I’ve never wanted to experience pregnancy or motherhood, for any reasons other than because I just don’t want to. But people demand reasons, and then think they have the right to scrutinize them to declare whether your reasons are good enough or not.

Even news articles that portray being childfree in a positive light still insinuate that most of us are childfree because of the economy, or climate change, or the pandemic. The undertone is that it’s okay to not want kids, but only if you have a “selfless” reason.

I stopped telling people why I don’t want kids around the age of 30, when I realized most of them weren’t asking out of good natured curiosity. I suggest others do the same and be firm about not discussing it with friends or family. It isn’t their business, and we need to normalize being childfree just for the sake of being childfree.