I love to play with children, I think children are brilliant,
I think they have so much to teach adults, so I appreciate them for that.
I just won't be having my own.
The world perceives childfree women in the most negative light possible.
I think it's not a need for a woman anymore.
We don't need to have children, we find that our own happiness is more important,
our own mental health is more important.
We have been called selfish, we've been called narcissists
which is kind of strange.
I do have a co-worker who recently had a baby.
All of my other co-workers were like I'll going over him and and making
silly faces and I'm just like typing away at my computer.
When it comes to when I knew,
that didn't want to have children,
it's hard to say only because I don't ever feel like I did.
I don't know what the feeling is like to want to have children,
you know, when I am in groups and a person's talking about wanting children
and I don't know how to respond.
In middle school, one of my friends, she said she never had the desire to have kids
and she said that and I was like oh, ‘Oh, I didn’t realise that was an option.’
And when she said that I was like, I don't know if I want to have kids either.
What really sealed the deal for me was my time as a teacher and my time is a nanny.
I remember feeling two different ways about my students.
One, was that I wanted to adopt them all and keep them and taking a take care of them,
and love them, and nurture them and then the other part of me was like, oh my gosh,
this is all day every day and that's when the first seeds of maybe this isn't for me started
to spring up.
I knew for sure that having kids was not what I wanted to do because of my gut instinctive reaction,
which was kind of like illness kind of like,
kind of like, a tunnel that just shot out in front of me and looked very, very dark.
I find it very interesting that a lot of the people who do give me pushback,
not wanting to have kids are women.
If you are a woman and you don't understand why somebody else doesn't want to have kids,
learn about it, ask about it, don't immediately like, shut them down
or think that they're heartless.
I don't think that I'm a heartless person.
Hands down, responses from women are way worse.
With men it's more like a curiosity, like, oh, how did you come to this decision?
Women see it as an invitation to convince me otherwise.
It’s ‘Oh, not right now, but you’ll want some in the future’.
‘What are you going to do when you’re old and alone?’
Whatever I want! That's what I'll do.
Regret is another threat also, you'll regret it when you get older.
The thing about regret is you don't regret not doing what you don't want to do.
My parents know I don't want kids, they've known pretty much my whole life.
I've kind of prepped them already like don't ask because you know the answer.
In terms of pressure from my family, I don't get it quite so much from my parents
but I do get it from my grandmother.
Pressure to marry somebody Jewish so that I can raise Jewish kids.
I understand that she’s like, coming from where she’s coming from
and like I know she just wants the best for me
but at the end of the day, I always end the conversation saying it's my decision,
it's my life.
My father is from the Dominican Republic, he's have African roots.
My mother is from Puerto Rico.
So when I think about, you know, if I were raising a child in this world, a black child in this world,
you can't control how other people perceive them.
My mother was bent on me having kids,
‘Oh, they would be so perfect'.
But I've spoken to them and I've started saying,
I'm pushing 40 and my time is up, and I've been saying that since I was 35,
I'm now 36 but it seems to work.
My stepmother was ... we were fighting and she said,
'You'll see what this is like when you have kids'
and I said, 'I'm never having kids' and she said, 'YFes, you will,
you don't know what you want, you'll change your mind, you'll see.'
You know what doesn't occur to people is that a
five-year-old could walk up to a grown-up and say I can't wait to be
mummy when I grow up and they will never say you'll change your mind.
But if a little five-year-old girl comes up and says, I don't want kids she's loony or
she's you know she's too young she can't possibly know her mind.
Guys in my past have been like, ‘Oh, she’ll make a great mum, this is perfect'.
It's been important to find someone who is interested in
and cares about me for me.
And not what I can produce for him.
I have tinder and like, I'll see guys on there that are like maybe 10 years older than me
and they're like, 'I'm looking to start a family',
I'm like that's probably the worst thing you could put in your bio
because that's making every woman run away.
I mean at least that's how I see it.
Nowadays dating in New York City is really tough,
and I don't go on more than look at three or four dates with somebody.
Not on purpose just because, you know dating sucks.
But it hasn't come up, it hasn't become a deal breaker up to this point.
My partner and I were very serious in our relationship.
Once we moved and bought a home,
he and I had a discussion about whether we wanted children
and both of us agreed that we don't.
I think he just agreed with my decision not to, more so than anything,
because he respects whatever I decide to do with my body so ...
There are lots of other things that make a woman a woman.
Caring and nurturing ...
I love teaching and the passing on of like traditions, and culture and knowledge,
all that stuff that goes with being a woman.
But I don't have to have a child to do that.
Why can't women have that independence?
Why can't women have all these careers or have these passions that
are unhindered by any sort of extra responsibility placed on them.
There's something about women who don't want kids that is in a way threatening in the
same way a happily single woman is threatening.
You want to have kids that's fine I need you to respect my life choice not to have kids.
It's a two-way street.
Women aren't allowed to make decisions in a very confident way.
You're supposed to just follow a script.
And I think because women who have chosen to be childless aren't following
that script, it makes it look really uncomfortable.
There's no one way to be a woman.
We all just want the best for ourselves.
So, let's all accept that.