Opinion

I Don’t Care Why You Don’t Want Kids

Do you even have a good reason?

Photo by Victor on Unsplash

Give me one good reason why you don’t want to have children. Go on, I’ll wait. What’s that? You don’t have one? Fine. No, literally, it’s fine. Your reasons are valid. Your choices are valid.

I read an article the other day in which the author, a parent, bemoaned some people’s decision to not have children based on “trival” reasons, like not wanting to give up their social life or deal with soiled nappies.

Yeah, here’s the thing: the choice to bring new life into the world is a huge one. Therefore, any qualms you have about it are not trivial — they are vitally important. You need to be 100% certain you want children; I hear giving them back to the hospital is frowned upon, even if you kept the receipt.

That’s far from my only objection to this asinine complaint though. Humanity is not a hive mind. One man’s molehill is another man’s mountain: who are you to say what is “trivial”?

If it’s important to you, it’s important

It puts me in mind of something my therapist said to me in our very first session. After I’d spent an hour crying at this poor woman, she asked me why I hadn’t sought help earlier, given I was hanging on to my mental…