Maureen Taylor's "Childless by Choice"

“Gee, Mo, I hope you and Bruce aren’t sorry later on in life, when you don’t have children around to visit you. It is always so special having you kids around.” Following up with a sigh, my mother then shakes her head slowly, as if to add, “Tsk, tsk.”

I continue washing the dishes, holding my tongue. We have been visiting my parents for less than 24 hours. I have endured such comments for years now, though to my mom’s credit she manages to alter the approach with every attempt to get us to change out minds.

You don’t have children? Really? I would have thought . . . But you would be such great parents!” A woman we have just met at a barbecue considers us perfectly qualified to bring a child into the world and to raise him or her (or both!) responsibly.

I shrug and smile politely. It appears that we have been complimented, but I wonder.

And then there’s my sister: “Look, Maureen, I appreciate your effort, but it’s much easier if I just do it myself.” She walks off in a huff to make her twins’ peanut butter and jelly sandwiches “the right way.” I don’t have as much control over my tongue with her, and have gotten myself into teary exchanges on more than one occasion. What I secretly think is that my sister is envious that I have made a choice to not take on what she has chosen.

The idea that I even had life-altering choices to make crystallized for me one night when I was 24 years old. The music blared, glasses and bottles clinked in the background, and the place was packed. Bruce leaned over and yelled in my ear, “I don’t want to have kids!” What? I thought. Is he dumping me? Why was he saying this now, when we haven’t even discussed marriage? And after I calmed down a bit, I considered what my future husband had said. At that moment I realized that I do have a choice to have children.

When it became clear to me that I did have choices in my life, such as having or not having children, I felt a sense of relief. I felt more control over my own life than I ever had. Where I grew up, everyone followed the same basic steps in life: After finishing college and starting a career, you got married, bought a nice house in the suburbs, and started a family. Period. Nobody questioned it. Everyone expected it. Could there be any other way?

Apparently so. Before my husband Bruce and I got married, we discussed the issue of having children. (He had to bring it up, since I had honestly never even thought about it before.) Although the whole concept of choice was new to me, I didn’t really agonize over whether we would or would not have kids. By the time we were discussing marriage and children, many of our friends were already married and had one or two offspring. I began to recognize that I had never felt any of those pangs for a baby that I had always heard about from my friends and my sister (who had wanted babies for as long as I could remember). It wasn’t like I didn’t try to feel the want; I did try. I still try. I go to the baby showers and visit the new mothers in my life, and I see a lot of babies. But to this day, a round, soft newborn infant or a wobbly, gurgling toddler does not really appeal to me, not nearly as much as a bounding puffball of puppy. (I love puppy breath, too, but diapers and projectile vomit?)

Bruce and I have always owned dogs together, and they are our kids. WE adopted our present “baby,” Maggie, who talks to us, plays with us, listens to us, and loves us. We indulge her every whim, and she is the classic spoiled child. We are a family.

There are so many more reasons that we have decided to remain childfree. I am a teacher, so I think all that “maternal need to nurture” must already be fulfilled for me. And because I was a shy child, one who preferred tree climbing, daydreaming, and generally playing alone to spending time with my friends (who frankly weren’t terribly friendly) I don’t want to make someone else go through that. We are also concerned about overpopulation, not to mention the general ugliness in the world we hear and read about daily. Maybe it’s because we are selfish, as we have been accused, for not wanting to change our lifestyle to accommodate a dependent life.

This supposed selfishness is the favorite argument against us childless-by-choice folks. Me mother has tried this angle to persuade us. And although she says she has accepted our decision, she still will never be happy that we have chosen to remain childless. Her dissatisfaction with our choice lies not in the fact that she will have only two grandchildren (and one granddog), but rather in the fact that she had always wanted lots and lots of children of her own, and unfortunately was unable to do so. It is difficult to accept that what we want is not always what everyone else wants; we have our baby Maggie, and I have my students. These are our children.

And even though I have worked with adolescents for ten years now, my sister, mother of two-year-old twins, insists that I know nothing about raising children and that I certainly cannot understand the frustrations of spending an entire day with them, day in and day out. Not that I do know everything or that she has it easy. Spending time with my sister and the twins is actually the most effective form of birth control I know!

I believe that being a parent is the most difficult and important job there is, In fact I’m not sure I could even live up to the expectations I have set for proper parenting. Selfish? Perhaps. But before I understood that I had a choice to become a parent, I never would have identified those expectations. Bruce and I have discussed, we have weighed, and we have made a choice, the appropriate choice for us.