My story starts with one of my oldest memories sitting below huge pine trees with binoculars. I had a desire to be alone and admire nature quietly. Gifts of baby dolls and strollers were unappreciated and from a young age I was frustrated by what I would come to experience as societal expectations for girls and women. 

Both of my parents worked throughout my childhood and I could see how exhausted they were at the end of the day. They weren't interested in entertaining us although they did their best for a few minutes each day. I know they love their children, but I truly believed they would have had better lives without us. As I got older, I witnessed increasingly more examples of people who had children they came to regret or traumatize. It seems difficult for people to accept wanting children does not equate to being a good parent. 

Before meeting like-minded, childfree people, I would often use the excuse 'I would not be a good mother' after admitting I did not want children. It took years of listening to people tell me the reasons I would be a great mother before I finally changed my wording to 'I do not want to be a mother.' I was very fortunate in meeting a partner who is an antinatalist and was willing to get a vasectomy to ensure I never had to go through an unwanted pregnancy, abortion, or more complicated surgery to get my fallopian tubes tied. He broke the mold growing up around a Christian family who held very traditional views of what a woman's role should be and they took that role very seriously; he has over 100 cousins and the family tree seems to grow exponentially! Needless to say we have not told many people about his vasectomy.

After graduating from college, I was questioned about when we would start 'trying' (a question and term which is always inappropriate and uncomfortable, but people have no hesitation in asking). As people around us gave birth and we gained nieces we reluctantly held and interacted with, we heard comments like 'see don't you want one.' To this day, I am not sure whether people actually acknowledged our disinterest in reproducing, or whether they started to believe I had 'aged out', or the guilt from our parents died down because they are content to have grandchildren from our siblings. 

I describe our joint experience above, but I did receive disproportionate guilt as a woman. My sister-in-law would even pretend to understand my decision, while not so subtly placing the role of 'great aunt' on my shoulders. Today I am content with the dwindling or non-existent conversations about children, but I do feel somewhat dishonest in sugar coating my responses all these years. It is still socially unacceptable to say you do not like children; the few times I have said it I am looked at with concern and sometimes fear. Upon seeing someone pregnant, women are supposed to coo and tell the expecting mother how beautiful she is; I feel nauseous and remember walking into that Alien scene when I was 5 years old and should have been asleep. The most cringeworthy line I frequently heard was 'one day your hormones will change and you will want them,' as if decades of certainty would vanish and my brain would have no choice but to fold to the force of animal instinct to reproduce. I rarely refuted that one, but I can confidently say, that day never came.

We are happy DINKs, living our lives freely with no regrets being childfree. Over time, we have learned to let some friendships fade and lean into others. We can be ourselves with people who understand or share our lifestyle choices. Being childfree is completely natural and a growing movement, one day I hope that these stories won't need to be shared because the decision will be accepted without question.