My wife and I always knew that we didn’t want children. We want to spend our time on other things.

• When I first met my now wife in 2012, she told me that she never wanted to be pregnant.

• In our 30s, we talked about adoption, not wanting a newborn, and sleepless nights.

• I don’t want to be a parent and would like to spend my time doing other things.

When we first met in 2012, my wife said that due to health problems she I never wanted to have children.

Perhaps, like many young people in their 20s, we still leave open the possibility that years from now, when we are versions of ourselves we never imagined existed, we may develop a desire—a need— need. instinct, calling, whatever it is that makes a person want to be a parent – we didn’t have that then.

In 2015, years later on this proverbial road, we were driving 300 miles from Alabama to New Orleans for a couples weekend when my wife realized halfway through that she had forgotten it. birth control home, so we pulled over to the side of the highway, searched her luggage, and briefly but intensely returned to the question of whether we wanted to have children. Or rather, whether we want to risk a pregnancy that could ruin the life we ​​hoped to live. Our response was to turn the car around and take the pills.

We are child free by choice.

With another decade in the rearview mirror, I’m tempted to say nothing has changed. After all, we are still by choice, childless. However, one thing that has changed decisively now is my ability to articulate why this is so: I don’t want to be a parent.

Being a young newlywed, the stress I don’t want children was not the decision itself, but the feeling that I would inevitably have to justify it every time this topic arose in front of my family, colleagues, acquaintances or friends. After marriage, you find that people, even strangers, tend to ask about such things.

In more daring moments I tended to resort to things like climate crisis and the impending collapse of civilization as the reasons why I did not want to bring a child into this world. The rationale seemed undeniable. Perhaps, I reasoned, if the world were somehow different – somehow better, more fair, more reliable – then I would feel differently.

We talked about adoption at 30

As we turned 20 and entered the era of 30-somethings, it became a fact that there would be no biological children in our future. Despite this, the possibility of adoption arose from time to time. In theory, this eliminated the physical risk of carrying or giving birth to a child, two things that understandably terrified my wife.

We even reasoned that adopting a child would allow us to completely skip the sleepless newborn phase and the terrible twos that our friends with children talked about with something resembling shell shock.

However, our conversations about adoption were never about wanting children. Instead, I think these were echoes of the same conversations we had been having since our first meeting, in which we tried to reconcile the possibility of our future selves with who we were and who we had become and, perhaps, with who we have always been. was.

If there is any meaningful difference to be found between having children and being a parent, it is probably entirely semantic. While childbearing implies bearing and perhaps raising children as a sort of limited endeavor with a finish line through the path to adulthood, the role of parent emphasizes that this commitment is a lifelong commitment. It’s not that I’m particularly afraid, although that’s partly the case too; it has more to do with the fact that time is limited and precious and I wish I could spend it differently.

Realizing that I didn’t want to be a parent brought clarity to the situation, if only because understanding what we don’t want often sharpens our sincere desires.

I don’t want to be a parent, but I do want to be a supportive husband. I want to spend the rest of my life with my wife. I want us to grow old together. I want us to feel, in the daily rhythm of our relationship, evidence of the love that brought us together and made visible the possibility of the life we ​​now share.

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