Let Your Childfree Voice Be Heard

Let Your Childfree Voice Be Heard

Written by iandysgrl Tuesday, 10 November 2009 09:00

“I want you to write a paper on some significant event in your life that was problematic for you,” my beginning English class instructor announced.

I knew immediately what I should write my paper about. The most significant event in my life up until now had been my experience of being on the fence about having children and then coming to the conclusion that I wanted to remain childfree. For days, however, I was afraid to write this paper because we were going to be getting into groups and sharing our papers with each other in peer review. Not only that, but we would be announcing in front of the entire class what the topics of our papers were going to be. This may not sound like a big deal, but I live in Utah, particularly in Utah County, where we have the highest birthrate in the US nation. Having children is what people do around here. And many people in my class were parents.

The day of class came when we had to share our topics. I was very nervous about what people would think of me. I felt like I was being thrown into the lion’s den. Finally my turn came around, and I explained what my paper was going to be about. Everyone stared at me, and immediately someone’s hand shot up. In that instant, I thought, “oh dear, here we go to Bingo town.”

Surprisingly though, the man said, “you’d be surprised at how many people around here struggle with this idea of having children. I know of a few people who feel the same way and are in the same situation.”

When he said that, I knew I had picked the right topic. I was no longer afraid of sharing my paper, but was actually looking forward to it. I wrote my paper in one day. (If you would like to read it, I have posted it to my blog: http://cfutahn.wordpress.com/ ) The next week, we gave our papers to each other in our groups to take home and peer review.

The day came for our groups to get together and discuss our papers. Strangely enough, there were not that many bingo’s coming from the girls in my group. For the most part, they were more curious about the childfree lifestyle. I think many of them had never met anyone who was childfree. None of them had even heard the phrase before. One girl even said that she never knew about the aspect of not wanting to have kids before, absurd as that may sound. One woman in my group has known me for a very long time, since I was a preteen. She was surprised as she read my paper. She later told me that it was harder to hear from me that I wouldn’t be having kids than it was to hear from her friend who was a lesbian, because she felt like married people should all want to have kids. When I discussed the topic with my teacher, he told me that I should be more open with people about childfreedom to let people know that option exists.

I am so glad that I chose to write my paper about this subject. From writing my story and sharing it with others, I have learned a very valuable thing: that I should be more open with my feelings to let other people know that it is okay to be childfree. How many people out there have children because it’s “expected” of them and are miserable and have kids who can sense that? I would go out on a limb and say that maybe we should all be open about our childfree lives so that people will know that it’s okay, that we’re all good people, and there is nothing abnormal or wrong with us. We are all okay, so let our voices be heard. You never know who might benefit from hearing your story.

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