Who are these childfree (by choice) articles for?
Pondering why I write what I write and for whom
I hope you’re enjoying As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell. If you’ve liked the writing, it is worth knowing it’s entirely a reader-supported and funded publication. If you’d like it to support it, and have access to all posts and regular community chats, the best way to support is through a paid subscription. And you’d have my undying gratitude!
Recently I wrote an article about how hard being single was sometimes, particularly when you’re ill. There is still such a stigma around being single, I posited, that sometimes we over-compensate by talking about how fulfilled and peaceful we are, without feeling able to open up about our vulnerabilities around it. One of those vulnerabilities for me is around being ill, which opened up a much wider panic around what will happen to me when I’m older, and how I’ll be taken care of.
When The I Paper posted this on their social media feed, a man wrote a comment: “This is why you should stop writing articles promoting being child free. Family is vitality (sic) important to happiness, being part of a unit is what we evolved to do.”
Once again, it bears pointing out to anyone who has said something like this (see also: you’ll never know a love like it, it’s the most fulfilling thing you’ll ever do), that to say this to someone who is childfree but not by choice – how unimaginably cruel this would be. And for people who cough and splutter and say well, that’s different – why is it different? Who has the right to offer up conditions around their sympathy and caveats around their judgement based on the circumstances of another person’s life?
But also, this idea that everyone is skipping around playing happy families, braiding each other’s hair and eating banana bread, whose life actually resembles only that? What I witness most of the time are people who are trying to make the best choices for themselves, whose lives will include mess, illness, good moments, and joy.
What it doesn’t include are guarantees your kids will look after you when you are older (or even be in a position to look after themselves), or that you will be an acceptable parent judging by the number of adults I’ve seen who have been scarred by their own bad, absent or negligent parents.
Not least of which, is that it offers up such binary conclusions to certain decisions. Marriage equals happiness. Kids equal fulfillment. Singledom equals sadness. No children equals emptiness. While it is true that human beings thrive when they are part of a community versus being solitary, there are no rules to say what that community should look like.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.