My husband Chris and I are one of those couples people look at and get all ‘awww’ and ‘schucks’ and ‘you guys are just so cute’ about. And we are ‘old marrieds’, best pals, lovers, comrades, people who have shared a long 15 year journey together and just damned compatible and different enough to both glue us together and keep us being each our own person. So why didn’t we have kids? We were both childfree by choice – Dinks in urban slang today. But what were the nuts and bolts of that choice? Were his reasons for this choice the same as mine? And how did us being a childfree couple start out? Were we always this way, before we met, even since our teens, since our childhoods?
Chris is a pragmatist, a realist, a deep thinker, he makes considered choices, he thinks like a humanitarian. He is a man content with lots of time in his own company, preferably lost in a geeky magazine, a documentary, the threads of a lengthy news related Tweet, immersed in science, technology and techy problem solving and exploration. Beyond that he’s a nature guy, trees, vistas, walking, flora and fauna and a great ‘cat dad’. I sat with him and went through the list of why people choose to remain childfree

competing familial or social obligations
economic insufficiency
lack of access to support networks and resources
personal well-being
existing or possible health problems, including genetic disorders
fear that sexual activity may decline.
fears of being trapped or disappointed,fears for the child
damage to relationships or difficulties with them
fear and/or revulsion towards the physical condition of pregnancy, the childbirth experience and recovery
belief that one can make a greater contribution to humanity through one’s work than through having children
perceived or actual incapacity to be a responsible and patient parent
view that the wish to reproduce oneself is a form of narcissism
the absence of a partner one deems fit to sexually reproduce with
belief that it is wrong to bring a child into the world if the child is unwanted
belief that it is wrong to intentionally have a child when there are so many children available for adoption
concern regarding environmental impacts such as overpopulation, pollution, and resource scarcity
wish to spare a potential child from the suffering of life.
belief in declining condition of the world and not subjecting a child to those negative conditions.
belief that people tend to have children for the wrong reasons (e.g. fear, social pressures from cultural norms)
adherence to the principles of a religious organization which rejects having children
dislike of children
uncertainty over the stability of the parenting relationship
lack of interest
belief that one is too old to have children
career orientation

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childfree

What figured in his choice was commonly similar for me: belief that one needed to be with the ‘right’ partner first (I was 37, he was 31 when we married), that it required a great sense of responsibility and commitment, that there were other ways to contribute to humanity, that the future for a child was uncertain (global warming, economic uncertainty 20+ years ahead), that he had no social pressure or cultural norms to live up to (nobody expected or particularly wished he’d have children), fears of being too solitary to cope with 18 years of the demands and needs of a child, belief there were too many unwanted children to actually make more children, liking children but not enough to drive him to want to have them, engrossment in his work and interests and awareness this would stop him having the level of responsibility and commitment to have them.

I could relate to much of Chris’ reasons. But on top of these I grew up with immune deficiencies, food allergies and intolerances, lived with autism and brain injury, grew up with PTSD and DID and associated mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders and ultimately was diagnosed with a genetic collagen disorder and dealing with cancer and central apnea, had PTSD and DID – all of which effected my belief in capacity to healthily have a child or be there for that child as well as knowing any child would also be impacted by, if not inherit some of these things, if I’d been able to conceive or carry to term in the first place (many immune deficient people struggle to conceive or miscarry).

My parents were both medicated for mood disorders, my mother had been sectioned when I was 3 and was an alcoholic, compulsive gambler and a personality disordered psychopath with a history as my abuser. Because of the huge role my paternal grandparents and father had played in keeping me alive in my first four years, and my role in the survival of my younger brother in his first three years, it was instilled in me that support networks were absolutely essential if one wanted to ensure the ongoing care of one’s child. I felt there was no healthy support I would offer a child beyond myself and my partner and that if something happened to us a child would be in an ocean of uncertainty.

I liked children. I was a protective, caring, nurturing, fun loving ‘surrogate parent’ to my younger brother who was born when I was 6 and whose ‘parent’ I had become by the time I was 8-10 years old. But with a psychopathic, alcoholic abuser mother grooming him in complete loyalty to and identification with her, I found survival in distancing myself from him, leaving him behind. Living away from home from 15 she would track down where I lived, send him to the door, and instruct him he could not speak to me unless I came out to the car to see her. I would instead close the door, safe from my abuser, but continually shown the connection I was not free to have. This was a mirror image of when I was 4-7 years old, taken to see the paternal grandmother who I’d lived with from birth to four years old and had now been moved away for her own safety. On these once a year visits to the woman I had bonded with as ‘mother’ my biological mother would not permit me to move from the hallway nor permit her to come near me. I could not speak to her, only look through the doorway at the mother I had loved and lost. These two things were probably the most pivotal factors in whether I would ever have children of my own. I learned how much pain can come of bonding with a child or being a child bonded with someone you are now denied contact with.

Added to this was the ‘education’ by my disturbed mother about what motherhood was. Being an abuser who enjoyed being highly graphic and sexualised, my mother had no hesitation in explicitly detailing the process of my birth, explaining to me aged 10 that I ‘you know where you came from? You slopped out of my creamy cunt’. This, and the continual use of me as confidante to repeat ‘don’t ever get married, don’t ever have kids’, ‘you owe me a life’ and ‘I could have been free if I didn’t have you’, left me PTSD associated with all talk of child birth, having children, even marrying. Being sexually assaulted at age 2-4, at age 8, raped at age 12, raped at 14 and living with men from 15-25 to avoid homelessness, pregnant and miscarrying at 15, unable to tell anyone until I was 51, all of this added to challenges of relating to body, to sexuality, to the concept of pregnancy, to getting married. Then there was the general public with its broken record mantra of ‘if you were abused you should never have children or you would then abuse them’ (in fact only 30% of those abused go on to abuse their own children, 70% do not). So it took until my mid 30s-40s to work my way through the chaos.

I have always been more connected to animals and nature and like Chris was naturally solitary and aversive to being pursued. I feared I’d have felt socially claustrophobic and would have had a natural social distance a child would not have understood or taken personally. I also feared I’d not cope if I’d had a psychopathic child that got excited by harming or killing the way I’d seen in my mother. I knew that if I’d had such a child, I’d have abandoned them because I’d be unable to love a psychopath (I never bonded with my mother, though did bond with non-psychopath carers) and that the last thing a psychopathic child would need would be a parent who was afraid of, aversive to or rejecting of them.

Being born to an abuser, I did feel it was a narcissistic thing, a selfish thing to treat a child as ‘one’s own’, to feel one ‘owned it’ or even be overly possessive, overly entangled, even a helicopter parent fixating on one’s child as an investment, a project, a reflection upon oneself, a doll, an achievement… None of this spoke to me, all of it repelled me. I saw children the way I saw animals – creatures with their own entity, autonomy, personhood, requiring empathy, consideration, but also boundaries and separateness to become their ‘own person’, to experience ‘their own journey’. Perhaps I’d have made a great mother, but that doesn’t mean it would have worked for me and if it didn’t work for me, then long term, why would I imagine that would have worked for them?

Like Chris I felt there were other ways I could belong and contribute to the world without it being through creating yet another life in a world full of children waiting and wishing for homes, in a world the sustainable future of which we could not guarantee with any certainty whatsoever. I became an autism consultant in 1996, worked with over 1000 children and adults with autism until semi retiring due to health challenges in 2011. I was told I had been parent to the parents, helped them to be better able to mother their own children.

When I was in my teens and living with men everyone hoped I wouldn’t get pregnant, as if it would be a tragedy. And I could see any such child would have ultimately have ended up in care services. In my 20s people presumed I’d one day have children or that if I didn’t it was understandable on the basis of my autism. In my 30s, now accomplished, educated, financially independent, the question was ‘will you ever have children?’. By my 40s, by now also having only one ovary left, the statement was ‘its still not too late for you to have children’. By the age of 47, getting a double mastectomy and chemo for breast cancer it was ‘I hope you never wanted to have children’. By the age of 48 and on ventilation for Central Apnea and a failed respiratory drive meaning I can die if I fall asleep without my ventilation it is ‘lucky you didn’t have children’. At 51 I live with my husband in a great marriage, with our two cats in our house surrounded by families who say ‘I see your cats are your children’. And I ask myself, Donna, were you always destined to be someone who would never have children, who would have chosen never to have children? And I think I can say, yes, probably. I may have had them by accident or by default or through expectation or pressure. But by choice? No, probably I’d have stuck with having cats.

Around 1 in 5 women, roughly 20% of women, now choose to remain childfree. Some suburbs in Melbourne have even higher concentrations of childfree women with up to 20% of some areas being childfree by choice. Are you one of them? Would love to hear your own story.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist,and presenter.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.