It’s all about Choice.

There’s a trend I’ve noticed at the moment on the Internet – that great fount of all things stupid and silly in the world. It’s the vilification of women, particularly young women, who come out publically as not wanting to have children. Apparently this position is somehow scandalous and, apparently, borders on mass murder (or some such hyperbole). Now, apart from the inexplicable venom directed at these women, I find the whole thing rather strange. You see, as adult humans, we have something that seemingly some people have yet to appreciate – free will and choice. In my worldview adults can do (or choose not to) many things and one of those things is to have or not have children.

I for one, although being male my opinion in this area is easily discounted, have no intention of having children for reasons outlined in another post which I won’t bother to repeat here. So I have no problem with other people – male or female – making that same decision, that same choice. Actually I think it’s a good choice, a wise choice, a sensible choice but if others disagree (and I know they do) then feel free to have as many children as you can afford – just don’t expect me to join you. There’s the rub of course. Those who attack women for not wanting to have children can, presumably, have children of their own so why do they want to force women to have children who don’t actually want them? You see to my mind just because you can physically have children puts you under no obligation to actually have them. There is no law (at least in the West) that demands that women of child bearing age actually bear children, no understanding, no expectation, no convention, no imperative – nothing.

One of the many things surrounding this topic that really confuses me is the idea that people who choose not to have children are in some sense selfish. How exactly? Is it because deliberately childless couples have more money, more free time and generally more freedom than those who have chosen (or not) to have children themselves. Is this the ‘selfishness’ that they speak about? That people have made a decision that benefits them at no expense to anyone else? Is that selfish? Or is it that a childless couple are denying a child’s existence by their selfish wilfulness? But since when do we have obligations to people that don’t exist? How can we be obligated to produce a child that at the moment is only a future possibility? That makes absolutely no sense. It’s like having an obligation to a fictional character or an inanimate object – it just can’t be done unless you want to move to a very strange place indeed.

Women, and men, have every right to make the choice not to have children. For most people it’s a choice that they make – either to have a child in the first place or allow it to be born if the ‘choice’ has already been made through accident or momentary stupidity. Women might very well be ‘designed’ to have children but they are not baby factories and should never be seen as a way simply to produce more people with more mouths to feed. If you want to have children then fine – have at it. If you don’t then that’s fine too. Women (and men) should not be made to feel any less human, any less rational or any more selfish for choosing what they want to do with their own lives and their own bodies. As with much about the adult world it’s all about choice.