As the years go by, more and more of us - women, men, trans, and enbies - are exploring the possibility of non-parenthood. Yet, for many of us, the story isn't as simple as choosing not to have children and moving on with our lives. Rather than actively choosing non-parenthood, many people have the question of whether or not to have children thrust upon them because one or another barrier has come up to having them: fertility issues in all shapes and forms, financial or other practical limitations, or the wish to only have children with the right person and inability to find that person.
These challenges are mostly internal - meaning, the question or the challenge comes from within ourselves; the journey gets much more "interesting" when we start exploring the topic with other people. This time of exploring our desire and capacity to have children can be an intensely vulnerable experience, which is why it's such a shame that this is when we're most likely to discover the terms "the pronatalist agenda", "natalism", or "pronatalism".
At its core, "the pronatalist agenda" promotes the idea that reproduction is one of the main objectives of being human. A deeper exploration reveals discussions of the idea that a higher birth rate would reduce some of the major economic and social issues of our times (with the implication that having children is a civic responsibility), and moral arguments in favour of women considering their primary role as becoming mothers. These discussions are well documented online and can be found easily, so I'll leave the definition at that.
These discussions present a challenge to anyone exploring non-parenthood. An exploration of non-parenthood is fraught enough without moral pressure being introduced. When moral pressure is added to the parenthood vs. childfreedom position, it can be difficult not to feel shame. For those of us with family or friends who want us to have children, we may feel judged for not having children. That judgement can be hard to bear, especially for anybody ambivalent or childless not by choice.
I'm writing all of this precisely because my journey to becoming childfree was deceptively straightforward: I was told as a 5 year old that one day I'd have children, I said I didn't want them, I was laughed at (which annoyed me to no end), and, having been prompted to state my position on such a life-defining issue freakishly early, I've felt secure in my position since. While a few other issues have added to my resolution to be childfree: awareness of the environmental impact a child would have, my realisation that I'm neurodivergent and very much need a few hours of peace and quiet per day, and tokophobia to name only three, I've never doubted my feelings about parenthood.
This might make me sound like a potentially unempathic therapist to open up to if you are more ambivalent than I am - or worse, that I might actively hate children and have a bias towards discouraging you from having your own. That is not true. This article is partly an opportunity for me to introduce myself, so I can hopefully clarify to you that if you are involuntarily childless or ambivalent (a "fence-sitter", in some childfree groups) and are considering working with me, I will provide the safest space that I can for you to explore your feelings, options, and goals. More than anything, I want every child to be wanted, and that requires that each person who becomes a parent to be as sure as possible that they want children before they have them. I consider my task as a childfree therapist to be to facilitate your decision process.
So let's get started on that introduction: I am an aunt to two girls - by love, not blood. At the time of writing they're soon to enter their teenage years, and I'm looking forward to meeting the young women they will become. In the meantime, while I'm not a "kids person", I relate to them as best I can so that in the future, if and when they need me, they'll know what sort of person their aunt is. I have been mostly left behind by a few friends who had children, which was painful and needed my time and self-reflection to come to terms with. I have experienced being the only member of a professional group who wasn't a parent (which wasn't too fraught a situation for me. I was unable to contribute to some parts of the discussion, and the sense of exclusion was rather irritating but not as hard as it might have been, had I been struggling with my fertility).
My final comment on this will be that I suffer from a common therapists' affliction: I often don't have particularly similar experiences to those of my clients, whether that's around the topic of reproduction or not. Often, the best characteristic I can offer my clients is my own ignorance, but the good news is, I have plenty of it! More seriously, I strive to be aware of my ignorance, and am happy to use it to maintain an open space for you and I to explore your issues together.
I hope this article helps to illustrate what I'm like to explore childlessness or childfreedom with. I'm open to having a conversation by telephone or Zoom if you'd like to get a better sense of me before deciding whether you want to work with me, so feel free to reach out to me via my contact page or the phone number below.
