This Is What It’s Really Like to Not Want to Have a Child
It’s not like not wanting a side of broccoli
For all of the differences between wanting and not wanting kids, one thing is similar: the intensity of the desire in either direction is never stronger than when that desire is threatened.
For example, someone who’s always wanted “kids, absolutely, when the time comes” probably doesn’t fully realize just how bad they’ve always wanted a child until the day they’re told their (or their partner’s) body isn’t likely to produce one.
Similarly, someone who’s “never wanted kids, thanks” becomes acutely aware of how completely devastating a child would be to their future happiness when they’re under pressure to have one.
The huge difference when it comes to those desires, though (aside from the opposite life goals), is in the reactions each camp gets if they share their feelings about their predicaments.
“I can’t have kids” gets you the kind of reaction you see here on GoFundMe, where thousands of dollars are being donated for IVF treatments:
On the other hand, “God, I just really don’t want to have kids” gets you, “Don’t want kids? Don’t have sex.”
Don’t have sex.
Imagine saying to someone upset about being infertile/sterile, “Can’t make kids? Adopt.”
But we don’t say this, because since the dawn of long ago, it’s been hammered into us that a woman making a baby is everything. It is what a woman is, what a woman wants, what fulfills a woman, what makes a house a home, what makes a couple a family! Etc.
If a woman cannot make this baby, the world is sad for her. We all know - thanks in part to the many movies and novels and memoirs and essays about such things - the heartbreaking emptiness she will feel over the loss of her dream, the death of her single life goal, the cancellation of the only real plan she’d ever made.
I’m not making fun of this woman. I completely understand how devastating it would be to not be able to have a child you want because I know how defeated, how devastated, I would feel if I had no choice but to have a child.
And that’s where many people’s capacity for empathy funnels straight out.
“How can those two things be remotely the same? Babies bring happiness and hope, and all that. Plus, everyone has kids. So what if you think you don’t want one right now? If you have one, you’ll get over it. ‘Defeated. Devastated.’ Please. Drama.”
To explain the sinking feeling that comes with the pressure — worse, the certainty of the inevitability — of having a child, I offer this scene from the movie The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which I saw for the first time only recently and which has become my favorite scene in any movie ever for its authenticity and tragedy.
When the scene (captured here in stills) begins, a mother (Mrs. Kelly), whose husband is bedridden and unable to work, has just told their daughter Mick that she (Mick) will have to start taking night classes at high school so she can work longer hours during the day to make up for the lost wages — and that, in spite of Mick’s fears that she’ll quit night classes and drift aimlessly just like she’d seen other kids do, “it’s the only way.”
“But Mama! I want to make something of myself, Mama. I’ve got this feeling inside me like I was destined for something.”
“We all have that feeling when we’re young. It will pass.”
“Well, I know it won’t be easy, but without a high school diploma, what chance have I got?”
“The same chance I had. You’ll meet some fella and get married…”
“…If you’re lucky, you’ll love him. You’ll have kids. That’s what life is, Mick. That’s all it is.”
Some people — the ones who can’t conceive of not wanting children — could look at that girl’s face after this exchange and not see her soul dying.
That’s the face of a girl whose life is over. She’s just learned of the loss of her dream, the death of her one life goal, the cancellation of the only real plan she’d ever made
“Aw, that’s just a movie,” argue those who forget this post is being written by someone who can relate to the Mick character. “Having a kid ain’t that bad, dang.”
Here’s a real person who had a child she didn’t want after being pressured into it. Found her on Reddit:
Original Poster: It’s been over a decade and I’m still bitter on just how much of a nose dive my quality of life took. The best years of my life have been spent praying for time to go by faster — just wasted in a depressed fog of domestic slavery.
Reply: I’m so sorry. If you don’t mind me asking, did you want children before having them? Were you on the fence? Did you feel like other lied to you about the “Wonders”? Did you get pressured into it?
OP: I did feel pressured into it, by my partner, in-laws and society in general. I will take personal accountability that I didn’t stand up for myself when faced with external pressure to have kids. I don’t think my happiness levels will ever recover.
(There are a lot more like her.)
She knew she didn’t want them, but she did it, anyway.
“You can’t know until you try,” someone, somewhere, has surely said. “How does anyone know they don’t want ki — ”
You know when you don’t want them.
Some physical reactions I had when my first ex-husband told me he thought it was time to start talking about kids were immediate-onset exhaustion, like my core wanted to shut down; weight. weight. inside; blank apathy about the rest of my life (what life?); and a full spiritual recoil, as if “NO” were the only thing I knew, the only sensation I could identify, the only word in existence.
That future was dark, and it made me feel sick. I drew on this feeling when writing The Age of the Child’s Katherine, who in the first pages of the novel learns the appointment she made to terminate a very unwanted pregnancy has been canceled by an overturn of Roe and the shuttering of her clinic, which had been one of the country’s last still standing.
Why did I write this?
Because when having kids is “just what you do,” as many societies insist it is, no one takes not wanting them seriously. Which means not only do they not try to understand it, but they don’t think there’s anything there worth trying to understand.
Which means there are still too many parents / friends / magazines / movies / tv shows / cultures / countries / organized religions / lawmakers pressuring or forcing people to have children, and in many cases ruining lives — not only of those who will become regretful parents, but of the children who should only be born into the arms of those who happily and consciously invite them.
And which also means it’s too easy to not possess the deserved empathy for those who will be directly impacted by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, not the least of whom are the little girls adult male lawmakers would rather see spend nine months growing bigger by half their own size from a nonconsensual, too-young-to-know-wtf-is-even-happening pregnancy that was forcibly thrust into them by big, grown men than let them have a quick procedure to stop the adult-pedophile-rapist-shitbag’s seed from getting big enough to split her open.
All this just to say that more clarity regarding the feelings connected with unwanted pregnancies/parenthood can’t really hurt.
*Originally published on Medium.
“Something interesting and endlessly thought-provoking that The Age of the Child captures are the multiple sides of pregnancy — wanting to be pregnant, not wanting to be pregnant, and what right the government has in controlling pregnancy. This isn’t the first piece of dystopian fiction to consider these questions. The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, to name a couple, have opened the dystopian genre to questions about reproduction; however, The Age of the Child is one of the first I’ve read to really consider the issue of reproductive rights and attitudes so deeply.” — Goodreads Review
“This is like no other book out there.” — Amazon Review
“Scathing social commentary.” — Goodreads Review