Child-free by choice

I want to explain the phrase “child-free by choice” that I use on my “about” page.

That is a phrase that women who don’t want to have kids have adopted for ourselves, because “childless” sounds like you’re reproductively challenged or some such. Is it odd that a woman in her mid-30s doesn’t want and has never wanted kids? Not to me. If it offends you, you probably won’t enjoy this blog much because you’ll decide I’m a horrible selfish person. I can be selfish, but so can anyone. There’s definitely nothing wrong with me in that regard. I didn’t have a great relationship with my mother growing up and we have had a strained relationship since I’ve been an adult. I love my mother, but she also never wanted kids but changed her mind. Although she would never admit it, I think deciding to have kids was a bad choice for her. Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad I exist! But she wasn’t really emotionally equipped to raise children. She did the best she could, and I appreciate that. I have had a lot of therapy to become the wonderful, well adjusted, functioning person I am. I don’t think I’d be very good at raising children either. I made what I believe to be a responsible decision to not have children of my own. My one sibling has made a similar decision.

It used to be that if someone had children, that was a deal-breaker for me. I didn’t date people with children. That seemed like the wisest choice given I have no interest in raising children. I didn’t want everyone to get hurt. I also have been honest with romantic interests that I don’t want to have children. For those most part, this has not been an issue. When it comes to love however, it’s impossible to always be sensible. When I met Sebastian, I wasn’t that interested in him at first. We met online, like many modern couples. He told me about some difficulties he’d had in the past, and that he has two kids. He really put himself out there and I respected that. I told him that for many reasons he wasn’t someone I’d consider dating but that we could be friends. As it turned out, the more we talked the more I really liked him. His kids were about to move twelve hours away to another state with their mom, so I decided to give it a chance. Several years later we are married and this is the most healthy, loving, wonderful relationship that I have ever been in. We respect each other; we communicate really really well; we are supportive of each other; we share important beliefs and practice the same religion; and we genuinely love spending time with each other just as much as we did when we first met.

So I realized if I loved this man and wanted to spend the rest of my life with him – I needed to have a relationship with his kids. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that or not, but I knew that being with Sebastian meant being an important adult in the lives of his kids.

This was originally part of the “about” page but as I change the focus of this page I split it off on its own.