Thank you for your honesty. I am 26 it does put things into perspective for me. Having kids must be easy for financially stable people. I think it’s almost dangerous to be pushed into motherhood when you’re struggling with your own bills. Knowing we were never taught financial literacy to begin with before throwing us under the bus with the biggest responsibility on earth. KIDS.
100% yes!! so many people say it’s not about money, but honestly, having money does make all the difference in the system we’re living in. Money means you can hire a nanny if you want to have a night out, you can outsource cleaning, afford therapy, join mom groups that cost money, even take a break without it being a crisis. It gives you options. Without that, everything falls on you — emotionally, physically, financially. And that’s the part I wish more people would acknowledge. It’s not just about attitude or effort, but about access.
You are right, it's about money. Throughout history, women high on the status and wealth ladder have usually outsourced childcare entirely, even using wetnurses to breastfeed their babies for them. The little darlings would be brought in after dinner, freshly washed, for a little mother time before bed - and carried out again immediately if they got fussy or stinky. Jane Austin portrays upper crust mothers leaving their infants back at the country estate with the servants while spending the season in London.
In societies with a poor underclass, even the middle class had live-in nannies (think Mary Poppins, which idealized a certain reality). Then by eight or ten, children were often shipped off to boarding schools. In medieval times, boys were handed over to knights to serve as pages at age six. In Tibet, that's the age many boys are still dropped off at monasteries, to live permanently.
No need to feel guilty. Centuries of women before you found motherhood so onerous they did all they could to get out of it.
I'm so sorry you are going through this hard time. I have felt it before but have come to realize that if I want a village, I need to create it. And a lot of the problems of not feeling heard or helped stems from me just as much as others, I have started opening up more with my husband, he is very loving and helps when he can (but he does work long hours during the day so naturally I take care of the children most of the time), I have started asking family and friends for help and to my surprise they weren't condescending and didn't think less of me! I feel like I built myself this wall in my head that was hard to get through but I did it. I do have help, people do love children, they want to help but they need to know exactly how they can help, and we need to choose better partners to have children with. There are men out there who step up and care for the family properly, but a lot of boys have been raised to try to get away doing as little as possible and that stretched into parenthood unfortunately, so women with childish selfish men tend to get burnt out picking up the pieces because they have no other choice. I changed this narrative by talking more with my husband, asking everyone for help with big and small things, attending more events with moms near my area (picnics in the park are cheap and usually easily accessible) and being more inviting and hosting more! Hopefully this helps and brings some light to such dark, overwhelming thoughts, especially when we feel in the thick of it.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I’m really glad you’ve found ways to make things work better for you and I do agree we have to actively build our own villages and ask people for help. I think where we might differ is that my post isn‘t really about me personally having a hard time, but more about how the larger system makes it incredibly hard for so many moms to have a good experience at all (especially for moms in marginalized groups!) Not everyone has access to supportive partners, family nearby, or the time and energy for community events. That’s the deeper issue I was trying to speak to — and one of the big reasons why so many people are choosing not to have kids right now.
I understand that absolutely, and how intimidating it is to make that choice. But therein lies the necessity to, maybe not have children themselves, but build a community that supports mothers. Lots of these women that don't have kids make it harder for moms too, they are usually the ones being condescending about kids, focusing all their time and attention on activities that are hard to have kids around, and ignoring friends that have children. It's a very multidimensional topic and what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that only pointing to the problem doesn't do much and we can all come together to bring about some small steps that resolve the big issue at hand.
I live 3 hours from any family. Friends have mostly moved away. The best e perience I had was when a hematology resident and their kids moved in across the street for a 1 year fellowship. (We have a lot of residents moving in and out of our neighborhood, which makes it tough for lasting relationships). The mom was a brand new nurse, they moved from across the country. She gave the most support (as did i) than anyone else ever living in my neighborhood. Our boys were the same age. She worked changing shifts, we would pick the kids up at the bus stop for each other. She patched up my kids skinned knee. They supported us when my husband was diagnosed with cancer. Sad they moved away.
My husband and I didn't know if we wanted to be parents. I knew the world wanted us to be parents. We decided to sign up to be foster parents. We had children in our care on and off for four years, and I learned one important lesson: the only safety net for women is other women, and I could be the safety net or I could need the safety net, but I just couldn't do both. For a myriad of reasons, we stopped fostering, mainly because I did not like being a mother in any way, form, or fashion. But I still love children, and I'm absolutely the safety net for my friends with kids and always will be.
My sister's girls asked me why I didn't have kids, and said I should go have a baby. I told them i like being an aunt better, not everyone is cut out to be a mom, and besides if I had my own kids I couldn't do as much as I do for them and their parents of give them some of the nice things I give them. (Example, I have covered the younger one's violin rental and lessons since she was six, plus I've been taking her to the lessons because her parents don't have time and don't understand music outside of listening to it. )
A fantastic read that echoes many of my thoughts. Now that I'm 35, nobody hounds me about being childfree like they used to in my twenties. Where others see loss, I feel liberation.
I recently came across a misogynistic thread accusing "feminists" of discouraging women from having children. I was like.....clearly this is all written by men who have NO IDEA what it's like being a child-free woman in her 20s. "HOUNDING" is truly the best word you could have used to describe that time period! lol
No one hounds me at 47 for being childfree, but there is plenty of crap bandied about regarding sad old cat-lady women who failed at their Life Purpose and now live in denial of that, pretending to be happy when they couldn't possibly be happy. And of course stopping younger women from having kids because if we failed at life, so must everyone else. And of course there is no way any young woman might choose not to have kids herself, it had to be pushed on her, but pushing motherhood for some reason doesn't count as social pressure. Always coming from the kind of people who lament for the days women had to be so completely financially dependent on men that the men could pop their wives in the mouth whenever he felt she "had it coming" and be praised for it by society because she had no recourse to justice and women were considered inferior subhumans. And sadly I say "people" because they aren't always men who feel that way.
Thank you for writing this. This needs to be said. I've noticed a social media trend lately of people wanting to be young mothers, but with all the above-listed difficulties, I think it needs to be emphasized that if you do choose to have kids, you need to wait until you're as emotionally mature, financially stable, and established in your life as you can be, because motherhood is going to rock you. People need to spend less time talking about the beauty of motherhood, and more time educating about the challenges mothers can expect to face if they choose that path.
Yes, I definitely agree about the young mother trend! It’s directly related to the way babies are increasingly seen as expensive accessories that match your aesthetic. Since having children in this economy is so kinda pricey, people have started to view it as a status symbol. Thank you for reading 🥰
Genuine question: why did you expect other people to pull up to raise YOUR baby? Who's baby have you helped raise? I don't mean that sarcastically, I think it's a question worth examining to hopefully dial down the disappointment of people not pulling up. We can't expect what we don't give.
I'm happily childfree and I'm "raising" my company, and I don't expect anyone to help me. With anything. Ever. I don't think any career woman does. It's my choice, my life, my path. Yours is yours. A new mom's isolation walks hand-in-hand with the entitlement that everyone will drop their life for your choices.
Hey Shallon, I think there’s been a bit of a misread here, I’m not asking strangers to raise my child. I’m speaking to the broader systemic issue: in patriarchal societies, care work is treated as a private, female responsibility, rather than a societal one. That’s a cultural choice, not an inevitable truth.
I’m fortunate to have amazing support in my personal circle, but the reality is that most mothers don’t. And while your path is valid, the idea that no one should ever expect help is rooted in a very Western, hyper-individualistic mindset. In most cultures, child-rearing has always been communal. Expecting or even hoping for support (like access to affordable childcare or paid leave) isn’t entitlement. It’s asking society to value care work as essential, not invisible.
We can hold space for different life choices while still advocating for systems that support mothers better. That’s the conversation I’m trying to have.
Yeah I get that. But we DO live in western society. So for moms to feel shocked and irked that we don't have villages well...we don't live in villages? That can't be a revelation only when having a child. If people want a village, hey, that option is open.
But villages don't always have running water or wifi or individual paychecks or epidurals or duvet covers any other myriad of options. Its kinda why we all left them. We can't have western individualism but also African communality. It doesn't work.
And if a mom doesn't have help, why did she have a child? Why didn't she know she wouldnt have help? Who's responsibility was that other than hers to sort out before having a baby? But whenever someone points that out, they're a monster. It's all just the ~patriarchy.~
No. Its a person's individual responsibility to ask themselves "Just because I WANT something, can I actually HANDLE it?"
If that convo doesn't happen right alongside the patriarchy discussions then we're ultimately doing just performative blabbing and nothing will ever change for women.
Girl, I honestly don't think you understood a word of what they said. And comparing raising a child — a literal human being — with raising a company was actually one of the most stupid things I've ever read in my life. You're trying too hard to show everyone how clever you were for realizing that motherhood wasn't for you, and how "girl boss" you are, that you missed out the point of what they were talking about and just sounded really dumb and selfish. I'm also childfree, but the lack of empathy of some childfree women is just as annoying as mothers who keep trying to sell motherhood.
The problem comes in when mothers demand help or expect that everyone is just falling over themselves to take care of their kid. Or even worse, when they themselves abdicate their responsibility for raising or watching their kids because someone else is either there or "should" be available whenever mommy wants some time off.
I'm not adverse to helping parents with their kids. But I am up to here with women who walk up to me, a complete stranger, and TELL me to watch their kids while they go do whatever, like shop or check out in a store. And this isn't something rare - this happens a LOT. I tell them I don't watch other people's kids and I've actually had several mothers tell me they're going to leave their kids anyway and I better be there when they come back. I've had to threaten to call the police for child abandonment twice now to keep these mothers from just toodling on off without their kids.
And it goes without saying that many, many of us are fed to the teeth, with mothers especially, ignoring their kids in public and letting them run and scream and potentially harm themselves, expecting someone else, like another customer or a service person, will watch out for their kids.
I agree. Everyone wants this mythical village when they want help but suddenly that village is NOT welcome to give feedback. Only help! Well, I'm not in your village. I don't want to be. No one is in mine. I don't leave my corporation's compliance documents with a random stranger and demand assistance. We're all responsible for our own choices.
To be honest, I think a lot, not all but a lot, of women bring this on themselves.
First, they do little to no research about what having a baby entails, either by being pregnant or after the baby is born. You'd have to be blind, deaf, dumb, and brain dead today to NOT see all the articles and all the literature about how hard and expensive it is to raise a child. If you choose to ignore that and have a kid anyway, especially when we all know you can't afford one, don't expect people to sympathize with your situation.
Secondly, if you want the village to help you out, you can't scream and yell at people for telling your kid to quit running or screaming in public or for being brats, because that IS the village right there.
And third, your job as a mother is to teach your kid and the earlier you start, the easier it's going to be for you later on. Remember when kids had chores? Remember when you took your kid home when he started to act out in public? This is called teaching your kids and it isn't something that has to wait until they're 5 years old to learn. A two-year-old can pick up his toys.
Today we have mothers who would rather haul their toddler into a bar or a movie instead of toilet train them. They'd rather ignore the screaming and temper tantrums of their kids instead of creating boundaries. They'd rather put up with their kids hitting and swearing at them instead of trying to teach them to learn how to control their emotions.
Where is Dad in all this? Well, dads need boundaries and structure, too. The time to talk to your partner about what you, as a future mother will expect, is before you get pregnant. A real man will step up to the plate. But if you marry a toddler in a man's body and still have a baby with him anyway, that's just your choice, so don't complain when he doesn't help with anything. You'll have to lay it out what you want your partner to help with, but if your choice of a husband is still falling short of his parental duties, then all I can say is dump his ass and go it alone until something better comes along.
I understand where you're coming from, but again, how hard is it to research how expensive and time consuming it is to have kids? I knew this when I was 14. And I'm not only blaming women. I'm blaming every person who ever told a woman to "just have kids" because...because....because. If women - and I say women because they're the ones who are mostly stuck raising the kids - would put as much time into researching them BEFORE having them as they put into buying a new car, just maybe they wouldn't find themselves in these situations. Yes, the system is broken - shattered, really. So why in all the names of the gods would you STILL have a kid and expect everything to work out like a fairy tale?
I broadly agree with this comment but why does a mother also have to parent the father? Why don't we as a society expect more from dads so that another adult doesn't need to give them "boundaries and structure"? There should be no stepping up to the plate. He should have always been on the plate.
Yep, the whole “it’s your fault because you chose the father in the first place” narrative is so common, but honestly insane. Normalize calling out fathers for their sickening behavior, not shaming the women left to keep up with their bullshit.
Of course it's the fault of women who chose the father of their kids. Were they all held at gunpoint to get married and pregnant? It's called taking responsibility for your actions. As a woman myself, it irks me to no end when other women don't take responsibility for themselves. This is why the men I meet think I will fall at their feet just because they wave a dollar bill at me or try to tell me what to do. It's amazing to me how many men think I'm going to be their mama just because their last ten girlfriends were. And you should see the pikachu faces of some men when I explain that I expect some mature and responsible behavior from them. Especially when I let them know I'd rather be single than married to child in a man's body. It's called having respect for myself.
And what are you talking about? Normalize calling out fathers? The time to call them out is BEFORE they're fathers and also, before they're husbands. As long as you let men become fathers first and THEN normalize calling them out, don't expect anything to change. WOMEN HOLD THE POWER. They are not required to be married or have children with losers. If men finally come to realize that they aren't marriage material and women aren't going to marry them or have kids with them because of their behavior, or lack thereof, that's when men will change, not before.
You, Sarah, are insulting millions of women by saying they shouldn't be shamed for being left to keep up with a man's bullshit. A woman shouldn't ever have to put up with a man's bullshit, let alone be left to keep up with it. If I was in a marriage with a kid and a loser husband, my shame would be for marrying and having a kid with him in the first place, but also for still putting up with his crap and not leaving him. Yes, I know it's hard to leave a lot of times, but it is possible. And that's the power I have as a woman. This is 2025, not 1880 when women stayed with their husbands no matter how sad a specimen he was.
"WOMEN HOLD THE POWER." - So true! I think a lot of us have internalized misogyny that we don't recognize. If we are "empowered" then everything can't be someone else's fault. I find it quite liberating to remind myself from time to time that I can do whatever I want with my life, with the choices that are currently in front of me. So if I make a mistake, that's alright, I didn't know better, but now that I do, what do iiiii want to do about it? It's so wonderful to have agency and freedom over my own life.
I don't know why you have to parent the father - you tell me. You women are the ones marrying these infantile men and having kids with them. If a woman is going to make the biggest and most important choice of her life with another person, why in the world doesn't she make this choice BEFORE finding out what kind of man she married? There were no signs whatsoever that this man wouldn't be a good husband and father?
Briana, did it ever occur to you that what you perceive as “the general intolerance of children and their parents (re: mothers) in public spaces” and “the growing anti-child sentiment” is the natural result of the decline in mindful parenting?
Do you remove your loudly crying or misbehaving child from places where people are trying to eat, enjoy art or entertainment they’ve bought a ticket for or just talk to each other without the distraction and disturbance caused by your shrieking child? Do you teach your child to be considerate of others outside of child-oriented spaces? If you regularly experience “intolerance” when you’re with your child in public you should probably look inward.
Thank you so much for your vulnerability- as someone approaching their late twenties, I’m plagued with these thoughts. Hearing this is helpful and appreciated 💛
I see a lot of comments along the lines of, “Why didn’t you educate yourself on the challenges of parenting before deciding to become one?” But the truth is, the decision to become a parent is overwhelmingly emotional and only a small part logical or practical. We’re drawn to the images of smiling parents gazing lovingly at their babies, the hearts-and-flowers version of parenthood. Rarely do our minds go to the dollars, the hours, or the sacrifices involved—and why would we, when society tells us that you can’t or should never quantify something as profound and sacred as raising a child?
Besides, “researching” parenting is largely moot. Every child, household, and circumstance is unique, and the advice landscape is a firehose of contradictions. You won’t truly know what your life looks like until the baby arrives—and even then, it changes day to day. When you do ask veteran parents for the unvarnished truth, most will hesitate, because even remotely acknowledging the physical, emotional, and financial strain is too uncomfortably close to being perceived as criticizing or even hating their own kids. As you pointed out so eloquently, it’s a conversation we, as a society, still aren’t ready to have.
Until we’re able to set aside judgment and speak honestly, many of us who become parents may find ourselves disappointed—not because we’re bad parents or ungrateful, but because we’ve all been sold a romanticized ideal that doesn’t prepare us for the full reality.
I’m just coming across this article. I feel understood & seen. My daughter just turned 18. I raised her alone. I didn’t know I was married to a narcissistic paranoid delusional sociopath. I found that out the hard way.
I’m self employed & highly educated. Not a day goes by that I’m not deeply grateful for all of my hard work early on.
I’m shocked by many of the comments on here. It feels like victim blaming.
A woman with a newborn is her most vulnerable. I was 37 when I had her. I had no idea I would be so vulnerable.
All my “best” friends were very busy, my family complained I was too far. I received no help except from the kindness of strangers & one friend one night who sang my daughter to sleep as I was nearly bleeding to death from the uterine fibroid that grew during pregnancy.
Many of the woman commenting here seem to lack compassion. Maybe they’re the ones congratulating men for changing a diaper. 🌷
I observed the same lack of compassion in a good many of the comments. It is really sad that our society has grown to think this way concerning the future of our species as whole.
My journey throughout motherhood was also almost entirely alone. As a military spouse, we moved near constantly so building a supoort system was almost impossible. My family was far away. My ex-husband was around for our daughter's early years and did interact in helpful ways then, but most of the parenting responsibility fell on my shoulders. He is a detached narcissist who was controlling and abusive. When I did attempt building any community, he thwarted it. It blows my mind how many commenters also seem to think that just because a person says they will be some sort of parent, that they will live up to that expectation.
I understand women not wanting to be mothers these days. All that is promoted and generally seen are women struggling to hold themselves together, alone, while the world puts more on their shoulders. My own daughter, who is a teen now, has zero desire to have a relationship as almost all of the marriages she has seen herself have been tumultuous and ending in divorce. As she understands child rearing and the effort it takes, she also believes that doing it alone is not a proper plan either. There is no easily put solution. We live in a selfish, entitled society that lacks the fortitude of empathy and compassion towards other humans, let alone mothers and children.
Agree 100% that the normalization of selfishness is a huge part of the problem. It’s sad to realize that for the vast majority of Americans this is just the water we swim in, so it’s hard to see properly until you end up in a situation like motherhood where a great deal of support is needed, or you have the good fortune to witness a different way of life somewhere else. I live in a Cohousing community in California, made up of people who went to great effort and expense to create an oasis of mutual support in the midst of the burbs. But even after 25 years, we still operate very much as individuals, not true communitarians. And it has gotten so much worse since the pandemic made community “digital first,” as one author says. We desperately need to put in the work to wrest back some form of the village, but people are just trying to survive and don’t have the energy. My teenage son has exactly the same attitude btw—why seek a love relationship if it’s likely to go so horribly wrong? He formed this opinion in middle school, when two of his best friends started dating then broke up a few months later and he had to pick one lol…but still, who can blame them?
The community that you live in sounds like a great plan and idea. Your observation of the need for effort to maintain such living since the pandemic is very interesting. It does seem that we had a huge societal shift to being much more self centered during that time. It is sad that it also happened in a planned community where togetherness was a core value that got it started. A social beings humans truly need to be around others on a number of levels. The demise is evident when so many are shouting from the rooftops how much they dislike engaging and lack the drive to do so.
Sadly, there is no easy answer for our teens who have zero desire to even look forward to the idea of a healthy marital relationship in the future. Given that the majority of people these days can list numerous diagnosed disorders and debilitating self observations that would turn off a potential spouse, who would want to enter into a relationship with the baggage already overwhelming? Add in the lack of accountability, due to years of excuses and biased leniency, and there is really a scary looking dating pool for them before they even start out.
I love hearing someone talk about this! I chose to have a baby after a ton of thought and knowledge that it would be difficult but honestly I didn't have the first clue how hard it would be. I agree wholeheartedly that romanticizing motherhood is horrible for all of us. We are just not meant to raise kids alone! Our family units are broken. Even having an incredible husband who understands how hard everything is and really is an equal partner ( as much as that's possible) it still feels like drowning many days. All that said, I wouldn't want to be childless, but I wish we had a better support system.
when I first said that I wasn't sure that I didn't want to be a mother, everyone told me that I would change my mind. seein mothers being hones is just si clarifying. I think we, as individuals, get to change the society, so, as a forming nurse, I promise to be better to mothers during labour. thanks for such an honest point of view 🤍
I have no words for how thankul I am to be able to live in this time where women are allowed to speak up about these kind of things. I'm just 26 years old but when my mom was my age she already had a 5 year old and another baby on the way so it wasn't something she really questioned but growing up she always talked to me and my sister about her dreams and aspirations and all the what-if's of her life. I think the saddest thing many women who have children say is that they have to lose a little bit of them every day in order to be a better mother. It's just terrifying when I think about it. Thank you so much for bringing such an important topic up, it was very refreshing to read your experience and I'm so sorry for what you had to go through during your labor.
Thank you for your honesty. I am 26 it does put things into perspective for me. Having kids must be easy for financially stable people. I think it’s almost dangerous to be pushed into motherhood when you’re struggling with your own bills. Knowing we were never taught financial literacy to begin with before throwing us under the bus with the biggest responsibility on earth. KIDS.
100% yes!! so many people say it’s not about money, but honestly, having money does make all the difference in the system we’re living in. Money means you can hire a nanny if you want to have a night out, you can outsource cleaning, afford therapy, join mom groups that cost money, even take a break without it being a crisis. It gives you options. Without that, everything falls on you — emotionally, physically, financially. And that’s the part I wish more people would acknowledge. It’s not just about attitude or effort, but about access.
Exactly! Access, freedom and having the option to. Which is a big relief and less of a mental charge that occupies your entire existence.
You are right, it's about money. Throughout history, women high on the status and wealth ladder have usually outsourced childcare entirely, even using wetnurses to breastfeed their babies for them. The little darlings would be brought in after dinner, freshly washed, for a little mother time before bed - and carried out again immediately if they got fussy or stinky. Jane Austin portrays upper crust mothers leaving their infants back at the country estate with the servants while spending the season in London.
In societies with a poor underclass, even the middle class had live-in nannies (think Mary Poppins, which idealized a certain reality). Then by eight or ten, children were often shipped off to boarding schools. In medieval times, boys were handed over to knights to serve as pages at age six. In Tibet, that's the age many boys are still dropped off at monasteries, to live permanently.
No need to feel guilty. Centuries of women before you found motherhood so onerous they did all they could to get out of it.
I'm so sorry you are going through this hard time. I have felt it before but have come to realize that if I want a village, I need to create it. And a lot of the problems of not feeling heard or helped stems from me just as much as others, I have started opening up more with my husband, he is very loving and helps when he can (but he does work long hours during the day so naturally I take care of the children most of the time), I have started asking family and friends for help and to my surprise they weren't condescending and didn't think less of me! I feel like I built myself this wall in my head that was hard to get through but I did it. I do have help, people do love children, they want to help but they need to know exactly how they can help, and we need to choose better partners to have children with. There are men out there who step up and care for the family properly, but a lot of boys have been raised to try to get away doing as little as possible and that stretched into parenthood unfortunately, so women with childish selfish men tend to get burnt out picking up the pieces because they have no other choice. I changed this narrative by talking more with my husband, asking everyone for help with big and small things, attending more events with moms near my area (picnics in the park are cheap and usually easily accessible) and being more inviting and hosting more! Hopefully this helps and brings some light to such dark, overwhelming thoughts, especially when we feel in the thick of it.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I’m really glad you’ve found ways to make things work better for you and I do agree we have to actively build our own villages and ask people for help. I think where we might differ is that my post isn‘t really about me personally having a hard time, but more about how the larger system makes it incredibly hard for so many moms to have a good experience at all (especially for moms in marginalized groups!) Not everyone has access to supportive partners, family nearby, or the time and energy for community events. That’s the deeper issue I was trying to speak to — and one of the big reasons why so many people are choosing not to have kids right now.
I understand that absolutely, and how intimidating it is to make that choice. But therein lies the necessity to, maybe not have children themselves, but build a community that supports mothers. Lots of these women that don't have kids make it harder for moms too, they are usually the ones being condescending about kids, focusing all their time and attention on activities that are hard to have kids around, and ignoring friends that have children. It's a very multidimensional topic and what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that only pointing to the problem doesn't do much and we can all come together to bring about some small steps that resolve the big issue at hand.
I live 3 hours from any family. Friends have mostly moved away. The best e perience I had was when a hematology resident and their kids moved in across the street for a 1 year fellowship. (We have a lot of residents moving in and out of our neighborhood, which makes it tough for lasting relationships). The mom was a brand new nurse, they moved from across the country. She gave the most support (as did i) than anyone else ever living in my neighborhood. Our boys were the same age. She worked changing shifts, we would pick the kids up at the bus stop for each other. She patched up my kids skinned knee. They supported us when my husband was diagnosed with cancer. Sad they moved away.
My husband and I didn't know if we wanted to be parents. I knew the world wanted us to be parents. We decided to sign up to be foster parents. We had children in our care on and off for four years, and I learned one important lesson: the only safety net for women is other women, and I could be the safety net or I could need the safety net, but I just couldn't do both. For a myriad of reasons, we stopped fostering, mainly because I did not like being a mother in any way, form, or fashion. But I still love children, and I'm absolutely the safety net for my friends with kids and always will be.
Amy, you sound like an incredible person and your friends who are mothers are incredibly lucky to have you!! 🥹
My sister's girls asked me why I didn't have kids, and said I should go have a baby. I told them i like being an aunt better, not everyone is cut out to be a mom, and besides if I had my own kids I couldn't do as much as I do for them and their parents of give them some of the nice things I give them. (Example, I have covered the younger one's violin rental and lessons since she was six, plus I've been taking her to the lessons because her parents don't have time and don't understand music outside of listening to it. )
A fantastic read that echoes many of my thoughts. Now that I'm 35, nobody hounds me about being childfree like they used to in my twenties. Where others see loss, I feel liberation.
‚where others see loss, I feel liberation‘ THIS THIS THIS!!! ❤️ keep living your best life!
I recently came across a misogynistic thread accusing "feminists" of discouraging women from having children. I was like.....clearly this is all written by men who have NO IDEA what it's like being a child-free woman in her 20s. "HOUNDING" is truly the best word you could have used to describe that time period! lol
No one hounds me at 47 for being childfree, but there is plenty of crap bandied about regarding sad old cat-lady women who failed at their Life Purpose and now live in denial of that, pretending to be happy when they couldn't possibly be happy. And of course stopping younger women from having kids because if we failed at life, so must everyone else. And of course there is no way any young woman might choose not to have kids herself, it had to be pushed on her, but pushing motherhood for some reason doesn't count as social pressure. Always coming from the kind of people who lament for the days women had to be so completely financially dependent on men that the men could pop their wives in the mouth whenever he felt she "had it coming" and be praised for it by society because she had no recourse to justice and women were considered inferior subhumans. And sadly I say "people" because they aren't always men who feel that way.
Thank you for writing this. This needs to be said. I've noticed a social media trend lately of people wanting to be young mothers, but with all the above-listed difficulties, I think it needs to be emphasized that if you do choose to have kids, you need to wait until you're as emotionally mature, financially stable, and established in your life as you can be, because motherhood is going to rock you. People need to spend less time talking about the beauty of motherhood, and more time educating about the challenges mothers can expect to face if they choose that path.
Yes, I definitely agree about the young mother trend! It’s directly related to the way babies are increasingly seen as expensive accessories that match your aesthetic. Since having children in this economy is so kinda pricey, people have started to view it as a status symbol. Thank you for reading 🥰
Genuine question: why did you expect other people to pull up to raise YOUR baby? Who's baby have you helped raise? I don't mean that sarcastically, I think it's a question worth examining to hopefully dial down the disappointment of people not pulling up. We can't expect what we don't give.
I'm happily childfree and I'm "raising" my company, and I don't expect anyone to help me. With anything. Ever. I don't think any career woman does. It's my choice, my life, my path. Yours is yours. A new mom's isolation walks hand-in-hand with the entitlement that everyone will drop their life for your choices.
Hey Shallon, I think there’s been a bit of a misread here, I’m not asking strangers to raise my child. I’m speaking to the broader systemic issue: in patriarchal societies, care work is treated as a private, female responsibility, rather than a societal one. That’s a cultural choice, not an inevitable truth.
I’m fortunate to have amazing support in my personal circle, but the reality is that most mothers don’t. And while your path is valid, the idea that no one should ever expect help is rooted in a very Western, hyper-individualistic mindset. In most cultures, child-rearing has always been communal. Expecting or even hoping for support (like access to affordable childcare or paid leave) isn’t entitlement. It’s asking society to value care work as essential, not invisible.
We can hold space for different life choices while still advocating for systems that support mothers better. That’s the conversation I’m trying to have.
Yeah I get that. But we DO live in western society. So for moms to feel shocked and irked that we don't have villages well...we don't live in villages? That can't be a revelation only when having a child. If people want a village, hey, that option is open.
But villages don't always have running water or wifi or individual paychecks or epidurals or duvet covers any other myriad of options. Its kinda why we all left them. We can't have western individualism but also African communality. It doesn't work.
And if a mom doesn't have help, why did she have a child? Why didn't she know she wouldnt have help? Who's responsibility was that other than hers to sort out before having a baby? But whenever someone points that out, they're a monster. It's all just the ~patriarchy.~
No. Its a person's individual responsibility to ask themselves "Just because I WANT something, can I actually HANDLE it?"
If that convo doesn't happen right alongside the patriarchy discussions then we're ultimately doing just performative blabbing and nothing will ever change for women.
Girl, I honestly don't think you understood a word of what they said. And comparing raising a child — a literal human being — with raising a company was actually one of the most stupid things I've ever read in my life. You're trying too hard to show everyone how clever you were for realizing that motherhood wasn't for you, and how "girl boss" you are, that you missed out the point of what they were talking about and just sounded really dumb and selfish. I'm also childfree, but the lack of empathy of some childfree women is just as annoying as mothers who keep trying to sell motherhood.
The problem comes in when mothers demand help or expect that everyone is just falling over themselves to take care of their kid. Or even worse, when they themselves abdicate their responsibility for raising or watching their kids because someone else is either there or "should" be available whenever mommy wants some time off.
I'm not adverse to helping parents with their kids. But I am up to here with women who walk up to me, a complete stranger, and TELL me to watch their kids while they go do whatever, like shop or check out in a store. And this isn't something rare - this happens a LOT. I tell them I don't watch other people's kids and I've actually had several mothers tell me they're going to leave their kids anyway and I better be there when they come back. I've had to threaten to call the police for child abandonment twice now to keep these mothers from just toodling on off without their kids.
And it goes without saying that many, many of us are fed to the teeth, with mothers especially, ignoring their kids in public and letting them run and scream and potentially harm themselves, expecting someone else, like another customer or a service person, will watch out for their kids.
I agree. Everyone wants this mythical village when they want help but suddenly that village is NOT welcome to give feedback. Only help! Well, I'm not in your village. I don't want to be. No one is in mine. I don't leave my corporation's compliance documents with a random stranger and demand assistance. We're all responsible for our own choices.
To be honest, I think a lot, not all but a lot, of women bring this on themselves.
First, they do little to no research about what having a baby entails, either by being pregnant or after the baby is born. You'd have to be blind, deaf, dumb, and brain dead today to NOT see all the articles and all the literature about how hard and expensive it is to raise a child. If you choose to ignore that and have a kid anyway, especially when we all know you can't afford one, don't expect people to sympathize with your situation.
Secondly, if you want the village to help you out, you can't scream and yell at people for telling your kid to quit running or screaming in public or for being brats, because that IS the village right there.
And third, your job as a mother is to teach your kid and the earlier you start, the easier it's going to be for you later on. Remember when kids had chores? Remember when you took your kid home when he started to act out in public? This is called teaching your kids and it isn't something that has to wait until they're 5 years old to learn. A two-year-old can pick up his toys.
Today we have mothers who would rather haul their toddler into a bar or a movie instead of toilet train them. They'd rather ignore the screaming and temper tantrums of their kids instead of creating boundaries. They'd rather put up with their kids hitting and swearing at them instead of trying to teach them to learn how to control their emotions.
Where is Dad in all this? Well, dads need boundaries and structure, too. The time to talk to your partner about what you, as a future mother will expect, is before you get pregnant. A real man will step up to the plate. But if you marry a toddler in a man's body and still have a baby with him anyway, that's just your choice, so don't complain when he doesn't help with anything. You'll have to lay it out what you want your partner to help with, but if your choice of a husband is still falling short of his parental duties, then all I can say is dump his ass and go it alone until something better comes along.
Hi Kelly, blaming women for struggling in a broken system isn’t helpful. Hope this helps 🫡
I understand where you're coming from, but again, how hard is it to research how expensive and time consuming it is to have kids? I knew this when I was 14. And I'm not only blaming women. I'm blaming every person who ever told a woman to "just have kids" because...because....because. If women - and I say women because they're the ones who are mostly stuck raising the kids - would put as much time into researching them BEFORE having them as they put into buying a new car, just maybe they wouldn't find themselves in these situations. Yes, the system is broken - shattered, really. So why in all the names of the gods would you STILL have a kid and expect everything to work out like a fairy tale?
I broadly agree with this comment but why does a mother also have to parent the father? Why don't we as a society expect more from dads so that another adult doesn't need to give them "boundaries and structure"? There should be no stepping up to the plate. He should have always been on the plate.
Yep, the whole “it’s your fault because you chose the father in the first place” narrative is so common, but honestly insane. Normalize calling out fathers for their sickening behavior, not shaming the women left to keep up with their bullshit.
Of course it's the fault of women who chose the father of their kids. Were they all held at gunpoint to get married and pregnant? It's called taking responsibility for your actions. As a woman myself, it irks me to no end when other women don't take responsibility for themselves. This is why the men I meet think I will fall at their feet just because they wave a dollar bill at me or try to tell me what to do. It's amazing to me how many men think I'm going to be their mama just because their last ten girlfriends were. And you should see the pikachu faces of some men when I explain that I expect some mature and responsible behavior from them. Especially when I let them know I'd rather be single than married to child in a man's body. It's called having respect for myself.
And what are you talking about? Normalize calling out fathers? The time to call them out is BEFORE they're fathers and also, before they're husbands. As long as you let men become fathers first and THEN normalize calling them out, don't expect anything to change. WOMEN HOLD THE POWER. They are not required to be married or have children with losers. If men finally come to realize that they aren't marriage material and women aren't going to marry them or have kids with them because of their behavior, or lack thereof, that's when men will change, not before.
You, Sarah, are insulting millions of women by saying they shouldn't be shamed for being left to keep up with a man's bullshit. A woman shouldn't ever have to put up with a man's bullshit, let alone be left to keep up with it. If I was in a marriage with a kid and a loser husband, my shame would be for marrying and having a kid with him in the first place, but also for still putting up with his crap and not leaving him. Yes, I know it's hard to leave a lot of times, but it is possible. And that's the power I have as a woman. This is 2025, not 1880 when women stayed with their husbands no matter how sad a specimen he was.
"WOMEN HOLD THE POWER." - So true! I think a lot of us have internalized misogyny that we don't recognize. If we are "empowered" then everything can't be someone else's fault. I find it quite liberating to remind myself from time to time that I can do whatever I want with my life, with the choices that are currently in front of me. So if I make a mistake, that's alright, I didn't know better, but now that I do, what do iiiii want to do about it? It's so wonderful to have agency and freedom over my own life.
Thank you for sharing your perspective 💜
I don't know why you have to parent the father - you tell me. You women are the ones marrying these infantile men and having kids with them. If a woman is going to make the biggest and most important choice of her life with another person, why in the world doesn't she make this choice BEFORE finding out what kind of man she married? There were no signs whatsoever that this man wouldn't be a good husband and father?
Briana, did it ever occur to you that what you perceive as “the general intolerance of children and their parents (re: mothers) in public spaces” and “the growing anti-child sentiment” is the natural result of the decline in mindful parenting?
Do you remove your loudly crying or misbehaving child from places where people are trying to eat, enjoy art or entertainment they’ve bought a ticket for or just talk to each other without the distraction and disturbance caused by your shrieking child? Do you teach your child to be considerate of others outside of child-oriented spaces? If you regularly experience “intolerance” when you’re with your child in public you should probably look inward.
Thank you so much for your vulnerability- as someone approaching their late twenties, I’m plagued with these thoughts. Hearing this is helpful and appreciated 💛
Thank you for reading!! 🩷
👏👏👏
I wanna print this. Love it.
I see a lot of comments along the lines of, “Why didn’t you educate yourself on the challenges of parenting before deciding to become one?” But the truth is, the decision to become a parent is overwhelmingly emotional and only a small part logical or practical. We’re drawn to the images of smiling parents gazing lovingly at their babies, the hearts-and-flowers version of parenthood. Rarely do our minds go to the dollars, the hours, or the sacrifices involved—and why would we, when society tells us that you can’t or should never quantify something as profound and sacred as raising a child?
Besides, “researching” parenting is largely moot. Every child, household, and circumstance is unique, and the advice landscape is a firehose of contradictions. You won’t truly know what your life looks like until the baby arrives—and even then, it changes day to day. When you do ask veteran parents for the unvarnished truth, most will hesitate, because even remotely acknowledging the physical, emotional, and financial strain is too uncomfortably close to being perceived as criticizing or even hating their own kids. As you pointed out so eloquently, it’s a conversation we, as a society, still aren’t ready to have.
Until we’re able to set aside judgment and speak honestly, many of us who become parents may find ourselves disappointed—not because we’re bad parents or ungrateful, but because we’ve all been sold a romanticized ideal that doesn’t prepare us for the full reality.
I’m just coming across this article. I feel understood & seen. My daughter just turned 18. I raised her alone. I didn’t know I was married to a narcissistic paranoid delusional sociopath. I found that out the hard way.
I’m self employed & highly educated. Not a day goes by that I’m not deeply grateful for all of my hard work early on.
I’m shocked by many of the comments on here. It feels like victim blaming.
A woman with a newborn is her most vulnerable. I was 37 when I had her. I had no idea I would be so vulnerable.
All my “best” friends were very busy, my family complained I was too far. I received no help except from the kindness of strangers & one friend one night who sang my daughter to sleep as I was nearly bleeding to death from the uterine fibroid that grew during pregnancy.
Many of the woman commenting here seem to lack compassion. Maybe they’re the ones congratulating men for changing a diaper. 🌷
I observed the same lack of compassion in a good many of the comments. It is really sad that our society has grown to think this way concerning the future of our species as whole.
My journey throughout motherhood was also almost entirely alone. As a military spouse, we moved near constantly so building a supoort system was almost impossible. My family was far away. My ex-husband was around for our daughter's early years and did interact in helpful ways then, but most of the parenting responsibility fell on my shoulders. He is a detached narcissist who was controlling and abusive. When I did attempt building any community, he thwarted it. It blows my mind how many commenters also seem to think that just because a person says they will be some sort of parent, that they will live up to that expectation.
I understand women not wanting to be mothers these days. All that is promoted and generally seen are women struggling to hold themselves together, alone, while the world puts more on their shoulders. My own daughter, who is a teen now, has zero desire to have a relationship as almost all of the marriages she has seen herself have been tumultuous and ending in divorce. As she understands child rearing and the effort it takes, she also believes that doing it alone is not a proper plan either. There is no easily put solution. We live in a selfish, entitled society that lacks the fortitude of empathy and compassion towards other humans, let alone mothers and children.
Agree 100% that the normalization of selfishness is a huge part of the problem. It’s sad to realize that for the vast majority of Americans this is just the water we swim in, so it’s hard to see properly until you end up in a situation like motherhood where a great deal of support is needed, or you have the good fortune to witness a different way of life somewhere else. I live in a Cohousing community in California, made up of people who went to great effort and expense to create an oasis of mutual support in the midst of the burbs. But even after 25 years, we still operate very much as individuals, not true communitarians. And it has gotten so much worse since the pandemic made community “digital first,” as one author says. We desperately need to put in the work to wrest back some form of the village, but people are just trying to survive and don’t have the energy. My teenage son has exactly the same attitude btw—why seek a love relationship if it’s likely to go so horribly wrong? He formed this opinion in middle school, when two of his best friends started dating then broke up a few months later and he had to pick one lol…but still, who can blame them?
The community that you live in sounds like a great plan and idea. Your observation of the need for effort to maintain such living since the pandemic is very interesting. It does seem that we had a huge societal shift to being much more self centered during that time. It is sad that it also happened in a planned community where togetherness was a core value that got it started. A social beings humans truly need to be around others on a number of levels. The demise is evident when so many are shouting from the rooftops how much they dislike engaging and lack the drive to do so.
Sadly, there is no easy answer for our teens who have zero desire to even look forward to the idea of a healthy marital relationship in the future. Given that the majority of people these days can list numerous diagnosed disorders and debilitating self observations that would turn off a potential spouse, who would want to enter into a relationship with the baggage already overwhelming? Add in the lack of accountability, due to years of excuses and biased leniency, and there is really a scary looking dating pool for them before they even start out.
I love hearing someone talk about this! I chose to have a baby after a ton of thought and knowledge that it would be difficult but honestly I didn't have the first clue how hard it would be. I agree wholeheartedly that romanticizing motherhood is horrible for all of us. We are just not meant to raise kids alone! Our family units are broken. Even having an incredible husband who understands how hard everything is and really is an equal partner ( as much as that's possible) it still feels like drowning many days. All that said, I wouldn't want to be childless, but I wish we had a better support system.
when I first said that I wasn't sure that I didn't want to be a mother, everyone told me that I would change my mind. seein mothers being hones is just si clarifying. I think we, as individuals, get to change the society, so, as a forming nurse, I promise to be better to mothers during labour. thanks for such an honest point of view 🤍
I have no words for how thankul I am to be able to live in this time where women are allowed to speak up about these kind of things. I'm just 26 years old but when my mom was my age she already had a 5 year old and another baby on the way so it wasn't something she really questioned but growing up she always talked to me and my sister about her dreams and aspirations and all the what-if's of her life. I think the saddest thing many women who have children say is that they have to lose a little bit of them every day in order to be a better mother. It's just terrifying when I think about it. Thank you so much for bringing such an important topic up, it was very refreshing to read your experience and I'm so sorry for what you had to go through during your labor.