9. The One Where I Tell My Story

For our 10th episode, Laura is taking the spotlight solo. Join her for a stroll down memory lane as she discusses the various snapshots that shaped her decision to be childfree. From quirky moments to emotional revelations, she's baring it all.

Then as we gear up for Thanksgiving, Laura's got your back. Ever felt the heat of those probing questions during the holiday feast? Whether you're childfree, on the fence, or just biding your time, Laura's serving up some advice to tackle those tricky inquiries.

Oh, and heads up! We're taking a brief break for Thanksgiving, but fear not – we'll be back in two weeks, ready to dive into more fascinating interviews. Stay tuned, and happy holidays!

Chapters

• 0:00 Journey to Being Child-Free
• 4:11 Choosing Not to Have Children Journey
• 17:44 Deciding on Having Children and Timelines

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I stood there next to the tennis court holding this baby, watching him play tennis, and I had this very intuitive sense that this will be my future if I stay in this relationship, and this is not the path that I want. Welcome back to another episode of Child Free Me, a show where we examine the choice to be child free and what it's like to navigate that decision in today's world. I'm your host, laura Allen, and today's episode is going to be a little different. Instead of having a guest on, like I usually do, it's actually just going to be me. There have been a couple of people who have expressed interest in knowing more about me and my journey to being child free, so that's what today's focus will be on.

Speaker 1: 0:52

I certainly did not start this podcast with the intent to sit and talk about myself, but I do get it that there are people who are curious about how I would answer some of the questions that I have been asking my guests. So, as I was thinking about how to structure this episode, it was a little difficult because, like many of the people who I've interviewed over the past few weeks, there isn't one defining moment where I knew for sure that I wasn't going to have children. It was more of an evolution and almost an awakening, because what I think people need to remember is that having children is the default choice. Most of us spend our childhood, teens and early adulthood assuming that that is what we're going to do, because it's the only thing we know and it's the only thing that we've been told. I would argue and I'm not an early childhood expert, so certainly take this with a grain of salt but I would argue, even coming out of kindergarten, that most little girls either consciously or subconsciously understand that being a mother is the expectation.

Speaker 1: 2:10

So for me, like many people who have been following the standard life plan for most of their life, I spent most of my 20s not wanting children, but expecting that to change at some point. I really thought that once I reached a certain age or people told me that once I reached a certain age I would all of a sudden experience the desire to have children that everyone else around me was having and just never seemed to happen to me. So while I certainly didn't want children back then, I certainly hadn't coalesced around a decision. So, rather than just talk about a defining moment, I'm actually going to talk about a series of snapshots, or even a series of vignettes that really stand out in my memory as the moments where there seemed to be this indicator that having children is not something that I wanted or something that I was tracking towards. So I'm going to walk through those vignettes first. There's not a lot of them, so don't worry, but I will try to do them in chronological order.

Speaker 1: 3:16

The very first memory I'm going to talk about doesn't necessarily point to me not wanting to have children, but it is the first memory I have of thinking about being pregnant or having children. And in my mind it was in kindergarten, but when my mother and I discussed, I think it was probably closer to second or third grade, which is when she would have been pregnant with my youngest sister. For clarity, there are three of us I'm the oldest daughter and I have two younger sisters. So around first grade she would have been pregnant with my youngest sister. I do very clearly remember wanting to be pregnant, not because I wanted to have a child and necessarily take care of it. I just thought it would be so cool, I would get all this attention. In my mind I was like, oh, I'd get a note from my teacher, I'd get to skip class, like everyone, would be so jealous of me. So it was more just around the attention and the adulation I would get.

Speaker 1: 4:11

I obviously was not thinking about or had this deep desire to raise a child, since I was still very much a child myself. It was a deep desire, however, to the point where later I eventually learned I don't know, maybe through a class, or my mom probably gave me a book around how children are made and what you have to do in order to become pregnant, and I was devastated because it seemed like the worst thing in the world. I can't imagine why any two people would want to do that together. I have always had friends who were boys, and so I'm sure I had friends who were boys back then and was horrified that I would ever have to do something like that with them. I was devastated when I learned what sex was and sort of made this mental note to myself. I was like, okay, well, I guess I'm just going to have to do that once so that I can become pregnant Again. Very odd, I have no idea why I was thinking this at such a young age, but my hopes were dashed when I learned what goes into making a baby so fast forward to when I was probably early teens.

Speaker 1: 5:12

I had at that point, a pretty long career in babysitting. I was highly sought after by my parents' friends to come over and babysit. I obviously had two younger sisters at that point, so a lot of what I did to make money was babysitting. And there was a very clear moment I have of I just finished a babysitting job and I thought to myself I am done with this job. I no longer want the responsibility. I always felt this really deep responsibility when the parents left and I was there taking care of the children, or the anxiety of keeping the children entertained the whole time, or what if they started crying? Or just the whole anxiety around putting them to bed, and I very firmly decided that I no longer wanted to do that and it felt really good to be able to make that decision and walk away.

Speaker 1: 6:05

I think also what's interesting about this is that I was an amazing babysitter, which is probably why I burned out so quickly from it is I cared a lot. I wanted to be the best babysitter. I was creative and wanted to make sure the children were obviously entertained and had everything they needed. I think as a babysitter, you also have the double expectation of the parents on top of you and what they would want you to do and making sure that you're pleasing them. And I talked about this earlier, about people telling me, when I explained that I don't want to have children, that oh, that's too bad, because I would be a really good mother and again I think I would I would stress myself out to the limit, and that's what happened with babysitting. It was a great way to make money, but I certainly hit a point where I was like I never want to do this again. So that is the second snapshot I have a memory of.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Fast forward again, I'm now at the end of high school, possibly the beginning of college, and I was at my high school boyfriends summer home up in New Hampshire. They had a tennis court and he was playing tennis with, I think, his dad. He had lots of cousins and one of his cousins had handed me their child, so just a baby that I was holding, and I stood there next to the tennis court holding this baby, watching him play tennis, and I had this very intuitive sense of this will be my future if I stay in this relationship, and this is not the path that I want. I was. It was probably before my freshman year of college, so still fairly young, but intuitively knew that that was not my path and it probably would have to be if he and I ended up together. And I think it was just interesting because I was definitely enthralled in the relationship and so happy to be dating him but even then knew that it was not ultimately a path that I wanted to go down.

Speaker 1: 8:01

The fourth snapshot is one I already talked about, which is when a woman who I worked with expressed the desire to go babysit two of her friends kids on I think it was a Friday night in the city and she very clearly told me that because she was 32 and single, that of course she wanted to go spend time with kids like that's what you want to do when you're in your 30s and haven't had children yet. And she'd been a mentor. I really looked up to her honestly. She was so good at her job and I looked at her and just very clearly saw how differently we thought and almost knew in that moment that I would never really want to choose that over doing something else and also felt a little bit embarrassed because she looked at me like I had three heads. That I wasn't quite understanding. But again, I was still in my 20s at that point. So I think even then I was waiting almost for the other shoe to drop, to be honest, and for this crashing desire to be a mother to wash over me, which never did.

Speaker 1: 9:00

And then really the last moment I have that I think helps to paint a picture of my journey here is I moved to San Francisco and was working in the same office as Maricela, who was the very first woman I interviewed on this podcast. If you haven't listened she's the OG, please go back to episode one. She was fantastic, but she was the first woman I encountered who was married and had decided not to have children. I didn't know anyone else in my life who was in a long term committed relationship and had decided not to have children. I just remember standing in the kitchen of the office and she mentioned it and it was almost like things tilted a little bit and I realized that being child free and choosing not to have children, even though you have every opportunity, like being married and a long term partner, doesn't have to be the choice. And then, from then on out, I think I knew and had started to really verbalize that I was not going to have children because I turned 30, I went to business school. I met Zach, my fiance, within that year, and from there I don't think anyone ever remembered me not talking about how I don't want to have children. So that is my story.

Speaker 1: 10:12

I would definitely be lying if I said that I wasn't a little worried when I sat down to do this podcast, that I somehow had wanted children in my childhood and just don't remember it or somehow was a fraud. I'm notorious in my family for not remembering childhood memories, so a little worried that how I remembered things was different than how my family remembered it. So I did reach out to my mother just to see her perspective on what I was like as a child and growing up and when I started talking about not wanting to have kids, and she actually had a very interesting insight. So the first thing she said when I asked her about her memories I mean not wanting to have kids is that I was never interested in baby dolls or playing house in her mind, and I quickly pointed out that I loved American girl dolls. Shout out to Samantha, my Victorian era queen. But we both agreed that having a baby doll and wanting to play with babies is different than having a American girl doll. Really, I think I just liked changing her Victorian outfits and feeding her tea.

Speaker 1: 11:17

And then my mom also confirmed that I was very vocal about never wanting to get married around 12 or 13. And that went hand in hand with not wanting to have children. I think if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I am currently engaged, and so I've clearly changed my mind about getting married, and a thought that occurred to me while recording this is that I potentially never wanted to get married because I had always looped having children in with getting married. It was a belief that was probably baked into me that if you get married, you have children. So that could be the reason I was so adamant about not getting married, because I linked those two things so closely together. But here we are, and then, when I asked my two younger sisters, they both separately expressed that they didn't specifically remember me saying I didn't want to have children growing up, but that they never remember thinking that I would. It was always ingrained or somehow baked into their memory or psyche that I was not going to have children. So it sounds like it was certainly something that I expressed and talked about growing up. And then Charlotte, my middle sister, brought up that she recognized that when I babysat or did really anything related to children because I was very involved in children pretty much my whole childhood, so whether it was between babysitting or Sunday school teaching or summer camp counseling, I was always surrounded by children and she said that she recognized I really was just doing it as a means to an end and it wasn't something that was particularly fun or interesting to me or that I really wanted to do for the long term. So that is my journey.

Speaker 1: 12:59

So if I were a guest on my own podcast, I obviously would have had a lot more follow up and probing questions for me. But since this is a solo episode and it's just been me talking forever, I'm going to end this segment and we can hopefully do another episode in the future where I will delve into some of these other questions that I like to ask. Also, feel free to send in questions that you would want me to answer. I am happy to answer them. My email is in the show notes. Would love to hear from you. I'm always willing to answer questions from the audience. I think that would be so fun.

Speaker 1: 13:34

So for the second part of the show, before we wrap, I do want to address that. Obviously, thanksgiving is around the corner and we all know how difficult the holidays can be when you've chosen to be child free. I mean, let's be honest, holidays are difficult no matter what. If you have five kids, if you have one child, if you're trying to have kids, not sure if you want to have kids or have definitely chosen, it sucks having to field questions from Uncle Bob and cousin Mildred about whatever your next step is. So the holidays are upon us and I thought I would give a quick guide on how to handle some of these questions, in case anyone is particularly stressed about it and just wants a little bit of guidance.

Speaker 1: 14:20

In my mind, there are really just two ways to handle these types of questions. The first is directness and boundary setting, which is probably the healthiest and most mature of the two options, and the second is deflection, which is certainly probably less mature but, in my mind, highly effective. So I think using either of those two options is a good idea. Personally, I'll probably sprinkle in a little bit of humor throughout. Humor is another form of deflection that I like to rely on and again, I feel like if any therapist or psychologist are listening to this, they're horrified, but truly this is just about survival. So for the first approach, which is directness and boundary setting, this can obviously be uncomfortable, but it is probably the easiest way to prevent future questions from happening. Not easy, but there are a couple ways that I would phrase it.

Speaker 1: 15:16

You can obviously take all of these with a grain of salt, but I think it is important to include happiness or excitement in relation to the decision. So, for instance, one option is thanks so much for asking. I've chosen not to have kids and I'm really grateful for all the love and support everyone has shown me as I made this decision. I like this one because it sort of gives a little jab, just a little ding of guilt, that they better jump on board and give you love and support like everyone else, or they're just f*****g goals. So that's one option. You can also say having children isn't in my future. I'm choosing to focus on XYZ, fill in the blank career, a hobby, you like, a relationship and then go into detail around that thing that you're really excited about and start to move them away from the topic of kids and having children. So those are two phrases that I've used in the past that I think are really helpful For anyone who is on the fence. I actually have a great one that I can't take credit for. Actually, chat GBT gave it back and I definitely spit out my coffee when it wrote it out. I thought it's amazing. So if you are on the fence and or you know you want to have kids, you just having it and people are putting pressure on to have it, you can say, oh well, you know, we're practicing a lot and we'll let you know when we make the team. I would love to see cousin Mildren her response to that.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Okay, for the second approach, which is deflection, my personal fave probably not the healthiest but still effective is just remember the golden rule that everyone likes to talk about themselves more than they like listening to other people. So just have in your mind something that you know, that Uncle Bob, cousin Mildren, what they love whether it's their dog, maybe golf, something that they could talk forever about and just quickly deflect and ask them about that. An example would be I've decided I'm not going to have children or I'm still firm in my decision not to have children, but would love to hear about XYZ, whatever they've done maybe it's a trip, a hobby, a dog, whatever it is and just turn it back to them and I think you'll see very quickly that they are more than willing to go into a lot of detail about their favorite thing. So hopefully those tips are helpful. Just remember that your decision is valid, no matter what it is.

Speaker 1: 17:44

If you're undecided, if you haven't started, if you know for sure you don't want kids, that is a valid decision. You don't need to defend it, and you also don't need to feel guilty that you haven't prescribed to someone else's notion of what the right timeline is. So I'm going to leave you with those words. Thank you for joining me on my first solo episode. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please don't forget to subscribe or consider leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts. I am actually going to take a break for the holiday, so there won't be another episode next Tuesday, but the Tuesday after that will be my first in-person interview, which is really, really exciting. So I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. For anyone in the US listening to this, enjoy your turkey and mashed potatoes, and I'll see you in two weeks. Thanks,