As a Child-Free Woman, Am I Allowed to Be Mediocre?

Or must I achieve something big to fill that child-shaped hole?

This morning I stared down at the proof that, for the twelfth month in a row, I am not pregnant.

Honestly, I’m beginning to give up on this trying-to-have-a-child lark. Lord knows it’s equally emotionally draining and annoying. I’m tired of it taking over my brain and my life.

As I pondered my child-free future this morning, a phrase popped into my head.

At least if I don’t have a kid, I have more time to focus on making something of myself. Perhaps I can be a famous writer instead.

I checked myself for this, and quickly because this line of thinking fits far too nicely into how we think child-free women should be.

If you can’t experience the “joys” (debatable) of having children, you’ve got to achieve something big to fit into that child-shaped hole, apparently. You can’t possibly be mediocre and child-free. You’ve got to be successful, career-driven, focused. An over-achiever.

Urgh. I’m exhausted just thinking about all the things I’m supposed to be.

Can’t we child-free women be ordinary and nothing more?

Here’s the secret about child-free women that society doesn’t understand

I was purposefully child-free for the first 37 years of my life. I have scores of child-free friends and acquaintances who also chose to not have children and they all say the same thing.

They’re not child-free because they are on the path to a stellar career.

They’re child-free because they don’t want children.

Women aren’t choosing careers over children, they’re choosing no children over children.

Truly understanding this is apparently a hard pill to swallow. It’s much easier to explain away a child-free woman’s choice with a flick of a hand and a dismissive oh it’s because she’s a career woman kind of comment. I’ve overheard family members dismiss my lack of children in exactly this way.

I’m afraid it’s all BS.

Then there are the child-free-not-by-choice women, of which it seems I’m becoming one. These women go through immense pain and heartache and yet are still expected to achieve greatness in lieu of their empty wombs.

It’s like we can’t accept that women who choose — or not choose — to be child-free might just want to chill the fuck out, to not outperform everyone around them.

This stereotype of the child-free-overachiever puts immense pressure on child-free women to excel in other areas of life when in reality, they just want to be left alone to live the life they want to live.

And that might include being completely average.

Which frankly is every child-free woman’s right as much as it is a mother’s.

Women can’t be left alone in their child-free life

Why can’t we let child-free women be whoever they want to be? Some women are not career-focused. Some women don’t have lofty ambitions to be the next Ariana Huffington. Can we not leave them the fuck alone to binge-watch the upcoming Selling Sunset series after returning from their averagely-paid, middling job? Can we not understand they might be perfectly satisfied doing so?

Frankly, this isn’t a problem solely reserved for the child-free. Mothers are also expected to have it all, to slay their careers and their child-rearing.

But there is a special kind of judgment reserved for the child-free in this regard. They don’t have the “at least I created life” argument that is hard to come back from.

I really enjoy having a career, and a not-too-shabby one at that. But right now, I don’t want to become the next bigwig Medium writer. I don’t want a massive Substack following.

I’m tired.

I don’t want to write, I want to sleep. I don’t want to exercise until I’m a society-approved weight, I want to eat all the food and drink all the wine. I don’t want to smash out a morning routine, I want to watch TV at 10 am in my pajamas.

But I’m a people pleaser and highly ambitious — a dangerous mix. I feel the judgment of my child-free life intensely. I feel the pressure to perform. I feel that if I’m not going to be an incubator for the next generation — if I’m going to be a disappointment to my parents and to society in general — I’ve got to have a big fucking reason.

And that reason can’t include averageness of any kind.

Average and happy > “Successful” and miserable

Some of the most satisfied women I know are child-free by choice and don’t have sparkling careers.

They live simple, ordinary lives in average-sized apartments or homes. They don’t fill the stereotype of the high-flying career woman in a power suit striding around New York. You’re more likely to find them hanging out and enjoying life as it comes.

They’re cleverer than many of us because they’ve figured out that a high-flying career is not where satisfaction and happiness lie. And often, neither is child-rearing.

The happiest demographic in the Western world in fact is a child-free, unmarried woman.

This doesn’t sound like a sad, lonely woman attempting to fill a void that only a child can truly fill. This sounds like child-free women who are satisfied with their life choices.

Sure, the waters are muddier for women like me who are staring at the child-free-but-not-by-choice pond. But also don’t want to prove myself some other way just because I tried for children and couldn’t have them.

I have the right to be ordinary as much as the next person.

And damnit I might just exercise that right.

It’s rather patronizing to assume a woman must fill that child-shaped hole with something like a career. It’s not like we hold men accountable in the same way.

I don’t like how this assumption a) puts huge pressure on child-free women and b) forces them into a position of patheticism. We still don’t, as a society, believe there is anything more important for a woman than pushing a small human through their hoo-hah. Those who can’t do it must have something else in their life, mustn’t they? Otherwise aren’t they just a sadass?

Fuck that.

Whether women are ambitious or not has no bearing on their decision to be child-free. And that counts for women like me — women who want a kid but possibly can’t have one — as much as it does for someone who is child-free by choice.

I’ll be using my potential dependent-free future however I like. And right now I’m exercising my right to angrily punch out words here followed by a massive fucking beer.

See you on the other side.

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