GOD I got this community to come to.....

So I never felt a strong need to have children of my own or otherwise, neither did my partner. I figured that there are enough people already without me making more. Never had that burning desire to pop one out or adopt. I had multiple SILs that did both. Yay for them.

It’s not that I don’t like kids, I do like most, as long as they belong to someone else. My life is full of kids that aren’t mine. I am the cool aunt (at least that’s what some of them tell me).

I feel like kids are inherently good creatures. (Except for one 5-year old who is pure evil - - looking at you Nikol). They are born good and then parents and society come along and mess them up. Being responsible for raising a good human being is daunting.

I’m happy with the choices I made. I know that I made the right choices for me. Society and my MIL may judge, but as a GenXer, IDGF.

Wishing everyone a Happy Friday! Go out this weekend and make memories, not babies.

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I feel like a lot of the 'but who will care for you when you're old' questions come with a kind of resentment in the background - ie, people think childfree folks expect other people's kids to wipe their butts when old in the nursing home or whatever, so they resent that childfree people seem to be banking on tapping a future young adult labor pool they didn't contribute to.

How do you respond to this? I feel like most of us are actually not assuming we're going to make the GenZs or GenA's born to other people wipe our butts; but most childfree women rather:

- are open to some kind of physician assisted suicide in countries/societies where that is an option

- are open to technology (AI, robots) filling this sort of elder-care labor need in the mid-to-long range

NEITHER of which means we're expecting to hire other people's kids to do our grunt labor in old age!!!!

they act like people that are child funny are the weirdos. But really are we weird? I don’t think we’re weird and I feel like wherever we live at the apartments that we were at the homes we rent the homes we own the neighborhood to live. We shouldn’t be treated like social priors for deciding not to have children.

I’ve noticed a neighborhoods if you don’t have kids, there’s a sense of entitlement. The entitlement is that they feel like they should be included in everything but if your child free, they won’t include you in anything. What I mean is the people in my neighborhood all get together and talk and stuff and no kids play and then me and my husband come out and they kind of just stare at us and walk off and disperse like we’re weird.

They actually treat us almost like we’re a danger to their kids because we don’t have kids and therefore they don’t trust us. As really the entitlement I feel like they feel like they’re certain things that they are allowed to do that others are not allowed to do. For example, my husband and I take our dogs on walks every day. Our dogs are always leashed. These same families have little dogs and somehow none of their dogs are on leashes and when we walk our dogs, they act like our dogs are just terrible beast.. who would any moment could dogs. moral of the story don’t move to a neighborhood. I hate my

As a child for a woman, my favorite part of a 24 hour day is night… that’s the time when you don’t hear children screaming, and crying and grocery stores or restaurants or anything. Or it’s supposed to be. The neighborhood I live in is like a ghost town. It is a subdivision. We have multiple families that have kids. The downside the only time I see the kids outside playing is at freaking night. What’s better this way all the kids at night have Glow in the dark complexion they are so pale. The part of the day that I like to sit outside and read books or cozy game or whatever.

My biggest issue though, is my neighbors across the street have 3 kids who ride theirs bikes and dirt bikes around our cul du sac. yes, the noise from the miniature dirt bikes bothers me. But what really bothers me is the child who rides his bike as close as he can to my dogs in hopes of irritating them and he looks at his parents and points out the dogs reactions. I have two pitbull mix’s. They are really easy going. But the child across the street doing that during their nightly walk really irritates me. I really hate kids!

EDIT: for better context , the child looks at my dogs, then at his parents and points to them and says see what they almost did. It’s ruining the walks for my dogs because their kid is insistent that he was as close as possible and drive my dogs up the wall. The sad part is the dog that is doing it too doesn’t like bikes and so it makes her a step back.