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It often feels as though my choice is an affront to parents who have made sacrifices to choose the opposite

The happiness argument is also quite gendered: men are rarely treated with the same presumptions as women when it comes to children. How essential must it be for a woman’s happiness if there are women who are physically incapable of having children? Such faulty logic bases the argument on nature when it really boils down to social constructs.

Even in 2016, we expect men to find satisfaction in work. When we talk about women in the workforce, it typically circles around the subject of work-life balance. How often do we tell women to take risks in their careers, to find satisfaction there? While that’s changing, we still have a difficult time entertaining the notion that women might want to find happiness in a career rather than offspring.

Why do I not want children? It’s simple: I don’t want to raise a child. I don’t mean to be coy with the minimalism of my reasoning, that’s simply what it boils down to. And that should be enough. I realize that by writing this, I’m opening myself up to people saying “You can’t know until you go through it, yourself.” And I understand that. I trust parents when they say that I can’t understand what parenting is like without experiencing it for myself. I know I can only conceptualize, not feel the depth of that experience. But that doesn’t mean I have to do it!

Bringing a human life into existence to test a theory of that life-altering magnitude is ludicrous.

My decision boils down to knowing myself better than anyone else. The sheer weight of responsibility of raising a child would change my life dramatically. I have an attention deficit disorder that already makes every aspect of life challenging; throwing a kid into the mix would seriously hinder not only the quotidian aspects of my life, but also what I want to accomplish with it.