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Choosing not to have children is a decision I stand by more firmly with every passing day. Take the last twelve hours, for example.
I was up late, working on client projects. I took a fever dream of a bath when I was finished for the night - described aptly, I think, because I kept dozing off and repeatedly waking up to a TikTok video looping on the phone that, somehow, hadn’t fallen into the water. This morning, I woke up with a start because I wasn’t waking up to an alarm… because I’d forgotten to set one. So in exactly twenty-one minutes, I went from unconscious to walking out the door and starting my twenty minute commute to school.
Would I recommend a twelve hour period that is anything like this? Absolutely not. The end-of-year wrap-ups for numerous clients, school, taxes, retirement contributions, and life’s other speed bumps have turned my usually organized daily schedules into absolute chaos for a couple of weeks now.
But do I greatly enjoy the luxury of having things turn into chaos and having only myself to worry about, and myself to get back on track? Absolutely.
No matter what my schedule looks like, I want to go to the gym for an aimless few hours. I want to spend an extra thirty minutes in bed in the morning, scrolling social media, petting my senior cat, Bristow. I want to be able to say yes to networking coffees and only check my own schedule before confirming. I want to go to Las Vegas for a queer kickball tournament for five days in January. I want to stay up late as I quality check new Grief Cards, while my aforementioned cat snores on the couch behind me and I rewatch Good Girls for the umpteenth time. I want to play a silly bakery game on my phone, and learn to play Baldur’s Gate on my partner’s desktop computer, and take his dog for two hour long sniff-centric walks downtown.
If it makes me selfish to want so much for myself, and to not want to carry the labor of nurturing a tiny human that I made, then I’ll proudly claim the title of ‘selfish.’
Here’s the thing: I have numerous friends who are parents, and soon-to-be parents. I’m also close with my own parents. I know that it’s possible to do everything listed above if you’re also a parent. I also know that parents are, too often, shoved into that particular label (especially women) and looked down upon if they’re not sacrificing their own lives for the sake of their children. That’s a whole separate rabbit hole for a different day.
I know, too, that it’s not possible to pick up and pursue all of your desires and hopes and goals and silly endeavors on a whim when you’re fully responsible for another human (or two or three, and so on). That responsibility, that tether, that additional layer of ‘Let me check’ or ‘Let me figure out childcare’ is simply not for me.
I’ll admit that there is a sense of guilt here, but not at all because of societal expectations. See, by now, my brother would have been 34 years old, and had at least two children, if not more. My parents would make terrific grandparents, and I know that’s something they both would have had in an alternate universe where my brother was still alive. But just like I don’t want any parents sacrificing their full selves for the sake of their children, I don’t want any children sacrificing their own goals for the sake of their parents’.
So as much as I refer to my students as ‘my kids,’ and as much as I enjoy being an honorary aunt to kiddos around the U.S. and abroad, having my own children is simply not a goal of mine. But becoming a foster parent, well, that’s a topic for another day.