Childless by choice?

I remember as a teenager, my mum being so worried that I would get pregnant too early and miss out on life. I am now 31, with no child in sight. 

We are living in a day and age where more and more women are choosing the be childless. It's a growing trend to see couples making the decision that they don't ever want to have children. And it's one that so many people in society still don't understand.

It's definitely something I've grappled with over the last few years. I'm now officially closer to 40 than I am to 20 and it's not lost on me that my biological clock is quickly ticking away. If I want to have children, the challenges are only going to significantly grow over the next few years. And that's even if I CAN have children, which I've never explored. 

I've gone back and forth on the choice many times. There have been times where I love the idea of having children, but I think the more that I think about it, the more I realise that I don't know if it's for me. I don't know if I would be a good mother. I worry I'll be impatient, that my tendency to explode when I'm exhausted will take over, and I don't want to bring a child into this world to leave them feeling like they aren't enough because I wasn't equipped to give them the mother they needed.

And then there are all the other things that come with having a child. The loss of freedom, the financial pressure, the enormous responsibility of raising an entire human being, and the fact that your life fundamentally changes the moment they enter it. I know people will tell me that the love makes all of that worth it, and I'm sure it does. But I've never wanted to have a child simply because I might love them. I want to be certain that I actually want the life that comes with being a mother.

That's the part I find hardest to explain. It's not that I dislike children. It's not that I don't think motherhood can be incredibly beautiful. It's not that I think people who have children have made the wrong choice. In fact, I have friends who are incredible mothers and watching them with their children can make me wonder if maybe I'm missing out on something. But wondering what it would be like isn't necessarily the same as wanting it for myself.

But then that niggle kicks in. How will I feel in 10 years if I decide not to have a child now. How will I feel in 15 years, when I'm in my mid-40s and the decision has become permanent? What about 20 years from now, when friends are watching their children graduate, get married or have children of their own? Or 40 years from now, when I might be sitting there wondering what my life would have looked like if I'd made a different choice?

Will I regret it...?

I think that's the part that scares me the most.  But if I decide to have a child and later realise that motherhood wasn't for me, there is no undo button. On the flip side, if I decide not to have children and later realise that I desperately wanted to be a mother, there isn't an undo button for that either. There is no way to know which version of my future self I'll become and sometimes I find that incredibly difficult to sit with. 

Because right now I don't want children. I'm loving being selfish. Making decisions where I don't have to think about those who depend on me (other than my dogs...). I love travelling, being able to drop everything to go out with friends, curl up for hours with a good book. And I know, categorically, that I will be able to do so many of these things still if I decide to have children, but will I...?

And perhaps that's the hardest thing about making this decision. I'm being asked to make a choice for a future version of myself that I don't even know yet. The 31-year-old me is perfectly happy without children, but I don't know what the 50-year-old, 60-year-old or 70-year-old me will want. And there is no way to meet those versions of myself and ask them whether I made the right decision.

Maybe that's why I find the whole conversation so difficult. There doesn't seem to be a right answer, only a choice and the possibility that I might one day wonder about the other path.

So, for now, I'm trying not to make a decision based on fear. Not fear that I'll regret not having children, not fear that I'll regret having them and not fear of what anyone else thinks my life is supposed to look like.

The more women I talk to, the more I realise I'm not alone in this strange space between knowing you don't want children right now and knowing whether you never will. There are so many of us sitting somewhere in the middle, wondering, questioning, worrying about our future selves and trying to figure out what we actually want beneath all the expectations.

So if you're in that same space, I just wanted you to know that you're not alone.

Maybe we don't have to know yet.