To coincide with the Maybe Baby podcast, readers reveal why they chose to be parents – or not

Why I wanted to be a parent

Evalina, 37: ‘Being a parent is the most intimately emotional relationship’

I always had a strong urge to nurture and wanted kids. I briefly considered not having them in my mid-20s after my older sister had her first child. I have a close relationship with my mum and she says the years when we were young are some of the best of her life. I feel this way too about my children: the relationship, the feelings of love, closeness and trust. Experiencing that has changed me and how I see the world.

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The mental and physical exhaustion is sometimes too much. I fantasise about holidays and travelling, and regular trips to the theatre and the pub. Realistically, though, I am happier now than before I had kids. If I didn’t have kids at the age I am now I would be a bit desperate to get pregnant.

Annie, 37: ‘I feel I needed the human contact, noise and busyness parenthood brings’

There was never any doubt that I wanted children. Even to the point that I wanted to have two, maybe three. We had three in the end. I’m glad and feel fulfilled. I feel I needed that human contact and the noise and the feeling of being busy that parenthood brings.

The relentlessness is hard. There is no opportunity to pause, take a breath, or reevaluate your priorities. I try to be really conscious of living in the moment. The best thing about being a parent is watching your children grow and change, as well as their inquisitiveness and curiosity. It doesn’t tend to be the big things that make you proud or make your heart ache with love. It can be little things like seeing an interaction with a friend, or the way they open their lunch box. It really is magical.

Jack, 33: ‘The idea of being childless was the hardest part of accepting my sexual identity’

As a gay man, I grew up assuming I’d never have kids, and only discovered there were options for me as an adult. I always wanted to be a parent and the idea that I’d be childless for life was the hardest part of accepting my sexual identity. I wasn’t prepared for the change having children would have on my other relationships, particularly with my husband’s family.The emotional bond I’ve formed with our kids, and the bond they’ve formed with me, transcends genetics and justified my pre-child assertions that love, not lineage, is the thing that matters most.

You lose a lot of personal agency – at least for us, things need to be planned and we can’t just change our schedule at the drop of a hat. For us, cooking a lunch for people is a big deal. If friends show up two hours late, everything gets thrown out of whack, but that’s increasingly seen as socially acceptable, even though to us it’s a massive disincentive to be sociable. I love to socialise but my kids take precedence, so there’s always a trade-off.

Ruth, 64: ‘My family had problems and I believed I could give my children unconditional love’

I never thought of being child-free, I was always certain that I wanted to have children. My original family had its problems, and I wanted children because I believed I could give them unconditional love and that they would know they were loved no matter what they did. For me, a future without children seemed impossibly bleak. Maybe it’s selfish to have children, given the state of the world, at least people often say so, but I wanted to give a child/children a good life and produce good people.

Without a doubt, the worst thing about being a parent is the worry. My children drive and they go out socially. One lives in London, one in Manchester and one in Sheffield. All cities, all with violent crime. The worry also extends to their lives in general. Broken hearts, alcohol dependency, illness, job loss, a sense of unfulfillment – all these anxieties plague me as a parent.

Natalie, 32: ‘When I was a teenager I dreamed of having my first child’

I always wanted to have children. When I was a teenager, I dreamed of having my first child and had romanticised the idea of finding the perfect husband, marrying early and then having children. The best thing about being a parent is simply being a parent. I guess I didn’t imagine that it would impact my life so profoundly as it did. In our case, we had just moved to another city when our daughter was born, and we had no family or friends here, which made the social isolation worse.

I love both of my daughters more than my own life – the oldest one is three and a half and the younger one was born not long ago. I absolutely love spending time with them, watching them smile and laugh and having a good time. Simply enjoying life through the perspective of a small child is magical. I love watching them grow up and witnessing their ups and downs. They truly are my biggest blessings.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I’m happy that my decision to be child-free is better for the environment, as I care deeply about the planet.’ Photograph: Peter Adams/Getty Images/AWL

Why I didn’t want to be a parent

Lilith, 25: ‘I didn’t want to face the possibility of another miscarriage’

Growing up, I was taught that having kids was a milestone in life, until my girlfriend at the time miscarried. After the grieving, I decided to put some thought into whether I wanted to face the possibility of another miscarriage by choosing to have kids. I didn’t want anyone I was involved with to go through that ever again. I’m a transgender woman and I became sterilised in 2017.



I love when people are curious about my decision to be child-free. When that’s the case, we can have a proper conversation about the merits of not having children versus being a parent, because I do think that parents can be happy too. I’m not out to change their mind and I hope they’re not hoping to change mine in kind. But if I show them that my life is pretty normal and fulfilling and not dependent on raising children, and if they see there’s another valid way of living outside of being a parent, then I’m happy.

Celine: ‘I’m happy that my decision to be child-free is better for the environment’

I decided when I was 16 that I never wanted to have children. There was no part of me that ever wanted a child and I was terrified of getting pregnant and then having to get an abortion. I had tubal ligation surgery at 21. After the operation, I felt enormous relief and I have never regretted my decision. I’m also happy that my decision to be child-free is better for the environment, as I care deeply about the planet.

Sometimes I’ll tell people my age and about the surgery and they’re often shocked but also often very supportive, asking me about the process or saying that they should get a vasectomy. This makes me happy to give support to other people who want to be child-free. I also like to show people that a woman can make a decision very early on in her life not to have a child and that this decision is valid and should be respected.

Rachel, 31: ‘I come from a great family, I have a fantastic marriage and I love my husband but I don’t want kids’

People who choose to be child-free need more visibility because it can feel very isolating in a world where having children is the norm. On a planet with dwindling resources, I think we need to chip away at the idea of parenthood as a life pathway by default. It’s just not true anymore. There was a time when most people who didn’t have children were those who couldn’t have them for biological reasons, which I can imagine in that society must have been really difficult, and I feel for them. It’s not that world anymore – men and women now have real choices about their future and I think we need to start talking and remove the stigma.

We live in a very child-centric society and we are constantly being fed a romanticised image of family that just doesn’t exist. We’re taught that we’re incomplete without children and I think that’s hugely emotionally damaging and also bullshit. Having a child won’t fix your self-worth, your marriage or your personal issues. I’m not a wretched husk of a woman, I have no emotional damage. I come from a great family, I have a fantastic marriage and I love my husband but I don’t want kids. I love my life and I’m thankful for the choices I’ve made. I am happy.

Anne, 27: ‘I want to be a mother to my dreams’

Travelling makes me feel alive in a way that nothing else does. Having the freedom and money to travel was one of the biggest factors in my choice to remain child-free. When I think about having children, I feel trapped. I feel like my time, money, emotional energy and creativity would just be sucked away from me. Nothing about motherhood even remotely appeals to me and I’m sick of women having to act as if it’s the be all and end all. It’s not for everyone and I know it’s not for me. I want to be a mother to my dreams, not a child.

The internet is a gift for the minority of any kind. A singular word for the reception I received was ‘cruel’. As I got older, I met some wiser people, grew a backbone, and found that when you learn how to defend yourself with reason, you find some pretty good answers and some pretty good people. I’ve known I didn’t want children since I was eight years old. I had been working to get sterilised ever since and finally found relief at the age of 20.