Obstacles
Obstacles
Written by Ida Summervelt Tuesday, 13 October 2009 07:46
According to my dictionary, an obstacle is something that stands in the way of or holds up progress towards a goal.
For most people who set becoming parents as a goal, there are no obstacles other than the financial considerations of raising a child. But for people who are battling infertility issues, there are many, many obstacles beyond that - various fertility treatments, IVF, etc., plus the emotional roller coaster that is the side effect of medical treatment. We’ve all read articles and seen TV shows describing the incredible emotional and financial commitment infertile couples and even some singles make to receiving treatment to help them overcome their obstacles and have a child.
While I can’t begin to understand the strong desires that drive people to invest so much time and money and to go through so many medical procedures and so much emotional turmoil to have a baby, I certainly sympathize with their struggles to overcome the obstacles in their paths and I rejoice with them when they finally attain their heart’s desire.
But yet....one fact remains, and that is that not everyone wants to have children. While society and the medical profession focuses on the obstacles confronting infertile people, those of us who have chosen to be childfree also face obstacles along the path to obtaining our heart’s desire: Living our lives without having children of our own.
Obstacles? To being childfree? At this point, childed people are most likely laughing like crazy but yes, there are obstacles along the path to childfreedom and some of them are huge.
The first obstacle is the label we are born with. The one that forever marks the child as a boy or a girl and determines the societal conditioning the child will receive. Either way, there is the expectation that the child will, at some point, reproduce though the expectation is much greater for girls than it is for boys.
The second obstacle is biology. We have an inborn drive to reproduce. Of course, for those who want children this is a good thing, but for those of us who wish to be childfree, it is a huge obstacle. Fortunately there are many good, reliable methods of birth control readily available today. This was not the case back in the days when biology was destiny.
The third obstacle is our relatives. Our parents expect grandchildren and take every opportunity to remind us of that expectation. Our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins all get in on the act, reminding us that our biological clocks are ticking and telling us how having kids is so worth it.
The fourth obstacle is our childed friends who parrot our relatives. Like our relatives, they tell us we’ll change our minds, ask who will care for us in our old age, and call us selfish. It’s difficult to keep friends who constantly badger you to blindly follow their lead while paying no attention to what you have to say on the subject.
The fifth obstacle is the medical profession - those professionals who simply do not believe that someone would not know their own mind when requesting a sterilization procedure and those that refuse to provide birth control or abortion because it conflicts with their personal values and feel they have the right to force their personal values on others.
Yet another obstacle may be our partners who just assumed that, when we said “no kids”, we would change our minds and decide we wanted them after all.
Yes, there are obstacles on the road to remaining childfree for life. But they can be overcome with will power, determination, and good, reliable birth control. Yes, by all means let’s rejoice for the infertile people who have overcome their obstacles and attained their goal of having a child. But let’s also rejoice for the Childfree By Choice: we have also overcome our obstacles and attained our goal.
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