Why I Am Child-Free -- The "No-Bull" Version

I’ve been working on a new post for several days, and I had crafted a nice, well-rounded article about the reasons I chose not to have children. It was an amusing commentary that could have been published in any women’s magazine, or any number of websites geared towards women’s interests. A masterpiece in the making, or so it began, but I was struggling to finish and actually post it. Finally I realized that the reason I was wrestling so furiously with getting it “just right” was because it was all just nicely-worded bullshit. I wasn’t being completely truthful about my reasons for not having kids, or sharing my honest feelings about why I chose to remain child-free. The piece was just a pleasant, polite, and politically correct pile of garbage. So, as I’ve done numerous times before, I sent that collection of wasted words straight to the trash bin.

Because here’s the real deal, my friends, the no bullshit version--I didn’t have kids because I don’t LIKE kids, and because I JUST DIDN’T WANT TO. I know I’m viewed as “odd” compared to the majority of women, but I just don’t like kids that much, and particularly not babies. There are a few children I have come to enjoy for brief periods of time and kids can be great-- for other people --but they’re just not great for me. And I understand that for most people, babies are a miracle of life, a blessing of their love, and the physical evidence of the passion they've shared with their partner. And I’m genuinely happy for their delight with their offspring and their perceived "beauty." But it’s a rare occasion that I can say I’ve ever seen a truly beautiful baby.

For some reason, my eyes only see babies as miniature old people, wrinkly, bald-headed, angry geezers swaddled in once-soft blankets that are now stiffened by green or yellow spit-up. My brain registers infants only as tiny, frightening aliens who frantically wave their pudgy little arms while making furious, ear-splitting demands, screaming for attention while squiggling and squirming and wallowing in their own waste. Don't even get me started on toddlers or teenagers. And since this is my story, I'm gonna I call it like I see it: most children, no matter the age, just aren't that appealing. At least not to me. Sorry, but I'm not really sorry. What I am is honest.

I have known since I was quite young that I wasn’t born with the “baby equals happiness” gene. I’ve never been the kind of girl who played with dolls or who exclaims "isn't it adorable!" when I see a baby or small child. And I don't coo, except when it comes to puppies. I can count on my two hands the number of times in my life that I’ve held a baby, and every single one has screamed the entire time, begging for their mommy to save us both from our shared terror. And even though I do love and care for the people in my life to the best of my ability, I think my nurturing skills would probably be classified as clumsy and erratic (at best). I just don't have a "motherly" bone in my body, except for my puppies. And that’s my simple truth.

But in the spirit of "No-BS-Day," I will admit there was a brief, psychotic moment in my (very) young life when I was so wildly, deeply, madly in love that I recklessly turned to my man and declared “we should have a baby!” Yes, I actually uttered those five words-ONCE. And I am eternally grateful to that man for knowing me better than I knew myself, at least in that moment, and for having the infinite wisdom to gently decline. Thanks to his common sense and sound judgment, I was spared decades of misery and regret, a lifetime sentence of motherhood--the byproduct of which would have been a living, breathing, daily reminder of a man who later painfully betrayed my trust, broke my heart into a million pieces, and crushed my soul into the dust without a single glance backwards.

And a heart-breaking, life-long prison sentence of regret, epic and miserable in proportion, is all I can imagine when I try to picture what my life would have been if I had given birth to a child. Not just his child, but any man's child. That's a pretty good justification for NOT having a baby, don't you think?

So there it is folks, that’s the REAL deal, the god’s honest truth, the politically UNcorrect, no BS version. I’ve never once regretted not having children. I'm glad I didn't, and happy that my near-lapse was only a temporary blip on the radar of my youth. Luckily, I had the confidence, the support, and the resources to stay faithful to my choice over the remaining years, not every woman is so fortunate. Not being a mother is also one of the reasons dear hubby and I were eventually introduced--mutual friends knew neither of us had, or wanted, children. If I had been serving my sentence as a mother, we likely never would have met at all. And my life would have been VERY different--in a not-so-good way. So I know I can say I'm VERY glad--in a VERY good way--that I made the choice to NOT have children. And I am very happy without them, in a no-bullshit-kind-of way.