Why Does Society Still Question Women Who Are Childfree By Choice?

More women are choosing to not have children. So why are the voluntarily childfree still told they’ll change their minds?

- Tory Shepherd

There was a period in my late teens and early twenties when a pregnancy was always bad news. An accident. By the time you hit your thirties, it’s almost always good news. By your forties, a quasi-miracle. So much angst and joy from lines on a stick.

I thought about this a lot, once. I was trying to get pregnant. Well, I was doing all the right things but hoping to fail. Every time I got my period, I thought, “Blessed be.” It was not, dear reader, a hoot, this lack of fruit. Because I was meant to feel devastated that my womb had not quickened. But I didn’t. Instead I just felt a wave of relief. It didn’t take too long to work out that I really, really didn’t want children.

It can be hard to explain, this not wanting. The people you meet want a reason. They want to believe that you hate children, or had a traumatic childhood. Some might accept that you chose a career over motherhood, or that you want a life of unfettered fun. But they don’t really understand the concept of an absence of wanting, the lack of the urge – even though an increasing number of women are choosing to be childfree. The Australian Bureau Of Statistics predicts that in the not-too-distant future there will be more couple households without children than with.

The latest data shows that Australia’s fertility rate – the average number of children per woman – is 1.7. It was almost three in 1970. At the present rate, it’s below replacement level, meaning Australians are not having enough children to maintain the population. That’s true across the developed world. When you give women education and access to contraceptives – when you give them freedom – they have fewer children.