#child-free

[flora-tea]

Actually, no.

You don't owe your parents/guardians anything for raising you.

You don't owe them in-laws.

You don't owe them grandkids.

You don't owe them favors.

It's your life!

You decide how you want to live it.

You decide what you want or don't want in your life.

[rikaklassen]

Reposted from Cohost.

[platoniromantic-feelings]

There's something about the way the future is always framed as including romance.

All my friends who are not already married or romantically partnered seem to expect, if not outright long for and seek, romantic relationships. "Happily ever after" endings virtually always include romantic love, even in books where romance was never the focus, and was perhaps not even mentioned until it was suddenly hauled in at the end. Whenever people talk about children growing up, at some point romance, marriage, and breeding are mentioned, like they are obvious, inevitable, routine, inexorable.

What happens to the people who don't get married? What happens to the characters who never fall in love? What are their futures?

I grew up knowing that I did not want romance or marriage, expecting and intending to live alone. But I am, as ever, surrounded by people for whom romance is part of their lives, and they always expected it to be, and they dread, or dreaded, a future in which they might not obtain it. And I wonder if that is one of the reasons why my own future often looks so bleak, even though it doesn't really have any reason to.

[gwydionmisha]

Russia considers law to ban defending child-free lifestyle

Under the proposed new legislation, comments defending the decision not to have children could be fined by up to $55,000. After prohibiting

[khaleesiofthegreatdairystate]

People misunderstand us childfree folks. We don't hate your kids, we hate you. Entitled parents who think that everyone and everything should be tailored to them because they don't want to put in the effort to raise their children are fucking scum.

[rootfauna]

Side Note:

Can you imagine being the child that a child-free woman was pressured into having?

Knowing that your mom was worn down by being told she'd regret not having not just you, but any child if she didn't have and raise a baby? Knowing she hated taking care of children but was continuously told it would be different because you are *her* child. Imagine that in the back of your mind every time you knew your mom was getting frustrated with you acting the way every child acts sometimes. Imagine having those things in the back of your mind every time you wanted to, idk, show your mom a picture you drew or a good grade you got and she said she'd look later, she's busy. Imagine seeing your mom paint, watch a medical documentary, or otherwise engage in something that was her dream and knowing she was convinced to give that dream up to have you, when she never wanted you. Imagine knowing what really convinced her to have you wasn't even that she wanted a child, she just wanted someone to take care of her when she grew old? Or that every time you saw her sad and you knew the only reason she had you was that everyone told her that she needed to have a baby to bring her joy?

How fucked up would that be for a kid?

And if you say that obviously that hypothetical child would never know because what kind of woman would actually TELL their child the real reason they were conceived? Your arguments for convincing a child-free woman to have a child all fall apart because they then dissolve into two options: have a child you didn't want, then spend the rest of your life pretending not to regret it and be a good mother, or that there are no cases of a woman regretting having children in history (false) and that all women will become loving mothers as soon as they give birth (false).

[pockymun]

I just want to see characters who want to be child-free actually be child-free and not made to change their minds.

Found family is fine though.