And then, almost immediately—so fast, in fact, that they can’t even hear it happening themselves—the word tumbles from the person’s mouth: Why? For them, that singular word rolls off the tongue in a mere instant. But for people like myself, I can watch each individual letter lazily take shape as though they were blowing bubbles shaped like W-H-Y.

Why? Well, why not? The level of reaction that is a result of this simple sentence has always baffled me. 

I think that if I had just said that I had recently discovered my ability to shapeshift into a squirrel, I would have been met with a response far less incredulous.

The problem with this question—why?—is that there is no correct answer. Nor should there be—to be perfectly clear—but when discussing what is considered a correct answer, I most often mean the one that says: Is this the reason that will be enough justification for you?

The problem—as I see it, and I’m sure that many others who are reading this will, too—is that the expectation lies upon us to have kids. Never mind that the data shows that women are having kids later in life or that more and more women are simply choosing not to have kids. (Let me highlight the key word from that sentence: choosing.)

The traditional model of the perfect family—a married man and woman and their 2.5 kids who live in a three bedroom, two bath ranch home with an attached garage in a quiet suburban neighborhood—continues to be as unrealistically pressed upon us as is the American Dream. 

Where we seem to have gone wrong is the assumption that this is (or should be) everyone’s dream. 

So where does that leave those of us who do not see our lives unfolding beneath this traditional model? 

We Need to Normalize Being Present

In December 2019, I got married. Leading up to the wedding, and increasingly thereafter, the question was frequently lobbed at me: When are you going to have kids? Not are you, but when? Now, I won’t discount the fact that it was a conversation that I had been a willing participant in before, but it was now coming with more pressing urgency. 

Now, it’s my turn: Why? I have never subscribed to the fact that first comes love, then comes marriage, and then immediately comes the rest of your life caring for a human that shares your DNA. 

The pressure—the expectation—of society to bear children is absolutely crushing. While there are beautiful babies born to married couples every single day, I don’t believe that the reason to get married is to have children. As we have shifted from a society of arranged marriages to those that are joined in love, why can we not, too, simply love being married?

So to that I say, we need to normalize being present. As our society steadily becomes more fast-paced, we are losing the art of enjoying the moment. We are losing that taste for the present by always searching for the next best thing. We have lost that loving feeling that comes with all of the firsts of being married: the first year together, the first home purchase, the first big fight. 

Instead, we stop savoring all of the little things that made us fall in love with our partner in the first place because our minds are too preoccupied, not with if we are going to have kids, but when. We do ourselves, our partners, and our marriage a disservice every time we willingly let memories slip by because we are too focused on the when and not the now. 

We Need to Normalize the Right to Privacy

Equally as invasive as the question of when is the question of why. Sometimes, the question of why has a time component: Why haven’t you had kids yet? This line of questioning has always felt to me to be inherently dangerous. While the question sounds plural (why haven’t you—as a couple—had kids yet?), the question feels much more personal. It begs the question: What am I doing wrong? Why haven’t I delivered on my promise yet? 

Perhaps (as in my case) you weren’t doing something wrong, you were simply waiting for what felt like the right time (spoiler: there is no right time). 

But far more often, there might be something wrong. The truth is, women carry the burden of infertility far more than men. While it is true that it takes sperm to fertilize an egg, when a couple has problems conceiving it is most often the woman that is first scrutinized. What is wrong with her eggs? Is she not ovulating? Does she need hormone therapy? Why can’t she carry a child?

Unfortunately, many women suffer in silence, all the while, searching desperately for a justification for inquisitive friends—an answer to this problem that says: I am not broken. It is not my fault. 

Sometimes, the version of this question that is tossed to me is offended: Why would you not want to have kids? 

The answers that most often come to my head (the ones that I really want to say)—disposable income, responsibility of only self, schedule flexibility, sleeping in on Saturday mornings, avoiding what looks to be an incredibly painful experience—are, for all practical purposes, not considered the “right” answers. 

More often than not, I’m relegated to saying something along the lines of: I just don’t think it’s right for me for fear of being accused of pure, overt selfishness. 

But, here’s the thing—I’m okay with the term selfish. In fact, I’m not just okay with the word, I embrace it. Because this is what ‘selfish’ says to me: I, unequivocally, choose this decision because it is what I want, what is in my best interest, and I do not feel that I have allowed outside perspectives to skew my own personal judgment. What is so wrong with that? 

Sometimes, the question of why I receive is guilt-inducing: Why don’t you want to experience life’s greatest joy?

Joy is subjective. What brings one person joy, may bring another pain. What brings one person fulfillment, may bring another confinement. It is not for you—nor I—to assert the opinion of what is ‘life’s greatest joy’ on another. Upon this earth, there are no two people who have the same shared life experiences. I have not felt your joy; you have not felt my pain. 

In order to honor and validate the existence of all of our feelings, I choose to only speak to what I know to be true for me. And I choose to believe that joy manifests itself daily, in a variety of forms and in a variety of ways, both passive and active. I look forward to experiencing new joys as they come, relishing in the moment of each, without always weighing one against another or being expectant of more.

But ultimately, while I can only speak to my own lived experience, we also cannot see into the inner workings of a couple in order to see what happens behind closed doors. They do not owe you an answer. I do not owe you an answer.

We all value the right to privacy in our lives, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. We order condoms and pregnancy tests and sex toys and other items we are too scared to buy in stores online because we can do it from the privacy of our own homes. 

We use incognito browsers to hide our browsing activity so we can safely visit adult websites with no one the wiser. 

We shut off cookies on our laptops and phones to keep our personal data private and secure. 

We install privacy screens and fences and curtains to feel sheltered and safe within our own homes.

It begs the question: Why then, can a woman not feel as though she has a right to privacy—a right to feel safe—within her own body? 

We Need to Normalize a Person’s Choice

I have spent a lot of time talking about selfishness and ultimately it comes down to the lack of willingness to support a person’s choice. I think back to when I was a child and I played with Barbies and G.I. Joes (my brother’s addition to my toy choice). 

Sometimes, we played with Barbies; sometimes, we played with G.I.Joes. Sometimes Barbie wore fatigues and fought enemies and came home without a shoe. Sometimes G.I. Joe took the Corvette for a spin around the block with sunglasses on and the top down. 

As outlandish and silly as this example may be (albeit true), no one critiqued my choice to have plastic dolls violate gender norms. No one said that Barbie needed to be in the kitchen or have babies just as often as no one said Joe needed to get his too-long legs outta the Corvette. No one from Mattel came knocking at my door to instruct me on the proper use of toy dolls.  

We teach children that they can be whatever that they want to be. Barbies are sold as lawyers, doctors, explorers, scientists. We print out posters with quotes from our favorite inspirational women to hang on our walls. We read lines out of history books showing the strides that women have fought for and made. We show children that it is possible. 

But, while women have made huge advances in the fields of science and medicine, what we haven’t made advancements in is the normalization of a woman’s choice. We say that we are opening new doorways of potential, while simultaneously confining ourselves to old rooms.

Conventional wisdom would say that I am talking about men in a patriarchal society, but I am not. Women shut the door in the faces of other women almost every day. It has been my experience that it is almost exclusively women who pry with the seemingly innocent questions of when or why. It is women who celebrate a pregnancy announcement on Facebook with the caption, “Congratulations on your first child.” 

And, most importantly, we slam the door in the faces of other women when we place the sole burden of choice upon ourselves. Women shame other women when they choose to not have kids. But why is it also not part of the conversation that male counterparts can be just as equally involved in the choice to not want or have children? Why is it always blamed on the women? (Or anyone with a uterus for that matter!)

I believe that it is because we, as women, hide that very lack of choice behind the guise of having it all. For so long, the narrative was that a woman had to choose between having children or having a career. That, if a woman chose not to have children, she was forsaking her role in society, she was selfish, she wasn’t a true woman. 

But that narrative has changed. Now, if a woman can balance being a mom, being a wife, and still have time to be a prolific businesswoman, then she has it all. 

That has become the true mark of womanhood. Besides, who doesn’t want to have it all? It’s enticing; it’s seductive; it’s the gold star; it’s the headline that sells magazines on newsstands. Here She Is: The Woman Who Has It All! 

But behind the Woman Who Has It All is another woman who is overwhelmed. There is a woman whose mental health is suffering. There is yet another woman who feels the insurmountable societal pressure to put on lipstick, fix her hair, and handle it. To be the Woman Who Has It All. 

But, why can’t we normalize that having it all can look differently to every person? Why are we not able to normalize that there is no one right way? 

We know by watching documentaries of celebrities and famous individuals that those who look like they have it all are actually struggling just as much as you or I. We act surprised when they commit suicide—but they had it all!—but deep within our souls, we empathize with them, because we, too, want the world to think that we have it all, even as our mental health holds on by a mere thread. 

There is no one specific scenario—no matter how shiny it looks to the casual passerby—that is ever the recipe for having it all. There’s simply not enough time to be wholly present for it all.

We need to normalize that you can still have it all without having kids. You can still have it all with kids but without a career, too. We need to normalize that being a Woman Who Has It All is less about juggling all of the roles that women are expected to fill and instead, choosing to say no to the roles that do not fulfill us so that we can have it all in those that do.

We Need to Normalize Changing Your Mind

And sometimes, the reason that you don’t want to have kids is because you changed your mind. You might remember that I mentioned that I was married in 2019. I was also divorced in 2022. 

I’ve been accused of a lot of things when this topic of marriage and children comes up. I’ve been accused of lying. Of misleading. Of making excuses. I’ve been accused of being selfish (there’s that word again). 

But there was one thing that I was never allowed to be guilty of:  changing my mind.

You see, this article ends exactly where it began. With societal pressure. I can definitively say that I have never felt particularly maternal. I was never one of those girls that knew early on that they wanted to be a mother. In my younger years, I would have instantly told you I didn’t want kids. At 35, I can say that I have never heard the sound of that elusive clock ticking. 

But what I did feel is the pressure of society. The nagging insistence that having children was life’s greatest joy. That, if I didn’t have kids, I was missing out on the single most meaningful thing that would ever bloom during my existence on this planet. 

I wanted to feel that; I wanted to believe that; I wanted to embrace the feeling that everyone says that little girls are supposed to feel when they think about being a mom. I wanted to be what society said that I had to be but didn’t feel myself. 

I desperately thought that that moment would come, too. I believed that love could break through my cold Grinch heart and I would realize that what I had felt for the majority of my life was wrong and that I could look back later and just say that I was just scared. Scared of the unknown. Scared of the mistakes that I might make. Scared of a new role that I would take on that I had no understanding of. 

I frantically reached for and clung to every single justification that I possibly could. I told myself that if I could explain it all away—if I could justify it, not only to myself, but to the world—that it would make it okay to feel the way that I did inside. I wanted to explain it all away because I felt like if I said that I didn’t want kids, I was the one that was broken. That I was a failure. That I was somehow less of a woman.

This need to provide an acceptable justification is a crushing weight. I always felt as though I didn’t have a strong enough reason for the question of why when someone would ask. I wanted to cry and shout and scream to whoever would listen that I did try, that I didn’t lie, that I was a good person—a good woman, a good wife—but, please forgive me, I just couldn’t be a good mom. 

I couldn’t give the right answer to why because I knew that even if I said I changed my mind, it wouldn’t be enough. There was no answer that would be enough.

But, as I now stand back as an observer of my old life, what I’ve come to realize is that I was doing myself the biggest disservice that I ever could. I was letting society deny my bodily autonomy.  

I didn’t lie to anyone else, but I did lie to myself. I was trying so desperately to contort my mind into the idea that I wanted kids that I was denying myself bodily autonomy. I was searching for every single answer or reason or justification to satisfy everyone else—friends, family, society—and give them the answer to why that they wanted to hear. But what I refused to give myself was permission to utter the answer to my own why. 

So here is the real, raw, honest answer when you ask me why I don’t want to have kids: Because it’s my body and I don’t want to.